Firefighters and officials on Monday struggled to describe the scope of the wildfires in Spokane County, Wash., as they worked for a third day to get a hold of the blazes that has pushed more than 65,000 people out of their homes.
The mayor of the city of Spokane spoke of neighborhoods that were simply gone. Firefighters who had battled some of California’s largest wildfires described the blazes as a similar “urban conflagration.” And the adjutant general of the Washington National Guard compared what he saw in evacuated neighborhoods with a “war zone,” warning that the fires would be a “very significant emotional event for this community long term.”
By Monday, the powerful winds that had driven three distinct fires through Spokane County over the weekend had eased, allowing some evacuated residents to return. Rescue crews found entire streets reduced to rubble, trees blackened and toppled, broken pipes spraying water, and the occasional hot spot still sending smoke into the air.
Despite the scale of the destruction, there have been no reported fatalities — a remarkable statistic officials have emphasized. The authorities were still trying to make contact with 14 people on Monday, but they said there was no indication that anyone had died.
“These are people who may have called for help evacuating, and many of them likely did get evacuated,” said John Nowels, Spokane County’s sheriff. “They are people we’re just trying to confirm are fine.”
But the speed of the fires, which left the air in Spokane acrid and the sky yellow, was matched by the speed of the evacuations.
“Usually our evacuation warnings go Level 1, Level 2, Level 3, and people have time at Level 1 or 2 to start preparing,” Mayor Lisa Brown of Spokane said. “But this just started at Level 3 and stayed there, so the fact that all those people made it out so quickly is a reason to feel very grateful.”
At the height of the fire that swept through Spokane’s Indian Trail neighborhood, Chad and Colette Simonson said a neighbor who chose not to evacuate texted them a picture of their house engulfed in smoke.
“We thought it was gone,” Ms. Simonson said.
When they returned Monday, they discovered that their home was one of only a handful still standing on their cul-de-sac. Two cars had burned, their wind chimes were scorched, and the house was filled with smoke. But next door, the home of their 90-year-old neighbor had been reduced to its foundation and chimney.
“We’ve never been happier and worse off at the same time,” Mr. Simonson said.
A few blocks away, Lex Ring and Doug Roberts found their house still standing. Across the street, every home had burned to its foundation.
“My son wants to know if his friend is going to be back at school when it starts,” Ms. Ring said. “I don’t know what to tell him.”
Rebuilding the hardest-hit neighborhoods will take years. Emergency crews say more than 700 structures have been destroyed, but they expect that number to rise as more satellite imagery becomes available.
Gov. Bob Ferguson of Washington has asked the Trump administration to declare a federal emergency and provide assistance to six counties and three Native tribes. He said the state needs generators, temporary shelters, help with debris removal and assistance with search-and-rescue efforts. Mr. Ferguson said the Federal Emergency Management Agency had already moved some resources into the state.
Crews are still fighting the fires, which began in vegetation on Saturday and spread quickly. Fire investigators have not determined their cause. On the fields around Mount Spokane High School, where a California-based incident management team has set up its command center, firefighters from at least four states were sleeping in tents and eating at outdoor buffets set up by local caterers. Their work has been hampered by civilians flying drones over hot spots and what rescuers and residents describe as “disaster tourists” ignoring road closures to gawk at the damage.
Meteorologists warned in the winter that light snowfall would make this wildfire season especially dangerous in the Pacific Northwest, and state leaders said that was exactly what was happening. Dave Upthegrove, Washington’s commissioner of public lands, noted Monday that there are 17 major fires burning in the state, encompassing more than 262,000 acres.
“This is not normal,” he said.
The sheer volume of fires this summer means it will take even longer for the hardest-hit places to fully recover.
“The need will be long-term,” Mayor Brown said. “So don’t feel like it’s over just because we’re not in the headlines anymore.”
Once a blue-collar city, Spokane has been transformed over the past decade by people priced out of larger West Coast cities like Seattle, Portland, Ore., and Boise, Idaho. Spokane County has grown by roughly 100,000 residents since 2010, to nearly 570,000, and the median home price has more than doubled, to about $410,000.
That growth has pushed more people into neighborhoods along the city’s expanding edge, where homes increasingly meet forests and grasslands vulnerable to wildfire.
Mayor Brown said she believes Spokane can rebuild without making its housing crunch even worse. But she urged residents to accept that recovery will be slow.
“Everybody wants some certainty,” she said. “They want to get back and have that moment of reckoning where they know whether their house is still there or not. We have hope, and we also need patience.”
Jacey Fortin and Madaleine Rubin contributed reporting.
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