The Spokane burns show that not even surburbia is immune to wildfire

All it took was an ember, then several. The Old Trails Fire jumped the Spokane River from a nearby state park into the Indian Trail neighborhood, forcing mass evacuations Saturday afternoon in Spokane, Washington. While it began near the forested Riverside State Park, allegedly set by an arsonist who was arrested Monday, it quickly tore into Spokane’s northwest corner, leveling homes. As of Monday afternoon, the Spokesman-Review reported that more than 700 to 1,100 structures were lost between three fires — the Old Trails fire, Autumn Lane Fire in the Suncrest area and the Fairview Fire in Mead — all of which are still ongoing. Collectively, the fire perimeters totaled more than 10,000 acres on Tuesday, according to Watch Duty, an app that shares human-collected information about fires. Mayor Lisa Brown called the fires “the worst natural disaster the region has faced.” Like most fires that destroy homes, they are burning in what fire experts call the “wildland-urban interface” — areas of high fire risk where homes mingle with fuel like trees, grasses and bushes. It also refers to the zone between unoccupied land and human development, according to FEMA. The term often conjures up images of mountain towns, homes dotted in the forest and rural areas far from population centers. But the Old Trails fire redefined all of that: it turns out, the wildland-urban interface is also suburban. Similar urban-wildfire conflagrations have burned in recent years, including the Eaton and Palisades fires in the Los Angeles area in January 2025 and the 2021 Marshall fire, which became the most costly wildfire in Colorado history. All of these fires were sparked just outside suburbs and were pushed into communities by gusty winds. All of them showcased how quickly neighborhoods can burn, under the right conditions. Almost a third of housing nationwide today is situated in the wildland-urban interface. The suburban neighborhood of Indian Trail was mostly built in the 1980s through 2010s, part of a wave of development in fire-prone areas in the West. The neighborhoods that burned are like so many other neighborhoods in the region. There’s a massive sports complex where generations of kids play soccer, baseball and football, churches, schools, a skatepark, grocery stores, manicured lawns, and tidy houses. It’s not that wild, although access to nearby state park trails is a draw for residents. It’s roughly 15 minutes from downtown Spokane, the second largest city in Washington with a metropolitan area of more than 600,000 people. Almost a third of housing nationwide today is situated in the wildland-urban interface, according to 2020 Forest Service research. As climate change primes the landscape for wildfires, these places are increasingly in harm’s way. Much of northern Spokane — east almost to the major arterial Division Street — are considered at risk of ember-driven wildfires, according to FEMA maps. Forest Service maps show that homes in Spokane County face more fire risk than 82% of counties nationwide. But some of the area burned is only considered moderate fire risk, and much of the evacuated areas is considered low. In Spokane, it was high winds that increased the risk. For the first time in Washington state history, the National Weather Service designated a “particularly dangerous situation.” Those same winds that fanned flames in Spokane also blew up more wildfires in north-central Washington, including the Sinlahekin Fire, which was almost 74,000 acres on Aug. 3., the Little Giant Fire, which spotted across Lake Chelan over the weekend, and the Kaiser Canyon Fire, which, as of press time, has burned over 136,000 acres on the Colville Indian Reservation. The smoke from those fires is now blowing across the northern Rockies and hanging over communities much like the ones still burning in Spokane. Communities across the West are thinking about wildfire preparedness — maybe even more so if their neighborhoods previously felt like the last place a wildfire could touch.