Update: The Highway Patrol closed Highway 152 in both directions
Saturday night around 7 p.m. after the Pacheco Fire jumped over the
road.
Update: The Highway Patrol closed Highway 152 in both directions Saturday night around 7 p.m. after the Pacheco Fire jumped over the road.
Officers turned around angry travelers just after the Casa de Fruta turnoff, repeated telling drivers that they didn’t know when the road would open.
Flames could be seen several hundred yards away on the left from the turn-around point.
“There is ash everywhere,” an officer said.
A vehicle fire sparked a blaze near Highway 152 and Dinosaur Point Road today that had burned 750 acres as of 7:10 p.m., but a Calfire spokesman said he thinks crews are “starting to get ahead of it” and that it is not threatening any structures while moving north away from Pacheco Pass.
The fire started when a vehicle fire reported at 2:17 p.m. today near that area of the highway spread to the nearby brush, said John Amos, a spokesman with the Santa Clara County Calfire unit.
“I think we’re getting ahead of it,” Amos said. “It’s too soon to make that much of a guarantee, but it’s expanding slower.”
Calfire has “a considerable number of units” assigned to the blaze, Amos said. There were nine engines, an air-attack plane, four air tankers, two helicopters and two bulldozers working the fire as of 5:20 p.m. today, but Amos added how there likely were even more units assigned by that point because his data had not been updated.
The fire started on the north side of Highway 152 and began burning vegetation while moving north. Amos said the fire likely will not cross the highway because of its direction and that no structures are in the area.
