More than 1,500 firefighters from across the country are working 16-hour shifts to hold fire lines around Spokane, Washington, where nearly 850 structures have been damaged or destroyed, and an arson suspect now faces a first-degree charge.
The Spokane Complex Fire, a cluster of three separate blazes burning in and around the city, has displaced roughly 67,000 people since igniting Saturday, making it likely one of the most destructive wildfire events in Washington state history. Containment remains in single digits on two of the three fires. Temperatures are forecast to climb from the 80s into the upper 90s later this week, with no rain in sight.
And the people responsible for stopping it are sleeping five to seven hours a night.
Elite Hotshot crews are stationed within acres of one another across the fire's perimeter, hunting hot spots as they flare. Tom Stokesberry, a spokesman for the California Interagency Incident Management Team coordinating the multiagency response, described their mission as "search and destroy", find the embers before they become new fronts. NBC News reported that a typical Hotshot deployment runs two weeks before replacement crews rotate in.
Stokesberry acknowledged the toll on his crews but said they remain committed:
"It's trying on them, but they're here for the long haul."
As of Wednesday evening, the fire had burned 10,546 acres. The Old Trails Fire and the Autumn Lane Fire each stood at 13 percent containment. The Fairview Fire trailed at just 5 percent. Growth has slowed, the complex expanded by only 2 acres since Monday, but Stokesberry cautioned that the weekend's rising heat could undo days of progress.
"If our lines hold through the weekend, I think we're going to be on the path to not having this fire move anymore. But it's still going to be a long recovery phase."
Additional firefighting support is expected to arrive this weekend. More than two dozen states have already sent personnel.
Michael Kelly, a spokesperson for the Washington State Department of Natural Resources, said the fire is "likely one of the most destructive in state history." The 2023 Grey and Oregon Road fires outside Spokane destroyed 350 structures. The current complex has already more than doubled that figure.
Officials said the 67,000-person displacement count could still climb. No deaths have been reported, but the scale of property loss is staggering for a metro area that rarely makes national wildfire headlines.
The Associated Press reported that approximately 60,000 people were evacuated over the weekend alone, including patients at the local VA hospital. Around 400 evacuees sheltered at Spokane's convention center. U.S. Sen. Maria Cantwell warned, "We are not out of danger. The next couple of days will be challenging."
The fires are part of a broader wildfire crisis hammering the western United States. Breitbart reported that a separate fire has burned nearly 525 square miles in western Idaho and eastern Oregon, threatening more than 600 homes and 800 other structures. Benjamin Cossel, a public information officer for the federal response team, summed up the conditions: "We have weather working against us, and we have terrain working against us."
Amid the destruction, authorities have charged one man with deliberately starting the Old Trails Fire. Aaron Farinacci, 37, faces a first-degree arson charge filed Monday. His arraignment was expected Thursday.
The sequence that led to his arrest raises questions about the initial law enforcement response. Paul Child, a 64-year-old resident of a rural neighborhood northwest of Spokane, was driving along railroad tracks Saturday when he spotted a man behaving suspiciously. Child told the Associated Press what he saw:
"He was bent over in the brush, acting nervous. You get the feeling this guy's up to something."
Child's daughter called 911 with a description. A responding sheriff's deputy found and detained a man matching that description, later identified as Farinacci. But authorities released him because a cause for the fire had not yet been determined. Only after further investigation was Farinacci arrested Monday and charged.
An attorney for Farinacci did not immediately respond to a request for comment after normal business hours Wednesday. Investigators said the other two fires in the complex were also started by people, "though not necessarily intentionally." The causes of the Autumn Lane and Fairview fires remain under investigation.
That a suspect was identified, physically detained by a deputy, and then turned loose before the fire had consumed hundreds of homes is the kind of detail that deserves a full accounting from the sheriff's office. Residents who lost everything will want to know whether faster action could have changed the outcome.
As if arson and brutal weather were not enough, firefighters also lost critical air support early in the fight. Forty drones entered restricted airspace over the fire zone, forcing aerial crews to land until flight paths could be cleared. Stokesberry did not hold back about the danger:
"If you fly, we can't. It puts crews at risk. It puts life and property at risk, the infrastructure at risk. It puts everything at risk."
Skies have remained free of unauthorized drones since Monday. But the damage from lost air-attack hours during the fire's most explosive early growth cannot be recovered.
Drone interference with firefighting operations is not new. During last year's Palisades Fire in Southern California, a man was charged with recklessly operating a drone that crashed into a Super Scooper firefighting aircraft. He pleaded guilty, the U.S. Justice Department confirmed.
Whether any of the 40 drone operators in the Spokane incident have been identified or face charges remains unclear.
Fox News reported that the fires also struck the Spokane Indian Reservation, where a blaze burned over 27 square miles and destroyed at least 13 homes. The reservation town of Wellpinit was evacuated, though that order has since been lifted. Jamie Sijohn, a spokeswoman for the Spokane Indian Reservation, said the fire jumped the Spokane River from Lincoln County onto the reservation in three separate locations.
Spokane County Commissioner Shelly O'Quinn praised the coordinated response: "During the last three days, I have had a front row seat to the coordinated effort by area firefighters and emergency management staff who have worked around the clock to knock down the devastating Spokane Complex fires."
The praise is earned by the men and women on the ground. Whether the same can be said for every decision made before they arrived, the released suspect, the 40 drones nobody stopped in time, the investigation still sorting out how three separate fires started, is another matter entirely.
When 1,500 firefighters are grinding through 16-hour shifts on five hours of sleep, the least the rest of the system can do is keep arsonists off the streets and hobby drones out of the sky.
