Springs Fire (2013): mapping the 24,251-acre footprint

The archived outline of the Springs Fire spans about 15.4 km from west to east and 15.4 km from south to north. CAL FIRE places the incident at Southbound Highway 101 at Camarillo Springs Road, Camarillo. The mapped boundary provides a second way to locate the event: it shows the extent around that reference location.

Start listed by CAL FIRE2 May 2013
County listingVentura
Reported area in hectares9,814 ha (converted from acres)
Extent of the mapped outline15.4 × 15.4 km (west–east × south–north)
Containment entry in the archive11 May 2013
Springs Fire historical perimeter; north up. Approximate spans 15.4 by 15.4 kilometres.
Generalized historical perimeter. Source: NIFC interagency fire perimeter history.

What the perimeter shows

The two spans differ by only 0.0 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 24,251 acres; the interagency feature stores 24,059.9 GIS acres. The mapped value is 191.1 acres below the reported value (0.79%). This compares two published measurements, not two observation times. The difference cannot be read as fire growth.

CAL FIRE also records structures damaged: 2; structures destroyed: 10. Those counts come from the incident record. A building inside the perimeter cannot be assigned a damage category from this map alone.

A similar-sized fire for comparison

The Jerusalem Fire of 2015 is the closest match by reported acreage in this 100-case collection (25,118 acres). Its mapped spans are 14.0 by 13.1 km, west–east then south–north, versus 15.4 by 15.4 km here. The broad proportions are comparable. That does not establish that fuel, wind or suppression tactics were similar.

Sources and map method

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.