Trending
SPOKANE, Wash. (AP) -- Firefighters have taken advantage of cooler weather to begin getting a handle on wildfires that have displaced tens of thousands of people around Washington state's second-largest city, but hotter, drier and breezier days lie ahead.
Officials reported Wednesday that firefighters had established containment lines around the perimeters of all three fires affecting Spokane and that they were focused on reinforcing those lines. Temperatures were expected to climb from the 80s the past two days into the upper 90s, with less humidity, late this week.
The fires -- one of which authorities say was deliberately set by a man who was arrested and charged with arson -- have destroyed about 850 buildings and forced the evacuation of around 67,000 people since they erupted last weekend. Damage assessment crews have yet to tally exactly how many houses have been lost or damaged. No deaths have been reported.
The other two fires were also started by people, though not necessarily deliberately, investigators have said. They remain under investigation. Those fires, the Autumn Lane and Fairview fires, started independently of the arson-caused Old Trails Fire, they said.
Spokane County Sheriff John Nowels said during a Wednesday news conference that the evacuation zones will remain in place due to incoming weather and fire danger.
"We are not going to be downgrading these zones in any large way for many, many more days to come," he said. "If we let people back in and we don't have a high degree of certainty the fire lines will hold, we will put people in danger."
Many evacuees remained in a shelter set up in a Spokane convention center, at hotels or rentals, or at the homes of friends or relatives, with no idea of how soon they might go back -- if they have a house to return to.
"We figured it would be a day or two, not four or five. It's not the best situation," said Debra Curran, who has been staying at the convention center since Saturday with her husband, who has ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig's disease. Their house survived, but her husband would need to be transported by ambulance, which officials won't do until the fire risk in their neighborhood drops.
Among those under evacuation orders are patients and staff from the Mann-Grandstaff VA Medical Center in Spokane. When the fire approached on Saturday, the staff moved 27 patients to local hospitals and temporary shelters, said Bret Bowers, a spokesperson for the center. The medical center was not burned in the fire but several staff lost their homes.