Fire spares town near Yosemite

Dozens of homes destroyed in blaze

FRESNO, Calif. — A chimney and a cinder block wall is all that’s left standing among rubble that was a house Miki Crawford and her family called home for 22 years after a wildfire raced through her Northern California rural community, the former nurses’ aide said Friday.

“Everything else is obliterated,” Crawford said. “It’s just a feeling of complete devastation and loss.”

Crawford said she and her husband, Jai Crawford, packed two cars with clothes, photographs, family heirlooms, their four pugs and one hound dog and fled Tuesday after the blaze burning in the hills near Yosemite National Park doubled in size.

Their son hiked to the area in Mount Bullion the following day and took photographs revealing a nightmare — their three-bedroom home and at least five other nearby houses destroyed in their neighborhood.

The aggressive wildfire sweeping through the Sierra Nevada foothills covered with dense brush and dead trees destroyed 58 homes and 60 other buildings. But it spared Mariposa, a historic Gold Rush-era town popular with tourists bound for the park.

Firefighters lifted an evacuation order for residents of Mariposa and reopened Highway 140 between the town and Yosemite, California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection spokesman Andy Isolano said.

The wildfire that has scorched 115 square miles threatened at least 1,500 homes and forced almost

5,000 people to evacuate.

Roughly a dozen of the destroyed homes had dotted hills 10 miles west of Mariposa.

Residents a few miles to the north also saw damage, including Mount Bullion.

Crawford, 56, said there have been wildfires near her community in Mariposa County. But this was the first time they had to flee.

“We saw a video that showed the blaze coming from two different directions at one time, and it just looked like a fire storm,” she said.

“It was such an erratic fire coming from all direction that there wasn’t anything firefighters could do.”

She said she hopes to clean up the area and buy a modular home to put on their land. Relatives have started a Gofundme page to help the couple rebuild.