Wildfire season in the Inland Northwest is getting longer and more intense. Are you prepared?

Urban development can give the illusion of impenetrability against wildfires. But experts say city residents aren’t off the hook.

For decades the Inland Northwest’s hot, dry climate has sparked an abundance of wildfires, some more destructive than others.

Ray Kresek, a former firefighter and curator at the Fire Lookout Museum, bore witness to many of these fires and has seen firsthand how they’ve changed. Kresek got his start as a firefighter in the 1950s, when he said most fires were dealt with by hand.

“Fire just didn’t get big back in the 1950s and 1960s,” he said.

That shifted in the 1970s, when dry vegetation that could catch fire on the ground became thicker due to less fire activity and more people moving to the wilderness, Kresek said.

Thirty-five years ago, houses were rarely destroyed by fires in the area, Kresek said. Now, the West is experiencing “unusual” fire seasons, including recent large blazes that destroyed thousands of homes in heavily urbanized areas around Los Angeles.

“Then what happened last January down in California was, I’m afraid, what’s going to happen up here. It’s just a matter of time,” Kresek said.

Wildfires are increasingly evolving into urban conflagrations. These are large-scale, destructive wildfires that converge into urban areas and spread from building to building.

“Fires are moving from the wildland, skipping the urban interface and going directly into housing units, and the houses are becoming fuels,” said former Spokane Fire Chief Brian Schaeffer.

These types of fires will continue to happen if government entities do not focus their systems and policies on fire prevention, Schaeffer said. This would involve greater staffing in fire services, predictive services, the National Weather Service and other programs that work to prevent fires from occurring.

“They engineer the neighborhoods correctly. They provide the water supply and the evacuation route as a mandatory part of the code process,” said Schaeffer, the fire chief of Columbia, Missouri. “Give the people making those decisions the right information to be ahead of the fire before it even gets there to save lives.”

One of the programs in Spokane that focuses on tackling the problem is Darkhorse AI. This uses past fire department data to model the performance of fire stations, and map the improvements that adding fire stations and other resources could bring to neighborhoods.

A lot of areas outside the city aren’t receiving the same amount of support, Schaeffer said.

“As you watch the state’s budget with DNR, the Forest Service, BLM, even our partners up on the reservations with BIA, all of those services have been cut as part of the cuts and sequestrations across the government landscape,” he said.

Stoking the flames

It’s not just Washington. Countries around the world are seeing an uptick in the intensity and frequency of wildfires.

An analysis of 35 years of meteorological data by the U.S. Forest Service found that the Western United States, along with Mexico, Brazil and East Africa, face wildfire seasons that are a month longer than they were 35 years ago. Between Jan. 1 and July 9 of this year, there have been 36,825 fires that have burned around 2.1 million acres across the country, said Caleb Ashby, public affairs specialist with the National Interagency Fire Center . Although the total acres burned are below the 10-year average, the number of fires is higher than normal.

“We’ve shifted from traditional ‘fire season’ to what we now call a ‘fire year,’ ” Ashby said.

On July 12, the National Interagency Fire Center announced the national wildfire preparedness level increased to a 4, on a scale from 1 to 5. This scale indicates how prepared firefighters and other crews must be, given the fuel and weather conditions, fire activity and resource availability across the country. A Level 4 means national resources are committed to fight fires due to significant wildfire activity and heavy demand for additional resources.

In Washington, 90% of wildfires are caused by humans, according to the Department of Natural Resources. A stray firework or a mishandled bonfire can easily ignite dry brush and spread uncontrollably. A gust of wind can carry burning embers miles from the main fire front, potentially reaching neighborhoods and other residential areas.

Combine human interference with the looming threat of global warming, and you’ve got an equation for increasing wildfires.

Warmer spring temperatures are melting snowpacks earlier than usual, and parts of the state are receiving less than normal precipitation, two factors that worsen drought conditions. A hotter, drier climate parches fuels and coats forest floors with dead plants, making them more susceptible to catching fire.

Last month was the fourth driest June in Spokane since 1881, said National Weather Service Fire Weather Program Leader Stephen Bodnar.

“For June precipitation, pretty much the entire Inland Northwest experienced below normal precipitation and in the bottom 10%,” Bodnar said. “Some areas, including the Palouse down around the Tri-Cities and then into central Washington, like the east slopes of the Cascades towards the Waterville Plateau, southern Okanogan Valley had their record driest.”

Since 2011, there’s been an upward trend in temperatures during the summer, Bodnar said.

This year isn’t the first for hot , dry conditions. In 2015, Washington experienced a severe drought sparked by a snowpack deficit and record spring and summer temperatures. The Okanogan Complex fires broke out that summer, burning more than 300,000 acres and killing three firefighters.

In 2021, the heat dome surrounding the Pacific Northwest brought record-breaking temperatures and accounted for 21-34% of the total area burned in North America that year, according to a Nature study.

“Although we didn’t see that kind of heat, it’s just been persistently dry and we keep going into these three- to four-day periods of well-above -normal temperatures,” Bodnar said.

Be prepared

There have been 941 fires in Washington this year as of Friday, burning more than 38,000 acres of land, according to the Department of Natural Resource’s Intel Dashboard. There are six large fires currently burning in Washington, including the 5,800-acre Western Pines fire in Lincoln County, the 7,800-acre Hope fire near Kettle Falls and the 2,100-acre Pomas fire in the Glacier Peak Wilderness.

According to First Street, a nonprofit studying climate risks for properties, 87% of properties in Spokane County have some risk of being affected by wildfire over the next 30 years.

“There’s a lot of impacts that can happen, and just because you may live in city limits doesn’t mean you should be less aware,” said Ryan Rodrucker, communications manager for the Department of Natural Resources in Eastern Washington . “You need to be fully situationally aware during wildfire season that those fire impacts could affect you.”

The key to mitigating wildfires is preventing them from happening in the first place, Rodruck said.

“The closer we get to addressing those fires at 10 acres or less, the less chance that they have to turn into a catastrophic wildfire,” he said.

Local and state governments have provided regulations and resources aimed at preventing and preparing for fires.

Spokane County is under a burn ban until further notice. This means that unauthorized fires, including an outdoor fire without a chimney and spark arresters, such as a backyard fire pit, can result in a ticket with a $250 fine.

The Washington Department of Natural Resources has a Wildfire Ready Neighbors website with resources for homeowners looking to protect their property from potential fires. The program offers a free Wildfire Ready plan adapted to property and connects people to local wildfire experts in the area.

Guy Gifford, a pubic information officer at the Washington Department of Natural Resources, emphasized the need for preparation when it comes to wildfires.

Embers are the leading cause of home ignition. Since these can travel on the wind and land outside your house, it’s important to minimize the amount of combustible objects that are next to the house, he said. This includes brooms, newspapers, boxes and anything else that can easily catch fire.

“Just being aware of the things that if I took a match to it would have caught on fire,” Gifford said. “Think of all of those the next time you walk around a house.”

People also should be cautious about running sprinklers from public water systems during wildfires, he said.

“If we all did that in my neighborhood, there’d be no water for the hydrants,” he said. “We don’t really encourage people on public systems to run sprinklers because that takes away from the firefighters.”

Spokane County Emergency Management recommends to prepare a “go bag” including money, important documents, snacks, water, pet supplies, medications, clothes and something to sleep with including a pillow, blanket or sleeping bag.

In the event of a wildfire, the Alert Spokane program disseminates emergency notifications regarding evacuations and other safety alerts to all registered users. Spokane Regional Emergency Communications also has an official Spokane County Evacuation Zone Map that identifies evacuation areas and their levels.

It’s not just flames that give cause for concern. Wildfire smoke consists of fine particles and other pollutants that can lead to a variety of health effects, including respiratory tract infections, heart failure and worsened asthma symptoms.

Staying inside might keep prevent inhalation of the worst of the fumes. However, air conditioning units brings air in from the outside. Not every unit is equipped to filter pollutants from wildfire smoke. The Environmental Protection Agency lists recommendations for minimizing exposure through HVAC systems and other air-conditioning units on its website.