Erskine Fire leaves devastation in its wake

KERN COUNTY (KFSN) -- Homes have been destroyed, people have been evacuated, and lives have been lost and changed forever.

Over 100 structures have burned and 1,500-hundred more are threatened.

"It was crazy," resident Mary Trautman said. "You couldn't even see your hand in front of your face, the smoke was so thick."

Trautman says it all happened so fast, there was no time to prepare, only time to react.

With neighbors, she ran from the fire, shirt covering her face.

She lost her home after the Erskine fire ripped through the small community of south lake Thursday night.

"Mine, my daughter's house all the friends we know up there, they're all gone, they're just foundations now," she said.

Trautman says everyone she knows is safe but some neighborhood animals didn't make it out.

She didn't come to the evacuation center with much, so she says they'd love to go back to see if there's anything salvageable.

Trautman has been in tears all day.

"All night, we didn't really sleep," she said. "We don't have phones. We had to come up here to get phone service, to even let our families know in other places that we were okay."

But she says if there's any shining light, it's that the community of South Lake helped each other through the fire and through the devastation.

And they'll continue to do that in the days to come.