FRESNO, Calif. — Residents are returning home Thursday after being forced to flee by a wildfire raging outside Yosemite National Park, but not all are certain what they’ll find when they get there.

David Oppenheim, a longtime backcountry guide in Yosemite, has been staying at the Super 8 since he and his wife evacuated their Mariposa home Saturday, taking their two horses, three llamas, five cats and one dog with them.

“I’m just hoping to go back to my life at this point,” said a weary Oppenheim. “But when they do let us back in to our house, we’re not even sure we’ll have water because we’re so remote all the wells run on electricity. We have no idea what we’ll do with the animals if we don’t even have water.”

Hundreds of residents were allowed back to their homes Wednesday as firefighters announced they had made critical gains in fighting a wildfire charging across the hillsides outside the park.

Roughly two-thirds of evacuees were allowed to return home to an area officials said had been spared by the blaze. The evacuation order remained in effect for some 100 homes close to the still-smoldering fire northwest of Midpines, a small town about a dozen miles from the protected wilderness.

By Wednesday evening, the 50-square-mile blaze sparked Friday by a target shooter was 40 percent contained after reducing 21 homes to ash.

The fire has forced dozens of park employees to flee and has left one of California’s most popular destinations shrouded in smoke at the height of Yosemite’s busiest season.

Officials with DNC Parks and Resorts at Yosemite, which manages restaurants and lodging in the park, said only about 4 percent of all overnight guests have asked for refunds since Saturday, when the transmission line that fed power to Yosemite was destroyed in the fire.

Since then, most hotels, stores and restaurants in the park have been operating on generators.

“We’re not waiting for power to be restored, we’re doing everything in our power to get our guest services back up to speed,” said Kenny Karst, a spokesman for the concessionaire. “We may not have electricity for the lights but now some people can take hot showers.”

In all, more than 2,000 blazes have scorched about 1,700 square miles around California — mostly on national forest land — this year.