Rancher crew helps control range fire near Idaho border

Firefighters from the Jordan Valley Rangeland Fire Protection Association and the Bureau of Land Management worked through the night Sunday to build a line to slow the spread of the fast-moving Cherry Road Fire. Starting about 4 p.m. Sunday, they completed a 20-mile fireline with burnouts and bulldozers at the southern edge of the fire along Succor Creek Road by 7 a.m. “Last night it was just blazing,” said Kari Clark, a Homedale resident who watched the fire. “You could see the whole hillside lit up.”Clint Fillmore is the leader of the Jordan Valley crew of ranchers who make up the association, the members of which were watching aircraft drop water on hotspots in the canyons around Owyhee Reservoir at 6:30 p.m. Monday, more than 24 hours after they’d started. “Winds pushed it all night,” said Fillmore. “There were a couple of times it almost got away from us.” The fire was reported about 1 p.m. Sunday, at about 3,500 acres. By Monday morning, it was 31,210 acres nearly 10 times that size. About 100 people worked the fire. The cause of the fire is undetermined...more