Petaluma crews douse brush fire along Highway 101

Petaluma firefighters Sunday afternoon quickly doused a brush fire alongside southbound Highway 101, officials said.

Starting at 2:27 p.m., multiple callers reported seeing smoke and flames along the highway just north of the East Washington Street off-ramp, an emergency dispatcher said.

Petaluma firefighters found ablaze a 30-foot by 10-foot area of brush underneath redwood and eucalyptus trees, Assistant Fire Chief Jeff Schach said. Within minutes, they had the fire under control.

Two unidentified men driving on the highway pulled over, jumped a fence into the backyard of a home on Arlington Drive, which runs parallel to the highway, and used a garden hose to keep the fire from spreading, Schach said.

No injures were reported and no properties were damaged, although a home was threatened by the blaze, he said.

In September 2016, a fire sparked in dry brush along northbound Highway 101 near East Washington Street burned 14 homes, destroying four of them.

“That’s a big concern for us - the freeway fires that back up to homes,” Schach said, adding that the cause of Sunday’s fire was undetermined.

- Hannah Beausang