Historic

Saturday around noon, one of the security guards at the casino where I work told me there was a fire burning near an apartment complex. Earlier that day, a local meteorologist had declared a red flag warning, with sustained winds expected at twenty to thirty miles per hour and gusts exceeding forty-five miles per hour. 

At first, I did not know much more than that and assumed the fire would be contained quickly. I was also confused by the location he described because I did not know of any apartment complexes in that area, only dry brush, scattered Ponderosa pine trees, and a few homes. 

It was not until I got off work and reached the sixth floor of the parking garage that I saw the scope and horror of what was unfolding. I took pictures there, but the full reality did not hit me until I got home. I live on five acres near the Town of Cheney, about twelve miles from Spokane and south of the casino, so I was safe this time. 

The smoke billowing into the sky made it clear this was a major fire, not something to take lightly. I turned on the news and saw that this was no ordinary brush fire that might consume only a few hundred acres. The fire had reached biblical proportions, especially after reports indicated that it did not stop at the Spokane River near the Bowl and Pitcher at Riverside State Park. It pushed through, and the crowned pine trees appeared to send burning pine needles into the wind, igniting additional fires east into Fairwood, northeast toward Indian Trail and Five Mile, and north near Nine Mile Falls and Suncrest, where I lived nearly twenty years ago. 

There was nothing ordinary about it. News footage showed cars gridlocked as people fled their neighborhoods, police and sheriff’s deputies going door to door telling residents to take what they could and leave immediately, and reporters struggling to maintain composure as they described the possibility that their own homes might be in the fire’s path. 

The next morning, an orange disk of sun rose in the east while smoke blanketed the horizon like gray fog. As I drove closer to work, I could still see smoke billowing in the distance along the hillsides. I drove up to the sixth floor of the parking garage and saw mostly a shroud of smoke where the hills were supposed to be. After work, I took more pictures, twenty-four hours after the first ones. Those same hills were still concealed by thick gray smoke. It was not over, not by a long shot. Local news continued covering the fire from different angles, showing vantage points and interviewing people who had evacuated to shelters in Spokane. 

This morning was cold, but the wind had finally subsided to a light breeze of five to ten miles per hour. The wind had shifted from north to south, and the area remained safe because the path of destruction had already consumed the grassland and woodland that, only forty-eight hours earlier, had provided fuel for the fire. 

By then, the smoke had settled around us like fog, a shroud that made breathing feel physically difficult. Even stepping outside to pick up trash near the bus stop and other centralized receptacles was hard. 

This morning’s headlines reported that more than 60,000 people evacuated, and apparently no lives were lost. Considering the size and potential lethality of these fires, that alone feels miraculous. 

During an interview this afternoon, a reporter asked a firefighter about the sheer devastation that had reached so many neighborhoods. The firefighter said it was fortunate the fire occurred when it did, rather than at night, as happened during the Maui fires of 2023.