Wind-driven wildfire triggers evacuations in eastern Washington

The Old Trails Fire forced about 5,000 homes to evacuate in eastern Washington after flames jumped the Spokane River and spread into neighborhoods off Indian Trail, pushing the emergency into the edges of Spokane and Airway Heights. By Sunday, authorities said the wildfires had burned more than 8.2 square miles, or about 21 square kilometers, and had destroyed about 600 homes, businesses and other buildings.

The fire moved through dry terrain under hot, windy conditions that left rural and suburban communities with little time to react. Spokane is Washington’s second-largest city, but the blaze showed how quickly a wildfire on the outskirts can threaten homes, roads and escape routes when combustible vegetation and strong winds line up in the same afternoon. A Spokane-area report put the destruction at 640 structures, a figure that showed how fast the damage tally was climbing as crews worked to slow the advance and protect buildings.

The weather only sharpened the danger. A July 31 Washington Smoke Blog post said a Particularly Dangerous Situation Red Flag Warning covered much of Central and Eastern Washington, and KING 5 said the National Weather Service office in Spokane issued its first-ever alert of that kind for wildfire risk. That warning matched the conditions firefighters faced as they tried to keep the fire from pushing farther into neighborhoods where evacuations could expand with little notice.

Governor Bob Ferguson declared a statewide emergency during the Spokane-area wildfire crisis, and local coverage said the Washington National Guard was activated to support the response. Firefighters were battling multiple major wildfires across eastern Washington at the same time, underscoring how the region’s late-warning vulnerability has become a recurring part of the Western fire season.

Another eastern Washington wildfire had already forced evacuations and destroyed homes on June 17, adding an earlier example of how destructive the season had become. By Sunday, the fires around Spokane remained uncontained, leaving families from Airway Heights to the neighborhoods north of the city facing a deepening threat as the wind-driven front kept moving.