‘Danger in my back yard’: residents in a wildfire-prone California town eye more Yosemite tourism with unease

Flames from the French fire burn on a hillside above Mariposa, California, on 5 July 2024. Photograph: Noah Berger/AP

Kathleen Armstrong saw the smoke curling above the tree-covered horizon and turned on her scanner with bated breath. Mariposa was on fire again. It was the Fourth of July, a high-risk time in the California mountain town near Yosemite national park that had already seen its fair share of emergency evacuations.

Memories still fresh from the destructive 2022 Oak fire, Armstrong and her husband rushed to pack up their four dogs as the sky began to glow red and flames raced toward the back door. “It was traumatizing,” she recalled in a recent interview. “It’s a miracle we are still here.”