after the fires in Gatlinburg last year, I went driving around and looking at the places that burned the day after they allowed people back in. I saw similar things there, houses side beside one burned to nothing and the other untouched.
cars sitting feet apart with one burned so bad that it was impossible to know what type it was. The aluminum wheels melted and looks like it ran down the road like water. The car 10 feet away with not even singed paint.

A few trees were standing but non of them were evergreen trees and only the largest part of the trunk was still standing.

It looked very odd and nothing like you see after a house or something normally catches fire, but when we see most houses that have burned, we see them after firefighters have fought the fires. In California now and in Gatlinburg, there was no way they could even try to fight the fires. They had to sacrifice 95% of the area and put all effort in saving the remaining 5% and keeping escape routs as clear as possible.

In Gatlinburg there are only 3 roads that lead out of town, one small 2 lane goes across the to North Carolina, One 4 lane connects Pigeon Forge and Gatlinburg, and a final 4 lane that goes to a town 45 miles away and connects with the interstate there also. When the fires started burning in town all 3 roads had fires blocking them even though they are several miles apart. It was like the fores were set at the same time trying to trap people in town with no way out. I spoke with a forest ranger at the time and he told me that they almost had to be arson by more than one person. The fires had been burning in the national park for a while but all of a sudden the whole town was surrounded by fires that popped up 10 or 15 miles from the main fire.