San Juan Bautista - A week after the official end of the county's fire season, two separate grass fires in San Juan Bautista over the weekend kept firefighters busy as they quickly contained and extinguished the blazes.
Just after 12:20pm Saturday, several fire units responded to a blaze at Rocks Road on the north side of Highway 156, according to California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection Engineer Jeff Kinoshita. The fire consumed about 15 acres of grass, but no structures were damaged, he said.
Saturday's fire started after a bird flew into power lines, burst into flames, plummeted to the earth and ignited the dry grass, according to Kinoshita. It was contained within a half-hour and fully extinguished within three hours, he said.
"It was a bird-into-a-power-line type of deal," Kinoshita said, adding that fires caused by flaming birds are "not too common."
In addition to the San Juan Bautista Fire Department, units from several CDF stations in San Benito, Monterey and Santa Clara counties were also on hand to fight the fire.
On Sunday a similar scenario played out when dry grass near Monterey Street on the south side of Highway 156 went up in flames at about 11:15am, according to Kinoshita. That fire, which consumed about 10 acres of dry grass, was fully extinguished in about three hours and did not damage any structures, he said.
The cause of Sunday's fire is still unknown, according to Kinoshita.
Firefighters from the San Juan department and CDF units from San Benito, Santa Clara and Santa Cruz counties responded to Sunday's fire.
Kinoshita said that, with a slower response or different weather conditions, last weekend's fires in San Juan Bautista could have been worse.
"If they'd spread and the fire wasn't contained, there's always the possibility that they could spread to structures," he said. "We're lucky it wasn't mid-summer with high heat and low humidity."
On Nov. 14, the CDF officially declared the end of San Benito County's fire season, which began in June.
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