About 17 miles to the east, firefighters reported 79% containment of the Washburn fire burning in Yosemite National Park, having threatened a grove of giant sequoias and scorching 4,856 acres since July 7.īut those fires were rapidly outpaced by the Oak fire, which sent up a pyrocumulus cloud so large it could be seen from space and darkened skies with smoke for hundreds of miles, prompting air quality advisories as far away as Barstow and the Victor Valley. About seven miles to the southwest, the Agua fire burned 421 acres and destroyed three structures after it was sparked by a vehicle crash Monday. The blaze was one in a string of fires to hit the area in recent weeks. “But I feel like I’ve been under LAX the last couple of days.” “Here I am in the middle of nowhere outside Yosemite,” she said. “It looked like Godzilla over my house.”īut then firefighting air tankers began to arrive dumping retardant and tamping down the flames near her. “The fire blew up,” said Pratt, 53, who is the California regional executive director for the National Wildlife Federation. Less than a mile from the evacuation zone in Midpines, Pratt had packed up her car on Saturday ready to leave.
Sitting in her front yard Sunday morning while ash rained down on her, Beth Pratt was thankful that things weren’t worse. We had roads closed all the way to Highway 49 South … it was basically in our backyard,” said McGruder, who has lived in the area for more than three decades. “We couldn’t even open the store yesterday.
#FINDERPOP SIERRA FREE#
That group includes the crew of firefighters and emergency personnel that McGruder is offering free coffee and soft drinks to while they use her parking lot as a makeshift meeting place.