Spokane-Area Wildfires Destroy 600 Buildings, Zero Percent Contained as 250,000 Acres Burn Statewide in Washington

Since the Old Trails Fire broke out Saturday, August 1, wildfires around Spokane have destroyed roughly 600 homes, businesses and other buildings, according to CBS News. Thousands of people have been evacuated. Firefighters had zero containment as of Sunday afternoon.

Spokane Mayor Lisa Brown called it "the worst natural disaster our region has faced," per CBS News. Spokane is Washington's second-largest city, and nearly 8.2 square miles of terrain has burned around it.

Three fires are driving the crisis: the Old Trails Fire, the Fairview Fire, and the Autumn Lane Fire, which has now absorbed what had been a separate blaze called the Meadowview Fire. Strong winds and high heat are pushing all three.

Statewide, the picture is bigger. Washington Public Lands Commissioner Dave Upthegrove said Sunday that 15 major fires are burning across the state, having scorched more than 250,000 acres. Roughly 4,000 people are working the fire lines. Upthegrove called it "an extraordinary fire season in the Pacific Northwest."

No Deaths Confirmed, But Officials Aren't Ruling It Out

No deaths have been reported in the Spokane-area fires as of Sunday, according to CBS News. But Mayor Brown was blunt that the danger isn't over: "We are still assessing the potential for lives to be lost."

Courtney James, a spokesperson for the Washington State Department of Natural Resources, urged residents to take evacuation orders seriously. "We urge residents of Spokane to heed evacuation orders and to stay alert to changing conditions and evacuations as they are rapidly changing," James said.

The cause of the fires is under investigation. Nobody has announced a determination yet, and speculation about ignition sources should be treated as exactly that until investigators say otherwise.

Power Company Says Its Equipment Likely Wasn't the Cause, For Now

Avista, the power utility serving the Spokane area, implemented public safety power shutoffs due to elevated fire risk, but those had been restored by Sunday, per CBS News. Still, more than 10,000 customers remained without power Sunday evening because of the fires themselves, down from a peak of more than 30,000 outages.

Avista CEO Heather Rosentrater said crews still can't reach many affected areas because of active fire and evacuation orders. She said she does not believe Avista's equipment ignited any of the Spokane-area fires, but that's her company's own initial assessment, not a finding from state fire investigators. Utilities have a direct financial and legal interest in that question, given the multibillion-dollar liability judgments California utility PG&E faced after its equipment was found to have sparked deadly fires in recent years. Rosentrater's statement should be read as a company position, not an independent conclusion, until investigators weigh in.

Rosentrater also warned customers that outages could recur during peak energy hours because of reduced grid capacity in the fire zone.

Governor Ferguson Pledges Long-Term Support

Washington Gov. Bob Ferguson toured the damage and spoke at a Sunday news conference. "There are just so many Washingtonians who have literally lost everything in a very, very short period of time," he said, according to CBS News. "Just in a matter of hours, their lives changed in deeply dramatic and fundamental ways."

Ferguson said the state would stay engaged past the immediate emergency: "We're here for the long haul." What that commitment translates to in actual dollars and disaster-relief programs hasn't been detailed yet.

The Bigger Pattern

Wildfires across multiple continents this week have strained resources. In Greece, France, Spain, and the U.K., major fires have been reported alongside Washington's crisis. Washington's 250,000 burned acres and 15 major fires are part of a broader 2026 fire season affecting multiple regions.

The debate over whether this reflects climate shifts, decades of forest fuel buildup from suppressed natural burns, or both, remains genuinely contested among foresters and climate scientists. What isn't contested is the immediate math in Washington: zero containment, 600 structures gone, and thousands of residents who don't yet know if they have homes to return to.

State officials have not released a timeline for containment. The investigation into what sparked the Old Trails Fire, the first of the three blazes, has not produced public findings as of Sunday, August 2.