BIG LAKE -- All afternoon, people in the Ronnie Court subdivision used garden hoses to wash over their houses and yards as the soot in the air grew stronger and darker and the wind blew dusty and hot.
They could feel the fire, and taste it, long before they could see it.
But about 4:30 p.m., the flames appeared, leaping across Big Lake Road to the north and creeping though the spruce and birch forest behind the houses. The brush on the ground smoldered and the trees bent in the blustery wind. One by one, tall black spruce trees ignited in orange -- nearly instant puffs, the brown smoke billowing high into the air.
Traci Jones spotted the state fire marshal's van driving up the road and ran shouting.
''Our house!'' she yelled, waving at a neat, gray and dark green split-level with a big deck. The flames had reached the edge of the yard, 100 feet from the dwelling.
''It's going to get our house!''
Up and down the dusty gravel roads between Wasilla and Big Lake, in subdivisions filled with homebuilt shacks and neat homes and weekend cabins, variations of this scene were playing out. Hundreds of people left at the urging of state troopers Monday night, but some stayed behind.
Jones, a real estate agent, and her partner, Brad McAlpine, a railroad engineer, left but came back with their pre-teen son, Corbin. They passed through police barricades and a fleet of fire engines moving from subdivision to subdivision trying to outrun the flames.
A yellow tanker truck from Anchorage's Airport Heights fire station pulled into the subdivision. The flames spit out of the woods behind their house and a shed started to burn. Firefighters pulled a hose across the yard and began spraying. McAlpine joined in with a garden hose.
Jones went to the other side of the house, spraying another hose on a smoldering pile of brush. Her hair was pulled back in a braided ponytail and her face was beaded with sweat. Her son, following instructions, sat in the car in case a speedy getaway was necessary. His bike lay on the ground next to the house.
The snowmachines, Jones said, were at a friend's place. Probably gone, she said. A spruce tree ignited. She continued with the hose, using her thumb to make a spray. She tried not to cry.
''We built this place two years ago,'' she said.
Flames spread to a second outbuilding. From inside came a string of pop, pop, pop explosions.
''Ammunition, I guess,'' Jones said.
The ground around the house was soaked. The family planned to stay and spray water until the fire passed or took their house.
''I know it's just not here, I know it's traumatic for people all over out here,'' Jones said.
Out on Big Lake Road, fire had burned a black carpet on both sides of the pavement, turning spruce into sooty, branchless poles. Smoke was thick. A strip of road was coated with pink fire retardant dumped from an airplane earlier in the day as crews frantically tried to contain the fire on the north side of the road. It was no use. The fire jumped at any number of points. Its edge was now three or four miles south, and hundreds of scattered fires were burning in the wake.
Troopers barricaded the road. The only traffic was emergency vehicles coming in and residents leaving, their cars and trucks packed with dogs, and with boxes and sacks of belongings. One man had entire desk drawers filled with papers in the back of his car. Trucks hauled out teams of sled dogs throughout the day.
A mile from the Parks Highway, flames engulfed a row of spruce trees 50 feet off the road. It was so hot, the flames warmed skin through glass in a passing car. A few hundred yards away from the fire, troopers tried to talk several people into leaving their house; unlike most of their neighbors, they refused.