The archived outline of the Whittier Fire spans about 15.2 km from west to east and 8.4 km from south to north. CAL FIRE places the incident at Lake Cachuma area, south of Hwy 154. The mapped boundary provides a second way to locate the event: it shows the extent around that reference location.
| Start listed by CAL FIRE | 8 July 2017 |
|---|---|
| County listing | Santa Barbara |
| Reported area in hectares | 7,458 ha (converted from acres) |
| Extent of the mapped outline | 15.2 × 8.4 km (west–east × south–north) |
| Containment entry in the archive | 9 January 2018 |
| Perimeter collection method as recorded | Digitized-Other |
What the perimeter shows
The longer dimension runs east–west and is about 1.8 times the shorter one. A circular buffer drawn around the incident point would hide that difference. A road or settlement at the same distance from the point could fall inside or outside the mapped footprint depending on its direction.
Two estimates of area
The incident report gives 18,430 acres; the interagency feature stores 18,412.4 GIS acres. The mapped value is 17.6 acres below the reported value (0.10%). This compares two published measurements, not two observation times. The difference cannot be read as fire growth.
A similar-sized fire for comparison
The Whaleback Fire of 2018 is the closest match by reported acreage in this 100-case collection (18,703 acres). Its mapped spans are 11.0 by 11.6 km, west–east then south–north, versus 15.2 by 8.4 km here. The longer axes run in different directions. Matching on acreage would miss that contrast.
Sources and map method
- Whittier Fire · CAL FIRE incident record
- NIFC interagency history · source perimeter (GeoJSON)
- Whaleback 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.