700 buildings gone, 65,000 people out: the Spokane fires are among Washington's worst
Three blazes that started on Saturday have merged into the Spokane Complex, burning 8,026 acres with zero containment. No injuries have been reported, and cooler weather is the crews' best hope.
Spokane is the second-largest city in Washington state, and it spent the weekend emptying out. About 65,000 people were ordered from their homes by three fires that broke out on Saturday and are now being managed as a single incident, the Spokane Complex.
Around 700 structures have been destroyed, houses among them, across 8,026 acres of burnt ground. That is roughly 3,250 hectares. Remarkably, given the scale of the evacuation, no injuries have been reported.
Zero containment is the number that matters
Early this week the three fires were still at 0% containment, meaning crews had not secured a single stretch of perimeter. Their best hope was in the forecast rather than on the fireline: cooler temperatures were expected across the Spokane area, the first genuine break since Saturday.
The rest of the state explains how thinly resources are stretched. Fifteen wildfires were burning across Washington, consuming close to 250,000 acres, or about 101,000 hectares. The Spokane fires have already entered the list of the most destructive in state history, a ranking measured in buildings lost rather than land burnt.
Europe has been reading the same script
Any of this will feel familiar from the other side of the Atlantic. Portugal spent much of July with dozens of municipalities at maximum fire risk, and in France the evacuations in the Gironde followed the same pattern: a fast-moving fire, holiday homes in its path, thousands of people leaving before dawn.
What sets Spokane apart is density. This is not remote scrubland but a fire that pushed into the edge of a city, which is why a moderate burn area has produced such a high building count. Official updates on fire status and evacuation levels come from the Washington State Department of Natural Resources.
Image: SounderBruce / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)
