Crews worked Wednesday to douse hot spots at the site of a wildfire that burned across swaths of open terrain in the far southern reaches of San Diego County, blackening scores of acres and pushing into Mexico before ground and air crews gained control of the flames.
The blaze — the second to break out in the same general area in as many days — began spreading for unknown reasons at about 10 a.m. Tuesday alongside Tecate Creek in Marron Valley, east of Otay Mesa.
Ground crews and personnel aboard air tankers and water-dropping helicopters battled the blaze, which posed no imminent structural threats, said Thomas Shoots, a fire captain with the state fire agency. The nearest homes to the burn area were several miles away, he said.
In addition to fighting the flames on the U.S. side of the border, Cal Fire personnel were aiding their Mexican counterparts just to the south in adjacent Baja California territory.
By 5:30 p.m. Tuesday, firefighters had halted the spread of the blaze at an estimated 70 acres.
Medics took one Cal Fire San Diego firefighter to a hospital for treatment of minor heat-related illness, Shoots said.
The fire was reported about 14 hours after another blaze erupted a few miles to the west, on the outskirts of Otay Mesa. Crews were able to halt the spread of that fire — which caused no known injuries or property damage — by 3 a.m. Tuesday, by which time it had scorched roughly 30 acres, Shoots said.
Updated at 11:30 a.m. June 22, 2022
–City News Service