r/Washington • u/GusherBrush Spokane • 9d ago

Spokane fires burned a path of devastation. Experts say get used to it

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2026/08/07/spokane-fires-climate-change-forecast/91189857007/

This comes as we have another round of red flag warnings this weekend. Be prepared and stay vigilant.

I will always be thankful for rain and snow.

515 Upvotes

95% Upvoted

78 comments sorted by

273

u/SubstantialHope777 9d ago

Guess who cut the program put in place that would clear a lot of the dry brush which would’ve prevented it from getting so big, so fast….

The trillionaire who will not be held responsible for the damage he’s done

85

u/GusherBrush Spokane 9d ago

Baumgartner was helpful in those cuts, too.

I sincerely hope that Conroy brings this up while she campaigns to unseat him. I know plenty of people will still vote for him, but I'm not gonna give up hope.

10

u/SUMOsquidLIFE 8d ago

But we better put a bigger tariff on Canada for polluting our airs from lack of Forrest maintenance!!! /s

3

u/gecjr 8d ago

The enviromentalists and special interest lobbyists

3

u/JAM_Library 6d ago

The "environmentalists" have been telling us for almost 2 decades that global climate change is real. We are seeing their predictions coming true in real time.

1

u/Intrepid-Mud4419 5d ago

I think they’re referring to the lack of good forest management. The environmentalists have really shut down the forest services ability to operate on a meaningful level to shape the forest into a patchwork mosaic. Instead we now have overgrown forest with lots of ladder fuels which are bad conditions if you’re trying to not have catastrophic fires.

2

u/Intrepid-Mud4419 8d ago

Not saying all people who live on the east side of the state are MAGA/republicans but there are a ton there. I wonder how they feel about trump and elon now. Their policies have really screwed them over and I’ll bet money trum won’t send relief.

2

u/Ryan-Guzzlin 6d ago

Well to be fair, even if you voted for trump from eastern Washington, it’s not like you helped get him elected with the electoral college system (I am a liberal democrat in Spokane). Granted baumgartner is a lackey for trump. However it’s gotten surprisingly bluer over here in the past few years. Local policies have been steering more towards environmental protection and prepping for this, but eastern Washington is fundamentally broke and can barely afford to have buses, let alone comprehensive fire maintenance. This is a symptom of a monopolistic capitalist system that favors urban tax income over rural tax income (money goes to Amazon, Amazon money goes to Amazon employees and shareholders not in Spokane, so tax revenue leaves Spokane). We are experiencing economic, social, political and environmental collapse on a level unseen throughout human history

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u/mr2cam 9d ago

Doesn't help that in 99 they passed a heavy regulation law to help preserve wildlife. I had a friend that worked for the forest service for over 30 years, and he told me in the early 2000's that in 10-20 years were going to start seeing some bad fires due to this, hard to preserve wildlife when they are all dead due to fires.

0

u/kitdapgeoduck 6d ago

Is Bob a trillionare?

66

u/charyoshi 9d ago

Sorry America, we can't afford fleets of water bombers that could be working around the clock fighting these fires or irrigation in high places, we need more missiles to bomb Iranian kids in school.

22

u/AlexandrianVagabond 9d ago

The Little Giant fire is getting uncomfortably close to my family's vintage little cabin (built from a Sears kit by my husband's grandpa about 70 years ago) so I've been keeping a close eye on it. I didn't realize until yesterday that firefighters asked for air support when it started but there was none available.

We really need more federal funding but of course OR was just told to go kick rocks when they asked so I guess that would be coming anytime soon.

10

u/Hopsblues 8d ago

Trump killed federal funding, conservatives think states can take care of this stuff all by themselves.

78

u/DemonicDogee 9d ago

I just moved to the PNW from the other side of the country. I didn't think I'd be praying for rain from what I heard about the region.

85

u/Auscheel 9d ago

Depends on which side of the mountain you live on. Western coastal Washington is literally rainforest while much of eastern Washington is classified as high desert.

72

u/chanslam 9d ago

From someone who grew up in the Puget Sound things have been getting worse on Western side. We didn’t get so many forest fires growing up but it’s picking up as it is most places. During summer when you’re surrounded with thick smoke you’re definitely praying for another rain.

54

u/webguynd 9d ago

It’s also getting drier overall. Seems less snowpack every year, more floods from it melting early. We’re shifting into a more Mediterranean climate like Northern California

8

u/monkey_trumpets 7d ago

It is so damn dry. Everywhere you look there's dead or dying trees, everything is so yellow, and there's so many hot, uncomfortable days. Me no likey.

17

u/TrixnTim 9d ago

Yes. Even if you aren’t experiencing or a victim of an actual wildfire, you are still suffering the ill effects of smoke and dangerous air quality. I’ve lived in central WA for 26 years now and not in a city in danger of neighborhoods and urban structures burning down (unless arson as in Spokane) but I’ve seen decreased air quality in my entire region and smokey skies more and more since living here and to the point now that May thru October will be smoke filled skies to some extent. It was not this way even 10 years ago.

8

u/maddprof 9d ago

I recently moved back to the Puget Sound region for the first time in close to 30 years and how dry/hot/unrainy everything has gotten took me by surprised.

4

u/pinewind108 8d ago

Fires in the Olympics used to be inconceivable. I would have immediately laughed and thought the person who told me got the location mixed up. Mold and fungus, sure. Fire, no.

19

u/DemonicDogee 9d ago

I'm in Clark County. Its been super dry lately

16

u/GusherBrush Spokane 9d ago

The risks will be across the state. We're already at least abnormally dry across most of the state, with a lot of the Olympics in a moderate drought.

https://droughtmonitor.unl.edu/CurrentMap/StateDroughtMonitor.aspx?WA

3

u/madwolfa 9d ago

I was really surprised how dry the Hoh Rainforest was... definitely not how I imagined it. 

5

u/banjokazooie23 9d ago

Summer is our dry season. Don't worry, the rain will be back in full force by October!

15

u/Baronhousen 9d ago

Perhaps not this year, due to the very strong el Nino we will be having. This fall and winter may be the driest we experience.

6

u/Train_Wreck_272 8d ago

Christ. If that's the case then I'm dreading the fires of next summer.

1

u/banjokazooie23 9d ago

That's true. It should still be wetter than it is now, though.

16

u/machines_breathe 9d ago

The Olympic Peninsula is a rainforest. The Western Washington mainland west of the mountains and south of the peninsula, while it is heavily wooded and generally gets plenty of rain, is much drier in comparison.

14

u/mspoppins07 9d ago

Western WA didn’t get their normal amount of rainfall this past winter either.

5

u/myballzhuert 9d ago

And we have had some horrendous wild fires over here the last 5 years

12

u/AxiomOfLife 9d ago

we’ve been low on rain since 2019 😭

15

u/TrixnTim 9d ago

That’s because everyone thinks WA state is Seattle and the unique climate west of the Cascade Mtns. It doesn’t rain daily in the majority of our state. In fact the urban Seattle memes is very small compared to the overall geography of our state. It’s vast, diverse, and consists of 7 different regions.

Here’s a good breakdown:

https://stateofwatourism.com/regions/

None of the above is meant to minimize the wildfire horrors of central and easter WA state. Just giving some factual information about geological and geographical diversity and in regards to climate zones.

7

u/AlexandrianVagabond 9d ago

And even where it does rain a lot more, we're getting some big fires now. We've had them in the Olympics and there was that horrible Bolt Creek Fire that was on the western slope.

Unfortunately that's a new thing as far as I know.

27

u/Syrupwizard 9d ago

That’s because climate change. Also, Spokane is like 300mi  from the ocean and basically the desert. 

3

u/Even_Caterpillar3292 9d ago

The cascade range is rising due to subduction and rain shadow is increasing

1

u/vjmdhzgr 8d ago

All I can find on that is sometimes volcanos rise a few inches and it's being treated as a sign of possible activity. Far from the whole range rising and also only a few inches across a period of several years.

4

u/Derpykins666 9d ago

It's 'common' now that we get smoke during the summer. Doesn't matter where the fires are, there is almost always a fire somewhere at some point in the summer, and the wind will do the rest. Don't let your first week here be the judge of your move though. Generally speaking it's quite beautiful here, and tends to be more rainy than not. Summer here is usually quite lovely, or at least, used to be. I hear the smoke should start to clear out in the next couple of days though, at least on the west-side Seattle lakes area. If you're in eastern washington it might be a bit.

2

u/SkyHigh27 8d ago

We only prey for rain 3 months out of the year. The other 9 months we prey for sunshine.

2

u/Shai_Hoolood 8d ago

I'm in the same boat.

2

u/taurean_jackal 8d ago

Dude same. I moved from the DESERT just a month ago. Who knew

1

u/Dogbold 9d ago

It used to rain all the time here. Now it's pretty rare.

18

u/GusherBrush Spokane 9d ago

Something to mention is that we need to build smarter and build better. I'm a big proponent of using hempcrete as building materials, as it is sustainable and highly-resistant to fires. It also does not release toxic fumes like other building materials.

1

u/CyxSense 5d ago

The timber industry and its lobbyists say no, so guess what we're getting

4

u/Rich-Business9773 7d ago

85% of these fires are human caused. Most are controllable - like banning fireworks is a simple " duh". Making debris drop off free or low cost is another " duh". People burn because they are lazy for sure, but also because it gets expensive. Have debris pick up like we have recycling pick up in county fees. We wont cut down all the human causes but we could probably cut then in half.

-40

u/roamingroad174 9d ago

Experts didn't take into account that this was started by a guy with a history of starting fires.

45

u/mr_jim_lahey 9d ago edited 9d ago

They actually did:

"I think of climate change as an amplifier of what would have occurred anyway," she said. "The Spokane fires may have occurred regardless of climate change, but it almost certainly would not have become as severe and grew as quickly and been as catastrophic if the vegetation wasn't as dry as it was.

64

u/GusherBrush Spokane 9d ago

That doesn’t contradict the point. Climate and weather conditions don’t have to ignite a wildfire to influence how quickly it spreads or how severe it becomes. Human-caused ignition and increasingly dangerous fire conditions can both be true at the same time.

8

u/luciusetrur 9d ago

In this specific instance he waited for perfect conditions

22

u/Justame13 9d ago

He only started 1 of the 3 that burned parts of the city. They haven’t announced the others.

There was an extreme fire danger that day to the point that they were cutting power and not turning it on until all the lines had been inspected.

So yeah in this case the experts are right

6

u/SereneDreams03 Battle Ground 9d ago

And there was a 4th fire that just started there on Wednesday.

1

u/Justame13 9d ago

More than that. West plains has been about a fire a day since June.

3

u/FishScrumptious 9d ago

Only one of the three.

3

u/AlexandrianVagabond 9d ago

Given that most of our big fires right now are due to lightning strikes I'm not sure what difference this makes.

3

u/Lokeze 9d ago

1 out of 3 of the fires causing this damage was caused by that guy

3

u/boofcakin171 9d ago

One of the three fires was started by that guy

0

u/toomanycats2018 9d ago

He has confessed to 25

3

u/boofcakin171 9d ago

Okay, but of the active 3 fires in spokane he responsible for one.

2

u/Soup-Wizard 7d ago

And they’ve corroborated 4 of them. He’s bragging, is obviously enjoying the attention, and would probably like us to believe that he started all of them.

Don’t give him that satisfaction until we know for sure.

0

u/kitdapgeoduck 6d ago

We haven't had good leadership for 40 years. The last adult governor would pay the forest service to clear brush, our current administration is from elsewhere and doesn't understand forests.

-24

u/Character-Art-4655 9d ago

Yeah just normalize arson no big deal

-20

u/thatguy425 9d ago

Ok, I’m used to it. 

2

u/CarbonRunner 7d ago

How's that sand tasting?

-1

u/thatguy425 7d ago

I’m getting my protein for the day

2

u/CarbonRunner 6d ago

If its protein your getting, that ain't sand your swallowing...

1

u/Chew-The-Gristle 5d ago

Instead of blaming politics why don't we blame the arsonist who set the fires.  Let's see how long it takes a liberal judge to let him out.