AILSA CHANG, HOST:
All right, to Spokane, Washington, now where three out-of-control wildfires are threatening thousands of homes in and around that forested city. Authorities estimate that about 65,000 people have been evacuated because of these fires, including neighborhoods, businesses and the sprawling VA hospital campus. So far, there are no reported fatalities, but incident commander Tom Clemo says that at least 700 structures have been lost, and that number could go up.
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TOM CLEMO: It's going to take a few days to get solid numbers, just because of the complexity, the volume of loss, and our priority right now is we have a firefight going on.
CHANG: We're joined now by NPR's Kirk Siegler, who is on the ground in Spokane and was at that press briefing. Hi, Kirk.
KIRK SIEGLER, BYLINE: Hey, Ailsa.
CHANG: Hey. OK, so what are you seeing from your vantage point right now?
SIEGLER: Well, to be blunt, not a lot because the smoke is so thick. Visibility from here - I'm looking across the downtown skyline - maybe less than a mile in places.
CHANG: Wow.
SIEGLER: Three wildfires, as you say, burning into the city, threatening it. One's threatening it. One's burning it just outside of it. It's hard for the aerial crews to even get in to assess the damage. And, Ailsa, this is a city on edge. You know, Spokane neighborhoods are full of dense, old growth, flammable pine forests. I want to take you out to a police roadblock near where the Old Trails fire - that's one of the three - has just leveled neighborhoods, just twisted metal left, leaving nothing in its path in some streets. One official called it a war zone. So here's a tired Spokane police officer, Will Dowsing. He's addressing a crowd of anxious locals, and he's telling them he just doesn't know when they'll get back in. The wind is shifting today. The fire is changing directions, back into the neighborhoods. It's just not safe.
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WILL DOWSING: I feel like an absolutely horrible person standing here giving you this news.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: You're doing your job (inaudible).
DOWSING: There is no answer that I can give you...
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: You're doing your job.
DOWSING: ...That wouldn't be emotionally acceptable to me or to you.
CHANG: Wow, so much stress and anxiety. And this is still a very active wildfire situation, right?
SIEGLER: Absolutely. These fires aren't even contained. And there are just some incredible stories of people evacuating. In that crowd, Ailsa, you know, looking for answers was a man named Don Simpson. He tells me he helped evacuate a nursing home, which was right by his apartment, and he was putting older folks in the back of his pickup and racing away from the flames.
DON SIMPSON: When I left, by that time, the fire was across the road, and, like, the field was burning - explode. The house up here were on fire. Coming out, it was, like, black orange. It was like out of an eerie movie.
SIEGLER: He has been sleeping in his pickup the last two nights, and a lot of people I've spoke to here at the Spokane Convention Center have similar stories. I'm here because this has been turned into a Red Cross shelter. There are hundreds of people inside on cots. I've just been watching some women here in front of me unload donated supplies, and they're just sort of waiting for word on - people are just waiting to see if their homes are still standing, and it may be days.
CHANG: Yeah. So scary - I know that it is still early, but what are fire officials saying about the fire response right now?
SIEGLER: Well, it is early, as you say, Ailsa. But, you know, urban wildfires like we've seen lately, like these, like Los Angeles, like in California, you really just can't stop them. Once they're going from house to house...
CHANG: Yeah.
SIEGLER: ...You know, the structures create the fuel for rapid spread alongside all the trees and the brush. Now, one lucky thing I would say quickly is that the elite federal firefighting crews, some of them, including the incident commander, only had to travel from Oregon where more than a million acres has burned so far, and they arrived in just a few hours.
CHANG: Wow.
SIEGLER: Local authorities were able to evacuate almost a quarter of this city of 200 - more than 200,000 people in just a matter of hours, so it's pretty extraordinary. But this is the kind of fire event that people here have been worried about...
CHANG: Yeah.
SIEGLER: ...And warning about for years. This is a city that is just getting drier and drier with its forest as a result of the last winter. And of course, you put climate change on that in the last few years.
CHANG: Exactly. That is NPR's Kirk Siegler in Spokane. Thank you so much, Kirk.
SIEGLER: You're welcome. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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