A wildfire on the McCoy Ranch in northwestern Jeff Davis County is now under control, according to the Fort Davis Fire Department. A lightning storm Wednesday afternoon initially sparked two blazes, which ended up burning into each other before spreading across 130 acres.
"There is no active fire and the crews are mopping up," said Fort Davis Fire Department public information officer Jim Fowler in a Facebook post.
Together the fires burned through brush land on the McCoy Ranch just off Highway 17, heading toward Balmorhea. One of the fires burned near the top of the mountain, while the other burned half-way up the mountain's side. There are no roads in the area the fire was burning, which meant fire crews had to hike through difficult terrain to reach the blazes.
With the fire now largely contained, crews on Thursday are monitoring the fire to ensure it doesn't spread past containment lines.
"Right now, we're just kind of watching things as the day heats up and our relative humidities [sic] are dropping," said Joe Pascua with the Texas A&M
Forest Service.
More than a dozen firefighters from Fort Davis, the Davis Mountains Resort and the Texas A&M Forest Services are responding to the fire.
