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[Update: Fri., April 3, 2026, 4:14 p.m.] As of 4 p.m. Friday, April 3, forward progress has been stopped on the Plato Fire, according to an update posted on the WatchDuty app. Incident Command estimates that the fire reached a size of about 22.8 acres.
[Original Story] A fire is currently burning near a Vandenberg space launch complex. The fire is about 13 miles from Lompoc.
At 1:24 p.m., a reporter on WatchDuty, a website that tracks wildfires, uploaded video footage and a post that said firefighters were on-scene of a 2-acre fire. The footage came from AlertCalifornia, a UC San Diego–based website that monitors wildfires in the state.
Vandenberg said that the fire department on-base is working to get a boundary estimate for the fire and contain it, and has reached out for mutual aid. Santa Barbara County’s Fire Department said they had firefighters assisting on-scene.
It is unclear the current size of the fire; Vandenberg does not yet have an estimate, but at 2:13 p.m., a WatchDuty post said the fire had spread to 10 acres and was at 0 percent containment.
