"This is just stuff. We're gonna move on from it," says Margi Wyatt, holding back tears as she stares at her burned-out mobile home destroyed by one of the fires raging through the US state of Oregon.

The 70-year-old fled 30 miles (50 kilometers) from her home to Estacada in Portland's southeast as the huge and still-uncontained Riverside Fire raced through.

The blaze devastated the mobile home site, located on a wooded hill next to a road. All the properties in Wyatt's row were destroyed -- but homes just ten yards (ten meters) away were left unscathed.

It is one of scores of infernos ravaging that have burnt through a record 5 million acres (2 million hectares) and left at least 27 people dead.

With smoke still rising from the hill, she and her husband Marcelino Maceda have come back to sift through the remains and pick up anything that may have escaped the flames.

But there's little left in the ashes. Among the belongings they find is a partially melted watch, a blackened bracelet and a ring.

"The police just told us to grab our things and go," Wyatt said as the flames neared. "I gathered what I could in 20 minutes -- cash, important papers, jewellery."

Everything else, she says, is in the blackened remains of her home, which they moved into just two years ago.

But Wyatt -- a retired caregiver -- said she was glad that at least no-one was hurt, but adds: "I don't want to come back. These are plastic houses. Our next move is a stick house."

- Guns and robberies -

Luckier residents moved back in as soon as the evacuation order was lifted, and much of the site was occupied again on Saturday.

Six miles to the north, a dense pall of smoke smothered the centre of Estacada. Some of the city's 3,500 inhabitants have returned despite the acrid air and are patrolling in cars to prevent robberies.

Matt Watts, semi-automatic rifle in hand and pistol in his belt, is standing watch at his property to keep potential pillagers at bay.

"I hear nothing but looters and arsons on the radio (scanner), I did not feel in fear of my house catching fire so I decided to hang around and protect it," Watts says.

"I hope to be a deterrent for somebody that means harm."

He says he has heard shots at night and seen cars with licence plates from other states, which make him suspicious.

For days rumours have spread that radical leftists have been lighting fires in Oregon -- false information that was debunked by the local branch of the FBI.

But James, 29, says the robberies are a reality -- and that he has lost about $15,000 worth of property, stolen from his workshop between Tuesday and Saturday.

"We had our Dune racer stolen. I've had a whole bunch of construction tools stolen. My motorcycle, the most recent thing we found out today, my motorcycle's gone out of the shop. Yeah, just a lot of different tools really."

He co-ordinates with his neighbours and they "come out at different times just to keep a watch on each other's houses but outside of that we just had to monitor our cameras," James says, pointing to images of the robbers.

Yoga devotee bends online search to feed the hungry
San Francisco (AFP) Sept 13, 2020 - Sean Kelly left the Silicon Valley startup world for a spiritual journey that led to a life filled with yoga on an island in Thailand.

But as a global pandemic disrupted the global economy, Kelly and two others created a search engine with the goal of raising funds to feed the hungry in Africa, Asia and anywhere else there is need.

Launched this month, Seva bills itself as the world's first independent, socially conscious search engine that lets people feed hungry children by browsing the internet.

"I think technology is one of the greatest enablers of both positive and negative forces," Kelly told AFP from Koh Pha Ngan during a video call.

The Seva team relies on Microsoft's Bing to power searches behind the scenes at Sevasearch.org, or on mobile devices with its app.

Revenue from ads linked to the searches generate funds which go to the World Food Programme and Project Healthy Children.

The site promises full transparency about its finances, and within a week had funded more than 169,000 meals for the charitable organizations.

"Unlike other search engines, we don't track your searches. We're really just here to feed people."

- Ideals vs. reality -

Created as a US company with a remote team from all over the world, Seva doesn't store search data or keep track of users, using minimal information such as query subjects and general locations to target ads, according to Kelly.

Kelly and co-founder Ron Piron had been mulling the idea of a search engine while running a Bookretreats.com platform launched five years ago for people seeking yoga getaways.

"We had it on a low burner for a while, then the pandemic hit," Kelly said.

"Myanmar people in my community lost their jobs, and friends started messaging me asking about where to beg on the streets."

A hunger crisis loomed, and Bookretreats was sidelined as people stopped traveling due to virus risk.

"We wanted to create a way for people to engage in effortless charity," Kelly said.

"Seva is allowing people to make an impact with something they do every day; search the internet."

As idealistic as Seva may be, it faces a challenge in an online search market dominated by Google, according to Technalysis Research chief analyst Bob O'Donnell.

Silicon Valley-based Google had more than 90 percent of the global search market as of August, according to Statcounter.

"It strikes me as a well-intentioned effort that may not have a lot of realistic opportunity," O'Donnell said of Seva.

"It could absolutely work, I just think it is more than a bit of a challenge."

Among the obstacles is that Google has become so much of a habit for internet users the name of the company is used as a verb for online searching.

Even privacy-focused DuckDuckGo has not managed to gain significant traction in the search market, the analyst noted.

Kelly grew up in Berkeley, California, graduating from the state university there.

He was an early employee at Modria, a dispute resolution platform spun out of eBay and PayPal.

"I ended up quitting my job at the tech startup to pursue a spiritual journey and really dive deep into yoga," said 33-year-old Kelly, who authored a book on the subject and taught classes before launching Seva.

"It takes people who are really willing to use technology to try and spread wonderful things, otherwise all the other aspects of humanity kind of bring it down," he said.

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