A fire in the woods

On my walk today, I went into an area of the woods I haven't used for a week or so. It looks like there was a fire that consumed about an acre of the woods (I'm guessing the area is about 300 feet long and about 150 feet wide making it 45,000 square feet with an acre being about 43,500 square feet). I hadn't heard anything in the news and have seen nothing in the paper about it so, perhaps it was a controlled burn. That area was in a valley that collected a lot of water and was more overgrown than the rest of the forest.

But, I really wonder. I didn't see any tire tracks on the edges of the burn so they didn't have any big equipment there to stop it. You can see tire tracks in the top photo where a vehicle went through the middle of the area. Maybe they just had enough firemen (fire-persons?) there to keep it under control. As you know from my other entries, I can come up with all sorts of weird explanations and justifications for things when I don't know the facts. If I find anything else, of course, I'll enter it here.

As I mentioned last spring, the town paid to have a machine go through the forest and clear areas along the paths as a fire break and to allow fire vehicles to get into the woods in case of a fire. So, this could have been an event that showed the wisdom of that move or as a planned justification of that effort. Boy, could I go off on the conspiracy part if I wanted to!

[Update - 3:10 PM, May 21 (same day) - Well it was an uncontrolled fire! One of the guys in the office found a news report about ten fires in our county on Monday of this week, May 17. It had been longer than I'd thought since I'd walked in that area. Also, the fire department estimated that the burned area I saw was about three acres. So, I didn't see the whole area - or my size estimation skills are pretty bad!]