Six area fire departments were called to extinguish a six-mile long line of flame along State Highway 80 February 26.

The call came in at 4:30 p.m. and the Karnes City Volunteer Fire Department responded. Initially, the problem didn’t look very large, but volunteers soon caught wind of the scope of the problem.

"Initially they just reported two small grass fires just north of the river bridge on F.M. 80," Karnes City Fire Chief Charlie Malik said. "We got there and there were a bunch of people that stopped on the side of the road already and had stomped them out. We watered that one down a little bit, but we kept seeing smoke to the north. We didn’t know if it was a controlled burn or what."

Firefighters took off down the highway and passed up a bystander that reported more fire to the northeast.

"We took off and it was probably another two miles north before there was another one," Malik said. "We could see at least four fires right there together, plus more smoke down the road. There had to have been … at least 10 separate spots burning. We had a county officer go up as far as County Road 627 (and) that was the last (fire) he saw. We didn’t know if there was going to be more, so we called Gillett to come from the north and we figured we better get Nixon. We had a bunch for several miles. We just didn’t know if it kept on going."

Volunteer fire departments from Nixon, Runge, Gillett, Falls City, and Kenedy all sent units out to the fire, which ended up spreading out over six miles to the northeast.

Malik said the departments were lucky in that the wind was coming out of the south, keeping the fire out of the pastures and containing it mostly to the roadside. The fires were extinguished and the last unit left the scene at 7:25 p.m.

As for what started the fire, Malik said he normally would assume a traveling vehicle sparked all the different instances of fire, but no evidence turned up to support that theory.

"Sooner or later those people pull over and stop, but in this case there were no vehicles broke down anywhere," he said, adding that there also weren’t any gouges in the road to indicate a vehicle had been dragging something producing sparks.

His department is continuing to investigate the fire.