Firefighters and families across Oklahoma were relieved to wake up to rain on Easter Sunday.

The dreary weather marked the end of days of dry, windy weather that helped spread devastating wildfires across the state Thursday and Friday.

Midwest City firefighter John Herndon said Friday he was grateful that winds had died down from the 62-mile-per-hour gusts of Thursday night and Friday morning.

“But what we’re really looking forward to is the rain,” Herndon said.

The weekend rain was a relief, but it came too late for dozens of families whose homes were in the paths of wildfires that burned more than 100,000 acres in Oklahoma and Texas.

The fire that started in Midwest City Thursday afternoon scorched about 2,000 acres in Midwest City and Choctaw.

Getting the fire under control required some help from the wind, which quieted around 2 a.m. Friday, and the efforts of 215 firefighters from 20 central Oklahoma fire departments, according to fire marshal Jerry Lojka.

But the joint effort wasn’t enough to save many homes destroyed by embers from a fire that began in a grassy field and were blown into a wooded area and then into a neighborhood. There, they skipped from house to house, blackening yards and engulfing some homes in flames.

Eight families lost their homes in the Oakwood East subdivision of Midwest City, about a mile east of where the fire is believed to have begun.

Valerie Waxenfeller was at home with her children Thursday afternoon in Oakwood East. She was keeping an eye on the TV hoping for more information about the smoke she could see in the air, when a volunteer firefighter came to her house and shouted that her neighbor’s yard was on fire. She put her son, daughter and dog in her car and fled.

“My front yard was full of flames when we pulled out of the driveway,” she said.

Waxenfeller saw news footage of her neighborhood on TV Thursday night but said she still wasn’t prepared for what she saw when she returned to her home Friday.

Friends and family joined her Friday afternoon, sorting through the blackened contents of her home with rakes, but didn’t find much worth salvaging.

There was one special item, however, that did survive the flames. A quick-thinking neighbor and firefighter saved Waxenfeller’s husband’s prized 1956 Ford truck, a bright yellow hot rod that has been in the family since 1984.

Jack Waxenfeller, Valerie’s father-in-law, said a neighbor who knew about the truck told a firefighter who was vainly shooting water at the already-blazing house that they could save a priceless item inside. The pair broke into the garage and pushed the truck into the driveway. With the house a lost cause, the firefighter trained his hose on the truck, to keep the flames at bay. On Friday afternoon, the truck sat gleaming in the driveway in front of the burned house, undamaged except for a little soot and a slightly melted taillight.

“I was tickled for my son,” Jack Waxenfeller said. “To me, it’s just stuff. People are important and stuff is stuff, but I knew he would be tickled pink that his truck was safe.”

Matt Waxenfeller, Jack’s son and Valerie’s husband, is in the Navy and stationed in the Middle East. He’s on his way back to Oklahoma to be with his family and assess the damage to his house.

“The Navy has been really great,” Valerie Waxenfeller said. “They have really quickly gotten my husband on a plane, and he’s on his way back.”

Across the street from the Waxenfeller’s, Nathan Christmon was surrounded by friends and family helping him put the wet, sooty contents of his home into boxes.

Christmon and his son were turned away from Oakwood East when they tried to return home Thursday evening. The neighborhood had been evacuated, so they parked on a hill and watched the fire and smoke in the woods near their house.

“I could see the smoke, but I didn’t know it was my house on fire,” Christmon said.

On Friday morning, he returned to find that he’ll be able to take very little away from the house. Christmon, who is an accountant by day but said his “passion and hobby” is photography, lost two computers and a hard drive full of photos, as well as a lifetime’s worth of momentos.

“The things that you can’t replace, that’s what hurts,” he said.

Two streets away from Christmon’s house, Robert Tanksley surveyed the shell of his burned-out home Friday, holding a container of chili delivered by the Red Cross and remarking on little miracles.

“My daughter came up to me earlier and said, ‘Look! I found Jesus!’” Tanksley said.

One of the few items that made it through the fire was a box of Christmas decorations that had been stored in the attic. His daughter found it on the floor of what used to be the garage. A nativity set inside the box had been protected from the flames and emerged a little sooty but otherwise intact.

Tanksley is philosophical about the loss of the house that he and his wife carefully chose 10 years ago.

“We looked so hard when we were picking this house, and this was the perfect one,” he said. “But I’ve been through a lot of things in my life. I’ve learned to take life as stages. This is another stage.”

Tanksley, who is close to retirement, isn’t worried about the future.

“I’m not going to be homeless. I’ve got a good job and good insurance,” Tanksley said with a smile. “I don’t have a marriage certificate, but I’m still married.”