The archived outline of the Gap Fire spans about 15.8 km from west to east and 17.3 km from south to north. CAL FIRE places the incident at off Seiad Creek Rd, 5 miles northeast o Seiad Valley. The mapped boundary provides a second way to locate the event: it shows the extent around that reference location.
| Start listed by CAL FIRE | 27 August 2016 |
|---|---|
| County listing | Siskiyou |
| Reported area in hectares | 13,705 ha (converted from acres) |
| Extent of the mapped outline | 15.8 × 17.3 km (west–east × south–north) |
| Containment entry in the archive | 28 August 2016 |
What the perimeter shows
The two spans differ by only 1.5 km. That does not make this a circular burn: the dimensions measure the outermost coordinates, leaving indentations and gaps invisible. Use the polygon itself, rather than its enclosing rectangle, to check whether a location intersects the footprint.
Two estimates of area
The incident report gives 33,867 acres; the interagency feature stores 33,011.4 GIS acres. The mapped value is 855.6 acres below the reported value (2.53%). This compares two published measurements, not two observation times. The difference cannot be read as fire growth.
A similar-sized fire for comparison
The Apple Fire of 2020 is the closest match by reported acreage in this 100-case collection (33,424 acres). Its mapped spans are 18.6 by 12.9 km, west–east then south–north, versus 15.8 by 17.3 km here. The longer axes run in different directions. Matching on acreage would miss that contrast.
Sources and map method
- Gap Fire · CAL FIRE incident record
- NIFC interagency history · source perimeter (GeoJSON)
- Apple Fire · comparison incident
- Comparison perimeter · interagency record
Spans use the geographic extremes of a generalized boundary, converted to kilometres at its middle latitude. They are approximate map dimensions, not distances travelled by flames. The GIS acreage is the source attribute, not an area recalculated from the simplified outline.