Firefighters are making significant strides against a cluster of blazes near Spokane, Washington, as they work to secure their gains ahead of a return of extremely hot, dry weather.
Local Efforts
Officials reported that crews have carved buffer lines around a trio of fires threatening the state’s second-most populous city. The blazes have destroyed hundreds of buildings and forced tens of thousands of people from their homes since Saturday.
However, full containment has yet to be achieved, authorities said. With primary containment lines now in place, crews are focused on strengthening those lines through aggressive mop-up and extinguishing pockets of heat near homes and other structures to reduce the risk of additional damage.
National Context
The Spokane fires were ranked as the No. 1 firefighting priority in the U.S. as a whole, including the drought-parched Pacific Northwest, where dozens of major wildfires have burned for weeks, fouling air quality across a wide region with smoke and soot.
A total of 94 major wildfires were burning in 13 U.S. states, most of them in the West, and more than half of those in Oregon and Washington, according to the National Interagency Fire Center in Boise.
A local resident, Aaron Farinacci, 37, was arrested on Tuesday and charged with arson in connection with one of the three Spokane-area fires. The cause of the two others remained under investigation, but authorities have determined that none of the Spokane blazes was triggered by lightning.
The Spokane-area fires have scorched more than 10,000 acres on the northern fringe of the city, home to about 230,000 residents west of the Rocky Mountain foothills near the Idaho border.
At the height of the conflagration, as many as 64,000 people were placed under evacuation orders as fast-moving flames swept entire neighborhoods and kept firefighters on the defensive. At least 700 structures have gone up in flames, the bulk of them homes, and early property-loss assessments showed another 400 buildings may have been heavily damaged or destroyed.
No casualties have been reported, and as of Wednesday, all 14 people initially reported as missing in the fire zone have been accounted for as safe.
Original reporting: Appleton, WI News Feed (HLL/CB) — read the source article.
