A Mexican-American family described having to evacuate the Bear Creek mobile home park 8km south of Medford, Oregon, as flocks of birds flew from advancing flames and sparks began to rain down on their house.
Ms Beatriz Gomez Bolanos told her four children to close their eyes while fires raged on both sides of their car as they made their escape. "Everything is gone. We've to start again from nothing, but we're alive," the 41-year-old woman told Reuters by phone.
They were lucky to escape with their lives as the wildfires that tore through three West Coast states in the US have claimed more than 20 lives since erupting the previous month.
Over in Phoenix, Oregon, Mr Matt Manson stared at the razed skeleton of his pick-up truck on Friday, which sat on a blackened driveway in front of a smouldering pile of rubble that once was his house. Like other residents in the small agricultural town in Oregon, Mr Manson was in shock as he returned to his neighbourhood and saw how fast the wildfire had engulfed his home and upended his life.
"The fire melted the motor right out of my truckit drained down the driveway," said the 43-year old construction worker. "I lost everything. I lost all my tools. My truck. I can't work. I lost US$30,000 (S$41,000) worth of guitars. All gone."
Mr Manson, who now owns only a backpack with a change of clothes, struggled to find the words to describe how the fire had ravaged the town that sits near the green Siskiyou Mountains, about 337km south of Portland. Trees lining his street were now just blackened, skeletal remains.
"It looks like a war just happened here," he said.
In Phoenix, the smoke was still thick in the air as several of its 4,600 residents tried to grasp the extent of the damage.
Ms Doris Peterson, 85, said she only had time to grab Toby, her 12-year-old Chihuahua, when she and her husband, Richard, fled after police banged on their door on Tuesday about noon and told them they had just minutes to get out. They spent five hours in bumper-to-bumper traffic before finding a hotel room in Grants Pass, Oregon.
On Friday, she and her husband sat in their car at a baseball field just north of Phoenix, waiting to be escorted into their neighbourhood by police.
She was bracing herself for the worst, but still hoped for a miracle. "I called my landline phoneand the answering machine picked up!" she said. "My next door neighbour's will not pick up. Maybe our house survived."
REUTERS