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When David and Dar Sherwin returned to their sprawling ranch property in Williams Canyon in the Santa Ana Mountains, they found a little note from the firefighters who saved their home.

The couple paused. Both teared up.

“It said, ‘We have your back,’” Dar Sherwin said.

The Sherwins were among thousands of people who fled the area late Wednesday night and Thursday morning as the Bond fire swept through the three canyons — Silverado, Williams and Modjeska — branching off from Santiago Canyon. The fire so far has burned up more than 6,600 acres, destroying 31 buildings along the way.

The couple said they felt lucky. They were not among those that lost their homes.

By around 11:30 p.m. on Wednesday, David Sherwin said they could see the fire peeking from behind a ridge.

“We could just see the glow and the plumes of smoke coming over the ridge,” he said. “It was pretty intense … that’s when we knew to get our stuff and get going.”

About an hour later, the family was packed up and heading out of the canyon. Fire was all over the place by then, and Williams Canyon Road was lined with fire vehicles.

“Just trying to get our butts out of here,” he said. “The rest was up to God.”

Many residents in the area praised the work of firefighters, who with their backs to homes stood their ground against a raging fire. The flames scorched canyon walls all over the area, but few homes appeared to be lost in these communities. Burn scars showed where the firefighters held the line.

Besides the rumbling utility and fire trucks that were still crowding the roads here, things appeared to be returning back to normal.

The fire still managed to pick off a few homes. Down the hill from the Sherwins’ property, a neighboring residence was almost completely destroyed.

The main house was reduced to ash and rubble. Also destroyed was a trailer containing mementos and collectibles — a stack of hockey cards that curled up from the heat were scattered amid photo negatives. A rooster crowed nearby from behind a wire fence. Six or so chickens clucked in the enclosure, too.

Many who live out here take advantage of the space to keep a few animals around. The Sherwins have a pack of dogs, six ducks, a bunch of chickens and three goats. They also have Mufasa, a chubby tabby cat.

The dogs and goats came with the Sherwins when they were forced to flee on Thursday. Mufasa and the ducks and chickens stayed behind. All were doing fine when the family came back. Firefighters had taken good care of them, too.

The goats probably helped keep the Bond fire at bay, chewing up some of the brush surrounding the Sherwins’ property. The couple also fastidiously maintained a buffer of bare land around their home.

As a result, very little of their home was damaged. A large air compressor was toasted in the flames, and a trailer near another house on their land that they rent out also was destroyed. A 3,000 gallon water tank that used to be on top of a hill behind the property somehow broke loose and rolled down slope, coming to rest on its side.

David Sherwin pointed to an area behind his house where he had just cleared a bunch of brush a few months ago. That’s where a line of charred earth was stopped in its tracks. Clearing all that land helped the firefighters who surrounded his property with hose lines.

“They basically set up an area and they held it,” he said.

On Tuesday, there were signs the fire isn’t totally gone. It’s just slumbering.

In every wildfire, crews of firefighters spend days, sometimes weeks, trudging through brush and woods to find spots of burnt ground where there might still be hot spots — literally patches of dirt that are so hot, they’re smoldering as many as a few feet under the surface. If the wind kicks up that dirt, embers could fly and spark another fire in the same area.

In Modjeska Canyon, one team of inmate firefighters — California prisoners who are trained up and hired to fight fires for pennies a day — marched up the side of a charred canyon slope on a mission to find hot spots like this.

Cal Fire Capt. Joe Hatch was watching them do their work from the driver’s seat of his SUV, his head resting on his shoulder and his eyes sleepy.

The danger of this fire really hasn’t passed, either.

“All last night,” he said, “we were hearing reports of smoke, embers and fires from neighbors.”

Without any active flames, fire crews can at least respond to most of those reports at this point. But it’s still back breaking work.

He said fire crews could be out there for a few more days, but they’ll start to wind down their operations soon. In the meantime, helicopters still flew overhead searching for warm patches of earth and directing firefighters on the ground to them.

From his second floor deck, Rob Prather watched the line of inmate firefighters in their orange jumpsuits and helmets, hauling chainsaws and shovels, hike up the slope behind his home. They’ve been working at a steady pace since he returned a few days ago.

“They’re amazingly diligent,” the 52-year-old contractor said. “We’ve had yellow, green and now orange.”

Prather and his wife and their six dogs hightailed it out of Modjeska Canyon at around 4:30 a.m. on Thursday. They’ve only lived here for around two years.

They’ve seen three fires this year. The Bond fire came the closest, with the most ferocity.

“I watch for if the fire is gonna cross Santiago Canyon Road at the entrance to the canyon,” he said. “There’s only two ways out of here — there and the other way.”

Prather’s wife operates a bar nearby, where they rode out the fire for a few days. They returned to their house untouched by flames. But the wait was harrowing; they watched some video footage shot with a drone that captured what was happening on their property.

Their home was built in the 1940s and has survived multiple fires in that time. Through the drone camera, they watched the flames reach the edge of their land. This time they weren’t so sure the house would survive.

“When it gets in your back yard — there’s always that potentiality,” Prather said. “That’s a gut-wrenching sight.”