MANNFORD, Okla. – The fields around Connie Laxton's home in Oklahoma were black with ash Monday after a roaring wildfire tore across her property and ran right up to her gray, brick ranch home – where it suddenly stopped.

The fire line is marked in the grass a foot from house, and the smell of smoke permeates the inside. One side of the three 40-foot pear trees in the yard is charred gray and black, the other is leafy and green.

"I went through a tornado in '84, and it took our house, but we've never seen anything like this," said Laxton, who believes the pear trees deflected sparks that otherwise would have landed on her roof.