Josh Ayers
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The fire that broke out around 11 a.m. Tuesday consumed 60 acres and is now fully contained, Cal Fire officials said. Firefighters hoped to reach full containment by early this morning.
The fire began on a hill behind the Cal Poly Equine Center. There were, however, no structures immediately threatened at the equine structure.
Animal science senior Stephanie Gloede was one of the first to see it and placed the call to 9-1-1 at 11:10 a.m.
“It spread really fast,” she said. “It was doubled, if not tripled, by the time the fire marshall got there.”
The cause of the fire is still under investigation, but investigators were still at the scene as of 4:30 p.m. To find the source of the fire, investigators talked to witnesses, looked for smoke patterns, and talked to the first fire crew who arrived at the scene.
At 1 p.m. Cal Fire called for precautionary voluntary evacuations at Poly Canyon and Stenner Creek Road. The evacuation did not include campus residents and no injuries were reported.
University Housing sent three e-mails to Cal Poly students living in on-campus residences such as the Cerro Vista apartment complex.
The first e-mail sent at noon advised students in Cerro Vista to close their windows. The second e-mail sent at 1 p.m., when the fire was moving toward Cerro Vista, advised students to be mindful of their health and safety. The third e-mail said the fire was “moving away from campus core” but did not specify what constituted “campus core.”
Two air tankers, two attack planes, three helicopters, approximately 20 fire engines and about 140 firefighters from Cambria to Nipomo arrived at the scene to help put out the flames.
An additional strike team was called to help defend the Poly Canyon area, which includes the construction site for Poly Canyon Village.
Cal Fire information officer Clint Bullard said the flames are hard to control on such a terrain with high foliage.
“The canyons are steep and inaccessible,” Bullard said, noting that aircraft is necessary to deal with such fires. “It burned very typical of Poly fires.”
The last Cal Poly fire was in early July when someone set off illegal bottle rockets below the Poly P. That fire scorched 50 acres.
Jessica Wagner and two other equestrian team members were riding horses along the trails behind the equine center when they noticed the fire.
“We saw it start on the left-hand side of the crevice and it just grew,” she said.
As a result of the fire, an animal science 224 lab was cancelled.
Around 3 p.m., Bullard said the fire continued to pull back on itself and burn parts that had already been burned. This helped keep the fire within the contained area and stopped it from spreading.
Bulldozers created several containment lines around the fire where it might spread. The fire jumped two of those lines and spread to nearby hills.
Bullard said it could take a few months for the land to grow back but that there could be a decent amount of rainfall in the near future.
Firefighters will be there through the night and over the next two days containing the area.
Editor in chief Kristen Marschall, managing editor Ryan Chartrand and reporter Cristina Albers contributed to this report.
Do you have photos from the fire? Send them to us at mustangdaily@gmail.com