California's Carr Fire kills 2 young children and their great-grandmother

Firefighters douse a hotspot near various homes as the Carr fire continues to burn near Redding, California, on July 28, 2018.
(Image credit: Josh Edelson/Getty Images)

California's Carr Fire grew from 48,000 to 80,000 acres Saturday and claimed the lives of three more people.

James Roberts, 5, and Emily Roberts, 4, were trapped by a wall of flames with their great-grandmother, Melody Bledsoe, 70, on their family's property near Redding. "I didn't think the fire could cross the river. Within 15 minutes, it burned my house down," said Eddy Bledsoe, Melody's husband. "She took care of me and them kids like we were a team," he said of his wife. "Every day, every day of her and my life, I told her, 'I want to thank you for being my lady.'"

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Bonnie Kristian

Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.