Spokane fires devastate quarter of city as residents grapple with unprecedented loss

Chris Matthews had been through this before. Last summer, a brushfire crept toward his Spokane home and his family of five packed up and left. They were back within hours. So when dark smoke rolled across the sky last Saturday and evacuation orders came again, he assumed the same script would play out—a few hours away, then home. He returned to find only ash and rubble where his house had stood.

"All of us thought we were going to be able to get back to our houses," he said later, his voice carrying the particular disorientation of someone whose assumptions about how the world works have been violently overturned. "And we didn't think it'd be a situation where we were going to lose our homes or anything like that."

Wildfires are seasonal fact in the Pacific Northwest. Every summer, smoke drifts across Washington and Oregon. Evacuations happen. People wait for autumn rain. It is the rhythm of living there. But what unfolded in Spokane this August shattered that familiar pattern. Nearly 65,000 people—almost a quarter of the city's population—were forced to flee. The fires consumed entire neighborhoods. And the thing that made residents understand they were facing something genuinely new was the moment the fire jumped the river.

Kira Townsend, 39, remembers the exact instant the danger crystallized. "It's never jumped the river like that, and just roared up the hill that fast," she said. The river had always been a natural boundary, a line the fires respected. This time it wasn't. The winds were too strong, too relentless. They simply pushed the flames across water as if it were nothing.

Matthew Kincanon, 31, was on Prosperity Lane when the fire entered his neighborhood Saturday night. He fled. Twelve hours later, he returned to see what remained. "As soon as I stepped out of the car I threw up," he said. "I felt sick. I couldn't control it. I just lost it. It hit me all at once." The house was gone. Everything was gone.

The city is now operating on two simultaneous tracks. Firefighters are still battling three large fires, each less than 40 percent contained. Meanwhile, recovery has begun for people who have lost everything. City Councilman Zack Zappone, who grew up in the devastated Indian Trails neighborhood, described the atmosphere at a city shelter as thick with "uncertainty and frustrations and difficultness." For those whose homes survived, officials say it may be weeks before neighborhoods are safe to return to.

Anger has crystallized around a specific target. Police charged Aaron Farinacci, 37, a local man who allegedly confessed to sparking one of the fires. Investigators say he deliberately chose a dry, windy day, calculating that conditions would allow the fire to spread maximally. He had been questioned for arson before and carried a prior conviction for killing his own father in Arizona in 2010. He has not yet entered a plea and has been ordered to undergo a mental competency evaluation. More dry, windy days are forecast.

Chrissy Goodrich's voice cracked with anger as she spoke about prevention. "People have got to use their brains," she said. "Stop doing things that are gonna cause sparks. I can't believe someone was mowing." Officials have warned that routine activities—lawn mowing, any spark-producing work—could ignite catastrophic fires in current conditions. She and her 73-year-old father, Scott Hansen, still ride mountain bikes through burned neighborhoods to fetch groceries, living in a mandatory evacuation zone.

Susan Crouch, 70, a lifelong Spokane resident who had already lost a home to wildfire years ago, called these fires "the worst Spokane has ever had." She expressed relief that a suspect had been arrested. Chris Matthews, having lost his house, now urges neighbors to prepare for scenarios they once thought impossible. He wishes he had installed a generator to power sprinklers around his property after the electricity failed. "For future reference, and for everyone else," he said, "take it seriously. Don't assume past historical times are what's going to happen in the future as well." His wife, Melissa, said learning the fire was deliberately set brought unexpected comfort. "It brought a little bit of closure," she said, aware the statement sounded strange. Knowing a person had done this, rather than nature alone, somehow made it easier to bear.