Washington state wildfires prompt widespread evacuations
Witness footage showed a smoke-filled sky in Spokane, Washington as wildfires across more than a quarter of a million acres in the state trigger widespread evacuations and power outages in the area, according to officials.
Three major wildfires burning near Spokane, Washington, caused authorities to declare a state of emergency and forced thousands of people to evacuate.
The Old Trails, Fairview and Autumn Lane fires have scorched nearly 5,400 acres with 0% containment as of 10:45 a.m. local time on Aug. 2, according to InciWeb. At least 600 structures have been destroyed Tom Stokesberry, public information officer with California Interagency Incident Management Team 7 who have been assigned to the blazes, told KHQ.
Washington Gov. Bob Ferguson declared a statewide emergency and burn ban on Aug. 1. Multiple areas of Spokane are under a Level 3 evacuation order, the highest level in the state. About 5,000 homes have been evacuated, according to the Associated Press.
“We urge residents of Spokane to heed evacuation orders and to stay alert to changing conditions and evacuations as they are rapidly changing,” Courtney James, spokesperson for the Washington State Department of Natural Resources, told CBS News.
No deaths related to the fires have been reported as of Aug. 2.
The fires near Spokane are one of five “major complex fires” in the state, Washington State Forester George Geissler said in an Aug. 1 news conference. The biggest, the Kaiser Canyon Fire in the northeastern part of the state, is approximately 134,000 acres.
Washington fires map
Northwest sees multiple fires
Wildfires this summer have been a problem in other parts of the Pacific Northwest. Nearly 34,000 lightning strikes last month led to a series of fires and evacuation orders in the southern part of British Columbia.
For the summer so far, about 450,000 acres have burned in Washington state, Dave Upthegrove, the state’s commissioner of public lands, said at the Aug. 1 news conference. “This is not normal,” he said.
About 4,000 people were fighting more than a dozen fires throughout the state, Upthegrove said.
Contributing: Reuters