FRESNO, Calif. (AP) – 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 rural California community, the former nurses’ aide said.
“Everything else is obliterated,” Crawford said Friday. “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 60 homes and 64 other buildings. But it spared Mariposa, a historic Gold Rush-era town popular with tourists bound for the park.