The archived outline of the Pulgas Fire spans about 11.5 km from west to east and 10.6 km from south to north. CAL FIRE places the incident at Off Interstate 5 at Las Pulgas Rd, north of Oceanside. The mapped boundary provides a second way to locate the event: it shows the extent around that reference location.
| Start listed by CAL FIRE | 15 May 2014 |
|---|---|
| County listing | San Diego |
| Reported area in hectares | 5,834 ha (converted from acres) |
| Extent of the mapped outline | 11.5 × 10.6 km (west–east × south–north) |
| Containment entry in the archive | 21 May 2014 |
What the perimeter shows
The two spans differ by only 0.9 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 14,416 acres; the interagency feature stores 15,186.1 GIS acres. The mapped value is 770.1 acres above the reported value (5.34%). This compares two published measurements, not two observation times. The difference cannot be read as fire growth.
A similar-sized fire for comparison
The Tucker Fire of 2019 is the closest match by reported acreage in this 100-case collection (14,217 acres). Its mapped spans are 11.6 by 14.9 km, west–east then south–north, versus 11.5 by 10.6 km here. The longer axes run in different directions. Matching on acreage would miss that contrast.
Sources and map method
- Pulgas Fire · CAL FIRE incident record
- NIFC interagency history · source perimeter (GeoJSON)
- Tucker 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.