Update: Aug. 12 at 10:05 p.m. Fire has burned 75 acres and is 100% contained.
A wildfire on Old Hernandez Road close to Coalinga Road has burned 40 acres since late afternoon Aug 10, Cal Fire said.
Firefighter Josh Silveira said that a positive is that vegetation or fuel is low because of cattle grazing. It is currently 10% contained.
The biggest local fire from 2021 to date consumed 184 acres in the final days of July near the west entrance of Pinnacles National Park Fire before firefighters contained it July 31.
Wildfires commonly occur throughout California during the dry summer months. San Benito County’s worst fire within the county lines was the Burkett fire of 1955, which burned 11,574 acres, according to Cal Fire records. Investigators did not find a cause.
The largest blaze overlapping San Benito and other counties was the 1979 Ciervo fire, the state fire agency says.
California’s two largest fires in history are the 2020 August Complex that burned more than a million acres of land followed by the 2021 Dixie Fire which burned 963,309 acres.