Grass fire briefly closes Highway 20

A grass fire scorched close to four acres of BLM land on Highway 20 on Monday afternoon and traffic was delayed at the Pilot for about 30 minutes due to concerns that the fire might jump across the road and ignite the other side.

Firefighters from the Mountain Home Rural Fire District were able to extinguish the fire in less than two hours and were later assisted by BLM fire crews in putting out isolated "hot spots".

"What's amazing is that anything can burn with as much rain as we had yesterday. That's an indication of this year's fire season," said Mountain Home Fire Chief Phil Gridley.

The fire was caused by some downed power lines and crews were forced to wait for Idaho Power to cut power to the lines before attacking the blaze due to some of the lines laying across a metal fence.

Apparently, vandalism caused the downed power lines, according to Idaho Power.

"A bullet frayed the power line and caused it to come down," said Lynette Berriochoa, spokesperson for Idaho Power. The person(s) responsible may have been shooting at the conductor or line itself, said Berriochoa, but Elmore County Emergency Dispatch did not have any reports of shooting in the area.

An hour long power outage caused by the downed power line affected approximately 150 customers during the early afternoon.