Posted: Tue, 21 Jul 2009 09:52 PM - 10,129 Readers

By: Noell Newton

The drought may be to blame for a brush fire that destroyed 45 acres in West Travis County.

Flames quickly shot up the hillside of a 650 acre ranch off of Thurman Bend Road Monday afternoon. Neighbors watched nervously as it got closer to their property lines.

"It's kind of scary because it's very, very close,” neighbor Ellen Smith said.

The fire spread across 45 acres and near several homes in the Village of Briarcliff. A backyard fence was burned down and some others damaged.

"It was like an inferno. There was a huge amount of smoke,” Smith said.

For four hours firefighters battled the flames. Two Starflight helicopters worked from the sky, scooping up buckets of water from the noticeably shrinking Lake Travis and dousing the flames.

The dry conditions made it difficult for the firefighters and may also be the cause. They say a power pole snapped on the ranch property and when it hit the ground the live wires sparked the fire.

"Usually when the ground starts to dry out like this a lot of times those poles will shift and if there's too much tension on the wire it will break and come to the ground,” Perdenales Fire Chief Ken Van Rens said.

If conditions continue to worsen, there's a possibility this could happen again.

"We really need some rain,” Rens said.

"Brush fires [are] a scary thought. It's always in the back of your mind definitely,” Smith said.

For a short time during the fire, neighbors lost power. Neighbors say the owners of the ranch live in Houston and were not on the property at the onset of the fire.