A fire completely obliterated the church in 1932, but the church was financed, and recovery was quick.

The wiring for that first chamber came from upstairs; and the fire had obliterated it.

That way, if diseases, fires, or hurricanes obliterate the Nihoa population, the population can be revived by transplanting some from Laysan.

Notice how the fire obliterates all traces of Charles Darnay's dead uncle: a stone face that resembles his is obscured, "as if it were the face of the cruel Marquis, burning at the stake."

But 20 years earlier, in the heart of World War II, in the very hour when the fires of Auschwitz were obliterating the Jews of Europe, a misplaced pacifist zeal had led him to a position acutely grotesque for a Jewish leader.

The only possible way in which he could obliterate all traces of his crime was to have a fire of sufficient proportions to obliterate those traces.

Behind him, outside the windows, the fire above the thrashing cinderbuds obliterated the black clouds of smoke; the heat was something physical, a pressure on the skin and eyes.

Either they had fled at the approaching doom of the city and were buried elsewhere, or some strange fire or other force of nature had consumed and obliterated them.

During the middle of the 19th century, three fires almost obliterated the village.