Temperatures soared in the San Juans last week, and apparently, a spark from a county road crew ignited the dry tinder and sent a brush fire racing up the hill from Crow Valley Road on Sept. 16.

Later that same day, another wildland fire was reported and extinguished off Dolphin Bay Road.

“Conditions were extremely dry,” said Russ Bruland, the County Road Superintendent on Orcas. He said the operator of the mower did not see the sparks, but spotted smoke behind him on the area where he had been mowing. The worker tried to douse the fire with a watering can, but it continued to spread. “The worker called the Fire Department for help at 10:55 a.m., approximately five minutes after he first spotted the smoke,” according to Bruland.

Fire Chief Mike Harris said that when he arrived on the first responding engine, he estimated the wind to be only about five miles per hour, but the fire had spread quickly and “the employee was prudent to call the fire department right away, rather than try to stomp it out.”

The fire spread from about 100 feet of roadway to about 75 feet uphill, Harris estimated, covering a total area of about a half-acre between Nordstrom Lane and Pleasure Horse Lane.

The firefighters flanked the fire with hoseline on either side of it and “pinched it off,” said Harris. Six fire engine vehicles and 24 firefighters were involved in putting out the fire. “Though the fire was contained in about 45 minutes and we breathed a sigh of relief, then the hard work started,” said Harris.

Fire crews spent hours digging out the fire, which had gone into the root systems, to make sure it didn’t flare up and ignite later. In active mop-up until 9 a.m. and a night watch posted until 6:30 a.m., mop-up was completed at about 11:30 a.m. when Crow Valley Road was re-opened.

In the meantime, a second fire was reported at about 6 p.m. near Markoff Lane, off Dolphin Bay Road.

Harris reported that a quarter-acre fire on unimproved land was extinguished in about 30 minutes, with mop-op operations keeping Fire Department crew there until about 9 p.m. There were five department vehicles and 12 personnel involved in putting out the fire, Harris said.

“It’s pretty weird to have two significant (for us) wildland fires on the same day, but it speaks to the weather we’ve been having.”