Spokane Fires Erase Hundreds of Homes Overnight — and the City Is Still Burning

Jenny Hansen woke up in a campground tent on Sunday morning with her husband, three kids, one dog, two rats, and two cats. She had been quietly getting ready for this news since Saturday: her home off of Holyoke Avenue was gone. As these fires tend to do when the wind blows, the Old Trails Fire moved quickly through her neighborhood. She said, “It’s just stuff,” with the steady tone that takes work. “That’s what we have to remember.”

This weekend, that sentence has been very useful in Spokane.

The Old Trails Fire, the Fairview Fire, and the Autumn Lane Fire are the three major wildfires that started on Saturday afternoon. They have since burned through more than 7,000 acres of Spokane County and are still not under control. Over 60,000 people have been told to leave their homes. At least 640 homes were destroyed by the Old Trails Fire alone. In the other two fires, hundreds more have been hurt or killed. Officials haven’t confirmed that anyone has died or been seriously hurt, but the numbers are so vague that no one is saying they are correct.

The fires began on Saturday in conditions that almost seemed designed to make things worse faster. The Pacific Northwest was hit by a cold front that brought winds that stayed between 20 and 30 miles per hour and gusted over 40 miles per hour. The air was very dry. When help arrived, the Old Trails Fire had already crossed the Spokane River and was hurtling through the Balboa neighborhood, destroying rows of homes on a street that had been normal just hours before. There was smoke coming from behind Tessa Anderson and her husband as they camped on the beach next to the river. They got away on a boat. In thirty minutes, there were flames where they had been sitting.

It’s hard not to notice how quickly this Friday afternoon turned into Saturday afternoon. And it’s still not clear if the worst is over or not.

There are almost 1,000 firefighters on the ground. Help is coming from crews in more than 12 states and Australia. More than 100 members of the Washington National Guard have been sent out. Senator Maria Cantwell said that the Autumn Lane Fire is the most important fire in the country right now. Help from FEMA is likely to be approved, and the governor is working to get longer-term help from the federal government. This bad of a fire season hasn’t happened in Washington state in more than thirty years. There are currently fifteen major fires burning across the state, which have burned over 250,000 acres.

The weather got a little better on Sunday; the winds slowed down and the temperature dropped a bit, but forecasters are still keeping a close eye on the end of the week. By Thursday, temperatures should be back in the mid-90s thanks to a heat dome that is getting stronger. People in the region say that the fuels are very dry and that there are no signs of rain on the horizon. Friday has been marked as the next very important day to be careful about.

On Sunday, the air quality index in Spokane was 207, which was the second-worst in the country. Even healthy people are being changed. The smoke that has been over the city will likely move west toward Seattle and Portland early this week as the winds change.

Something different was going on at the Spokane County Fairgrounds. There were makeshift stalls for the horses. Dogs were in crates waiting. Dori Peck, the executive director of SpokAnimal, was taking calls and donations to try to find homes for displaced animals so that they could be reunited with their families who had to leave their homes. Josh Kerns, a county commissioner who lives close to the evacuation zone, said that he saw his phone ring with offers of help, food, and spare rooms from neighbors. Fire crews got food from nearby restaurants. Spokane Public Schools set up a free emergency day camp for kids who had to leave their homes.

It seems like communities show who they are most clearly in the hours after something bad happens. This feeling is familiar from other disasters, but it’s still shocking. Along with the smoke and the loss, that’s what people in Spokane have been able to see this weekend.