The archived outline of the Tomahawk Fire spans about 6.4 km from west to east and 6.3 km from south to north. CAL FIRE places the incident at Traveled from Naval Weapons Station, Fallbrook and is now on Camp Pendleton. The mapped boundary provides a second way to locate the event: it shows the extent around that reference location.
| Start listed by CAL FIRE | 14 May 2014 |
|---|---|
| County listing | San Diego |
| Reported area in hectares | 2,172 ha (converted from acres) |
| Extent of the mapped outline | 6.4 × 6.3 km (west–east × south–north) |
| Containment entry in the archive | 19 May 2014 |
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 5,367 acres; the interagency feature stores 5,365.3 GIS acres. The mapped value is 1.7 acres below the reported value (0.03%). This compares two published measurements, not two observation times. The difference cannot be read as fire growth.
A similar-sized fire for comparison
The South Fire of 2019 is the closest match by reported acreage in this 100-case collection (5,332 acres). Its mapped spans are 8.6 by 7.5 km, west–east then south–north, versus 6.4 by 6.3 km here. The broad proportions are comparable. That does not establish that fuel, wind or suppression tactics were similar.
Sources and map method
- Tomahawk Fire · CAL FIRE incident record
- NIFC interagency history · source perimeter (GeoJSON)
- South 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.