Nine Agencies Held a Cybertruck Fire to 0.61 Acres

A Tesla Cybertruck and the woodchipper it was towing set 0.61 acres of private grass alight west of Norwood, Colorado, on June 29, 2025. Dispatch took the call at 1:15 p.m. Sunday in the Coventry Hill area outside Redvale, in Montrose County. About 30 firefighters from nine agencies had the grass 90% contained by 3:25 p.m.

No one was hurt, and no building was in the path. The truck fire’s cause was left open when the grass was called out.

Thirty Firefighters for 0.61 Acres

The hold is the story. A burn that size would fit inside a modest pasture paddock, yet the response looked like a wildland dispatch: local fire, two sheriff’s offices, three federal land agencies, and a contractor, with a crew still on the ground after dark.

Norwood Fire later told partner agencies the fire was 100% contained at 8:45 a.m. on Monday, June 30, 2025. That is 19 hours 30 minutes after the first call, for a fire that never left private land and never reached a structure.

The ignition was not a campfire or a lightning scar. It was a Tesla Cybertruck already in flames, with a towable woodchipper catching as well, on dry June grass four miles west of Norwood. Rural mutual aid in that corner of southwestern Colorado is built for grass and timber. A vehicle pack and a second machine sitting in the fuel is a different job, even when the black on the ground stays small.

THE REDVALE FIRE IN FOUR FIGURES

• The burn: 0.61 acres of private land, with no structures in danger.
• The clock: First call at 1:15 p.m. Sunday; 90% contained at 3:25 p.m.; 100% contained at 8:45 a.m. Monday.
• The roster: About 30 firefighters from nine agencies, including a contractor.
• The harm: No injuries reported, and the vehicle fire’s cause unnamed.

Those four numbers explain why a pasture fire in Montrose County drew Forest Service and BLM units instead of a single engine and a wet line.

Dispatch Logged the Call at 1:15 p.m.

San Miguel County deputies were first to put words on the radio traffic. The fire sat on private property about four miles west of Norwood, close enough to Redvale that local coverage used that name, and inside Montrose County enough that Montrose deputies rolled too.

The sheriff’s office posted the sheriff’s first public note while the truck was still burning. The wording treated two fires, not one.

A Tesla Cybertruck is on fire, and a generator was just ignited. The fire is on private property and suppression efforts are underway. No structures are in danger at this time.

San Miguel County Sheriff’s Office, Sunday dispatch note

Photos from the sheriff’s office show a hard column of black smoke standing over the stainless body, with flame at the rear and in the grass around it. Crews from Norwood Fire arrived with San Miguel and Montrose deputies. By midafternoon the grass was mostly ringed. Officials still warned that smoke would stay visible Sunday evening, and a group of firefighters stayed on scene overnight to watch for heat.

The first public note is also the first error in the file. The second machine was not a generator.

The Towable Woodchipper Caught Fire Too

The sheriff’s office later said the machine they had called a generator was a towable woodchipper. That correction matters more than a wording slip. A portable generator is a fuel can and a motor. A chipper is a heavy tow-behind with its own engine, a hopper full of wood, and hydraulic oil, sitting on a hitch behind a truck that is already on fire.

So the grass fire had two packages to work on: the Cybertruck, and the implement it had been pulling. Crews were not only wetting a pasture. They were keeping a burning truck and a burning chipper from throwing more fire into June grass.

Towing a chipper is not a stunt use of this truck. Tesla sells the Cybertruck as a job-site vehicle, and owners already put chippers behind these things on ordinary workdays. The Redvale fire is what that job looks like when the truck itself becomes the ignition.

No later public update said whether the chipper started from radiant heat, from a trailer-plug fault, or from grass already burning under the tongue. Officials only said it ignited, and that the truck fire was the event they were still investigating.

Norwood, Naturita and Paradox Took the First Hit

The standing force on that ground is small. Norwood Fire, Naturita Fire, and Paradox Fire are the departments that live with grass season on the dry benches between the San Miguel River country and the Uncompahgre Plateau. When the Cybertruck lit, those three did not get a quiet pasture fire. They got a vehicle fire that pulled in everyone who could legally put water on it.

San Miguel deputies, Montrose deputies, and Norwood Fire were the first names on the response. About 30 firefighters then worked the scene with help from the Bureau of Land Management, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Williams Construction, Naturita Fire, Paradox Fire, and the U.S. Forest Service. Count the two sheriff’s offices with those names and the roster is nine.

WHO SHOWED UP ON COVENTRY HILL

Williams Construction is the name that does not belong on a standard wildland org chart. A contractor on that list means the fight used whoever was close enough to help, not only career wildland crews. That is how a 0.61-acre fire in Montrose County can still empty the local board.

Federal land units were there because that bench is a patchwork of private parcels, BLM, Forest Service, and wildlife ground. A grass fire that starts on private land does not stay a private problem if the wind is wrong. The nine-agency turnout is the cost of treating that risk as real, even when the black ends at 0.61 acres.

Tesla Sells the Truck for Jobs Like This

The Cybertruck is not marketed as a grocery run. Tesla’s own product page puts the dual-motor and Cyberbeast versions at 11,000 pounds of towing, with trailer mode on the center screen so a driver can store load details. The same page lists five outlets for tools and devices. That is a pitch to people who pull chippers, compressors, and small equipment trailers down county roads.

The owner’s manual is more precise about the spread. Dual-motor premium and Cyberbeast trucks carry the 11,000 lb figure. The lighter setup carries a 7,500 lb long-range rating. Public updates on the Redvale fire never named the trim, so no one can say from the file whether that truck was on the 11,000 lb hitch or the lighter one. The chipper still puts the truck in the job Tesla advertised.

WHAT TESLA PUTS ON THE WORK SHEET

• Peak tow: 11,000 pounds on dual-motor and Cyberbeast trucks, the figure on the public spec sheet.
• Lighter tow: 7,500 pounds on the long-range setup, per the owner’s manual weight tables.
• Trailer mode: Load details and profiles live on the center touchscreen, built for exactly this kind of pull.
• Job power: Five outlets, sold as a way to run tools without a separate generator.

A separate Cybertruck already does this work without catching fire, which is the boring baseline the Redvale photos do not show. The stainless body and the 11,000-pound hitch rating did not keep this truck from becoming the ignition. The departments that live on that road did.

What Started the Cybertruck Fire?

The exact cause of the vehicle fire was under investigation when Norwood Fire called the grass 100% contained, and no later public finding named a crash, a wiring fault, a hitch problem, or a battery failure. Officials said the Cybertruck was on fire, the woodchipper ignited, and the grass burned 0.61 acres. They did not say why the truck burned.

Online argument filled that hole in a day. Posts called it thermal runaway and treated the pack as a bomb in dry grass. That is a guess, not a finding. A column of black smoke over a stainless truck looks like a battery fire. It also looks like a vehicle fire of any kind with rubber, plastics, and cargo in the bed. The sheriff’s office never used the battery words.

What crews do know, and already train for, is that EV battery fires involve thermal runaway, a heat cycle that can pick up again after the visible flame is gone. That is a general pack problem, not a verdict on this truck. It is still a reason an overnight watch on a burned EV in grass is not wasted time, even when the black is measured in tenths of an acre.

WHAT WE KNOW

• The machines: A Tesla Cybertruck burned while towing, and a towable woodchipper ignited with it.
• The ground: Private land about 4 miles west of Norwood, logged as the Coventry Hill area outside Redvale.
• The hold: 0.61 acres, 90% contained at 3:25 p.m. Sunday, 100% contained at 8:45 a.m. Monday.
• The harm: No injuries, and no structures in danger at any point in the public updates.

WHAT IS UNCONFIRMED

• The truck cause: No public finding named a defect, a collision, a tow-load failure, or a pack event.
• The chipper path: No public finding said whether the chipper lit from heat, wiring, or already-burning grass.
• The trim and load: Officials never identified the Cybertruck variant or the weight on the hitch.

Leaving those items open is not a small clerical gap. It is why a 0.61-acre fire still sits in the EV-safety argument with no mechanical answer attached to it.

Smoke Hung Over Coventry Hill After Dark

The grass was largely under control within two hours of the 1:15 p.m. call. That is the agencies’ own timing for the hold, and it sits 10 minutes off the 3:25 p.m. stamp when the fire was listed at 90% contained. Control and percent contained are not the same clock. One is the moment the spread was stopped. The other is the moment most of the line was in.

Smoke still stood over the bench Sunday evening. A crew stayed through the night. That is standard on grass when the ignition source is a vehicle that can hide heat in a frame, a pack, or a chipper hopper. It is also why Monday morning, not Sunday afternoon, is the containment time that counts.

THE REDVALE FIRE CLOCK

1. June 29, 2025, 1:15 p.m.: Dispatch takes the first call on a Tesla Cybertruck fire on private land about 4 miles west of Norwood.
2. June 29, 2025, afternoon: Norwood Fire, Naturita Fire, Paradox Fire, both sheriff’s offices, federal land units, and Williams Construction work the truck, the chipper, and the grass.
3. June 29, 2025, 3:25 p.m.: The fire is listed as 90% contained, about 2 hours 10 minutes after the first call.
4. June 29, 2025, evening: Officials warn that smoke will remain visible; firefighters stay overnight to watch hotspots.
5. June 30, 2025, 8:45 a.m.: Norwood Fire reports the fire 100% contained on 0.61 acres, with no injuries.

Monday’s call from Norwood Fire closed the grass. It did not close the truck. The Cybertruck and the woodchipper had already done the only damage the public file records, 0.61 acres of private pasture and a long afternoon for every department that could reach Coventry Hill. The cause of the vehicle fire was still unnamed when the smoke finally dropped.