The archived outline of the Pilot Fire spans about 8.7 km from west to east and 7.1 km from south to north. CAL FIRE places the incident at Pilot Rock & Hwy 138, southeast of Hesperia. The mapped boundary provides a second way to locate the event: it shows the extent around that reference location.
| Start listed by CAL FIRE | 7 August 2016 |
|---|---|
| County listing | San Bernardino |
| Reported area in hectares | 3,282 ha (converted from acres) |
| Extent of the mapped outline | 8.7 × 7.1 km (west–east × south–north) |
| Containment entry in the archive | 16 August 2016 |
| Perimeter collection method as recorded | Mixed Methods |
What the perimeter shows
The two spans differ by only 1.6 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 8,110 acres; the interagency feature stores 8,110.8 GIS acres. The mapped value is 0.8 acres above the reported value (0.01%). This compares two published measurements, not two observation times. The difference cannot be read as fire growth.
A similar-sized fire for comparison
The Empire Fire of 2017 is the closest match by reported acreage in this 100-case collection (8,094 acres). Its mapped spans are 9.0 by 10.0 km, west–east then south–north, versus 8.7 by 7.1 km here. The longer axes run in different directions. Matching on acreage would miss that contrast.
Sources and map method
- Pilot Fire · CAL FIRE incident record
- NIFC interagency history · source perimeter (GeoJSON)
- Empire 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.