A small wildfire that broke out over the weekend in the Davis Mountains Resort — a rugged residential subdivision in the mountains of Jeff Davis County — was mostly contained by Monday morning, according to the Fort Davis Fire Department.
The department said in a Facebook post Sunday evening that the Blue Fire had held to just 3 acres and was 70% contained. The fire has been burning for the past few days in a remote area to the west of the DMR's main area of roads and homes.
“Right now there’s no real threat to structures,” Edna Queen, chief of the Davis Mountains Resort Volunteer Fire Department, told Marfa Public Radio on Sunday. “It didn’t really grow much overnight.”
The Fort Davis Fire Department said in Facebook posts over the weekend the fire was burning in “rugged country” and that a state task force was working to contain the fire after local crews first responded on Saturday.
Queen said state crews dropped three loads of retardant over the fire by plane on Saturday and continued to make retardant drops on Sunday. The fire was burning in a rugged area accessible only by foot, she said.
“The location in the DMR is at the very end of Cochise Canyon,” she said. “It’s a very hardcore four-by-four road, then you have to UTV people up to the top of the trailhead, then you have to hike in.”
Queen said the fire was burning toward the west, away from the central residential area of the DMR. She said residents in the subdivision don’t need to panic or worry at the moment, but they “need to stay alert.”
“If it reversed course and started coming down the canyon, it would be a while before it really threatened structures,” she said.
It’s unclear when exactly the fire broke out, but officials believe it was started by lightning hitting a tree as storms blew into the region over the last few days.
This story has been updated.
