"We only had about a minute to get out of here," he said Sunday while surveying the rubble that used to be the Dog Valley Trading Post, a Cove Fort shop he owned until the Milford Flat fire.

"I grabbed my change box . . . and one handful of things, and went out the door," Rutherford said. "It came over that hill and burned us down, right to the ground."

But it could have been worse, Rutherford said.

"We've lost a lot of things here - a lot of handmade, beautiful items. But they can all be replaced, and we can't.

"You just pick up with your life and you go on. I understand a few people on the freeway lost theirs, and so we're lucky."

Rutherford has plenty of grateful company.

Erin Denton, 42, was driving her two children on I-15 to their L.A. home Saturday after a vacation in Montana. She and other drivers had rushed through a black cloud and patches of flames south of Fillmore when traffic stopped. As minutes ticked by, motorists climbed up a hill for a better view.

"I kept waiting for the police to show up and tell me what to do, and no one was showing up," Denton said. "What was I thinking, that Bruce Willis was going to drop out of the sky and go, 'I'll save you, ma'am?' "

Then Denton saw the crowd scramble frantically down the hill. A huge cloud of smoke rose up behind them. Truckers began to unhitch their loads as traffic U-turned into the shoulder.

"The fire jumped the fireline and started coming right for us," she said. "It was just panic - absolute, breathtaking panic. I have a 2-year-old and a 4-year-old in the back seat. What do I do? So I just started following the Utah folks. I figured they're the smart ones."

A half mile to the north, Denton met a team of firefighters. She finally got the official instructions she was waiting for.

"They just yelled, 'Don't stop! Don't stop! Don't stop! Just fly!' "

She flew.

About 2 miles east of Milford, Ruth and Kendall Hoover prepared their home after a friend called asking, "Do you know you are on fire?" Ruth said.

"We came out and started putting hoses all around the house," she said. Fire crews and deputies arrived in minutes.

"I don't think I was afraid, because there were enough fire trucks to spray us down. I have a healthy respect for wind and fire now."

ngonzalez@sltrib.com

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* Tribune photographerRICK EGAN contributed to this report.