Connor Henricksen: In Spokane, a suspected arsonist has been arrested and had his first hearing. Thousands are evacuated out of their homes. Many have lost everything they've worked their entire lives for. NWPB's senior correspondent, Anna King, has been reporting on the Spokane fires since Saturday night and has been on the ground there since Sunday. Welcome, Anna.
Anna King: Hey, thanks, Connor.
Henricksen: Hundreds of structures have burned, many of them homes. Over 65,000 people have evacuated. The fires are uncontained. Where are all of these people going? Connor, a lot of people are staying with family members, and then a lot of people are staying with friends. Some people are even out of town.
King: Like, I've heard of people going out to Ritzville and the Tri-Cities. There are hundreds and hundreds of people in hotels. In fact, the hotel I'm staying in is just chock-a-block full of fire evacuees and their pets. Still more are at the Spokane Convention Center, especially a lot of elderly people who had to be evacuated out of their senior living facilities.
There's a lot of people on cots with, like, oxygen masks, people who are wailing or crying out at periods of time because they're disoriented. They don't know where they are. It's a heart-wrenching scene, Connor. And you've been meeting dozens of these Spokane residents. Can you tell me about a few of them?
I met a woman named Donna Diebel, who's 92. She was in Spokane's Convention Center fire shelter, and her retirement home had been evacuated like others. And she described a scene where, as the fire came toward them, all the residents were staged outside of the home waiting to be rescued. Some were picked up by their family members, and the rest were rescued by Spokane Transit.
This is Donna here.
Donna Diebel: They have been very good to us, the Red Cross, so it's been okay. What else can you do? You kind of gotta roll with the punches.
King: I met another woman named Alicia Davidson. She's 29, and she's eight weeks pregnant and was just sitting there on the side of the road. And she's, you know, barely started telling people that she's pregnant yet.
Her and her husband, their home has been reduced to ashes, and her husband hiked in to see what was left past the road closure, and they were FaceTiming when I was with her. This is a little bit of that conversation.
Alicia Davidson: “Hey. Oh my gosh. Yeah, that's our stairs.” “Barbecue's still good.” “Oh my gosh.” “There's some tools. I could probably save a couple drill bits.” “Yeah, everything is just gone.”
King: You know, Connor, they lost their wedding dress, their family jewelry, her 20 pet fish.
Davidson: “Little things, you know, that you've put so much energy in. I've had plants. These seem silly, but I have plants that I've had for six-plus years that have grown. They were beautiful, thriving, and now they're just gone.”
King: I was just so amazed at the grace of all of these sources that were just so patient with me and so kind to speak with me in this moment of utter distress in their lives.
Henricksen: That's some incredible strength they've got. Can you tell me about the animals that have been evacuated?
King: Yeah, I went to the Spokane County Fairgrounds, and there I encountered all of these animals that were in stalls there. There were horses. There were wee little donkeys. There was an emu peeking through the bars of a stall. These animals are all stressed out. They're away from their homes and their habitual routines.
You can tell that they're stressed by how much sound is in the barns. And that stresses out the owners as well, who are worried for them.
Henricksen: And now that people are finding out that an arsonist may be to blame and a suspect is in custody, how are people handling that news?
King: I've seen some messages this morning and talked to a few residents of Spokane that I know, and people are very angry that this fire didn't have to be. And so it's really just across the whole city that this suspected arsonist is really a hated figure.
Henricksen: And speaking of the impact across the whole city, what does it feel like to be in Spokane right now?
King: You just see a lot of blank faces. People are going through what they have to do, but they're distracted and they can't think straight. There's just so much stress in town.
But people are being so kind, Connor. They're providing each other sack lunches. People are dropping pallets of water off in random neighborhoods near the fires. They're trying to keep each other going. And people are being protective of their neighborhoods and also their neighbors and people in adjacent neighborhoods.
We saw one cul-de-sac blocked off with trash cans and cones, and people had a sign there that said, "If you don't live in this neighborhood, kindly *blank* off." Everybody is trying to kind of protect their neighbors and their friends. What it leaves me with is that this type of fire could happen in anyone's urban neighborhood now.
Henricksen: That's a tough thing to think about.
King: Yeah. I've seen this kind of fire in Wenatchee, Chelan, the Methow Valley, the Tri-Cities, Spokane twice, near Bend, Oregon and Burns, Oregon. I think that if we're not waking up to the fact that these mega-fires can roll through neighborhoods and across landscapes, then we're kind of fooling ourselves.
Henricksen: Well, Anna, thank you for your reporting. Thank you for your continued work on this, and I hope we find out soon that the fires are out.
King: Thank you so much.
