A fire sparked by a downed power line near the Point Reyes Hostel on Monday night burned about 1.6 acres of brush but luckily left the hostel undamaged, according to Point Reyes National Seashore rangers. Hostel manager Hannah Morris said she and her husband, Aaron Ely, noticed something was amiss when the lights dimmed, and they called 911 at about 6:30 p.m. Firefighters from the seashore, Marin County and Inverness (including the town’s fire chief, Jim Fox, who ran out the door in the midst of making dinner) had to wait for over an hour after arriving on the scene before they could contain the blaze. It took that long for a PG&E employee, who had to switch off nearby power lines before crews could approach the fire, to arrive. (Once he did, he ended up having to return to the entrance of Limantour Road so he could call PG&E to find out where to disconnect the lines.) Waiting, said Ms. Morris, the mother of a 3-year-old, “was terrifying.” The fire was on “the edge of a wet gully,” she went on, but the winds were blowing toward the hostel; glowing embers landed on the roof and fluttered down to the dry grass above their leachfield, where Mr. Ely stamped them out. Ms. Morris evacuated her 10 or so guests and told them they should find other accommodations. (A few came back late that night and were allowed to stay.) Once the power lines were turned off at around 9 p.m. the crews quickly contained the fire, and most of the trucks were gone a few hours before sunrise. In the morning, Ms. Morris swept ash out of the foyer.