The chaparral-covered hillsides along Highway 94 between Barrett Junction and Potrero are not unfamiliar with fire. The same general area burned catastrophically in October 2007, when the Santa Ana wind-driven Harris Fire swept through in a 90,000-acre run that destroyed hundreds of structures and killed eight people. Nearly a decade later, the Border Fire of June 2016 burned 7,609 acres in a similar footprint east of Potrero, killing two more.

Fire in this terrain follows patterns that the land itself imposes. The chaparral is dense, the hillsides are steep, the Santa Ana winds accelerate through the canyons, and the summers are long and dry. When conditions align — heat, wind, low humidity, and a spark — fire moves fast and burns hot. The Border 32 Fire did not invent anything new about the landscape. It repeated what the landscape has been doing for as long as anyone has kept records.

The fire spread northeast from its ignition point through cheatgrass and into the dense chaparral along the mountainsides toward Potrero Peak. Evacuations were ordered immediately for Barrett Junction residents. Within hours, as the fire pushed toward the rural community of Potrero, mandatory evacuation orders covered the entire town and much of the backcountry west of Campo.

By 5 PM, 1,400 acres had burned with zero containment. The fire crossed Highway 94 during the afternoon and continued toward Potrero as crews worked to establish lines. By nightfall, fire behavior eased as temperatures dropped, allowing over 400 firefighting personnel to work through the night on spot fires and hotspots. At 10 PM the acreage stood at 4,243 — only a couple hundred shy of the final total — and containment was five percent.

Some residents were allowed to return home at the outer edges of the burn by that evening. Others waited longer.

Through September 1, containment grew to fourteen percent as crews worked in brutal heat. By September 3, the Tecate border crossing — shut down for several days by the fire's proximity — reopened as containment reached eighty percent. The fire was fully contained on September 5, with a final acreage of 4,456 and ten structures destroyed, including several homes.

Hundreds of residents from the Barrett Lake Road area, Coyote Holler Road, and Round Potrero Road near Potrero and Dulzura had fled their homes during the mandatory evacuations. The cause of the fire remained under investigation at the time of containment.

Firefighters stayed committed to the fireline for several additional days after the September 5 declaration, monitoring and controlling lingering hotspots in the burned landscape.

In chaparral country, fire is not only destruction — it is also part of how the ecosystem cycles. Native chaparral species are adapted to periodic burns; some require fire to germinate. The problem is not fire itself but the frequency of fire, and the presence of invasive grasses like cheatgrass that burn hotter and faster than native vegetation and leave soils vulnerable to erosion.

The hillsides above Barrett Junction and Potrero have burned enough times in recent decades that recovery between fires is increasingly incomplete. The Border 32 Fire added 4,456 acres to a landscape that was still recovering from 2007 and 2016. The people who returned to the rural communities along Highway 94 came back to a changed view — the same hills, but quieter, browner, waiting again for what comes back after fire.