PHOENIX, Ore. – Betty Stevens stumbled down the street that had until a few hours ago seemed so familiar, her feet crunching through ash and debris as she entered the smoking remains of her neighborhood. There were melted street signs. Trees burned down to stumps. Power lines across the road. And everywhere she turned, choking, acrid smoke.
Sobbing behind the face mask she normally wears for her job as a hospital respiratory therapist helping coronavirus patients, Stevens, 31, video recorded herself earlier this week as she stumbled through the neighborhood, raw emotion in her voice, sometimes unable to form words, moaning in obvious pain.
"I think everything's gone," she says as the rising sun illuminates the destruction. "This doesn’t do justice to how terrifying and horrific this is, seeing how devastated everything is. Our homes are gone. Our homes are completely gone."
The Almeda fire is one of more than 2,000 wildfires that have burned through the western United States in the past weeks, forcing tens of thousands of people to evacuate their homes from Colorado to California and Oregon, and enveloping millions in choking, toxic smoke considered hazardous to breathe.
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