Washington wildfires force mass evacuations as 250,000 acres burn

Thousands of people were forced out of their homes in Washington as more than 250,000 acres burned across 12 large wildfires, pushing Spokane neighborhoods into Level 3 evacuation orders that warned, "Leave NOW! This may be your only notice." Gov. Bob Ferguson declared a statewide state of emergency and issued a burn ban as strong winds and high temperatures drove the fires and left roughly 60,000 people without power.

The evacuation pressure was sharpest in and around Spokane, where large parts of the city were under the highest alert level and at least three fires were burning nearby. The Old Trails Fire began around noon on Saturday, Aug. 1, and had grown to about 2,500 acres by Saturday evening as it moved north and east toward residential areas. In eastern Washington, more than 5,000 homes were evacuated and more than 600 structures had burned.

Firefighters were battling the blazes from the air and on the ground while the Washington National Guard was mobilized to help the response. Crews from more than a dozen states were also assisting, underscoring how quickly the fires outpaced local resources as wind and heat turned a bad weekend into a multi-county emergency. Washington received its first Particularly Dangerous Situation designation for wildfire threat, a marker of how extreme the conditions had become east of the Cascades.

The emergency exposed the strain on evacuation systems as well as on firefighting capacity. In Spokane, the Level 3 orders meant residents had little time to decide whether to leave, and in some neighborhoods the order language made clear that there might not be another warning. With entire blocks evacuated, power knocked out for tens of thousands and multiple fires burning at once, Washington’s response was tested on speed, coordination and the ability to move people out before the flames moved in.