Depending on your perspective, Spokane’s worst fire happened Saturday

Only five weeks ago, a fire tore through Camp Sekani and into a neighborhood north of Spokane Valley, destroying 14 homes.

The Upriver fire killed one person and burned 213 acres.

That kind of wildfire, one that rips through an urban or suburban neighborhood burning a dozen or so houses, used to be rare during Spokane County’s fire seasons. There was the Valley View fire in 2008 that burned about 12 homes near Dishman Hills. The Hangman Hills fire in 1987 burned a couple dozen.

One used to stand out: A firestorm in October 1991 destroyed more than 100 homes in Spokane County. The Ponderosa Neighborhood in Spokane Valley was particularly hit hard.

But three years ago on Aug. 18, the Oregon Road fire in Elk destroyed 126 homes and the Gray fire on the West Plains and Medical Lake took 240.

That was only three years after 120 homes, most of the residences in the small town of Malden, were destroyed in northern Whitman County during the Babb Road fire, which started in Spokane County.

That kind of devastation intensified Saturday within Spokane city limits. The Old Trails fire started west of Spokane and blew into Northwest Spokane, burning 640 structures. Two other large fires in Spokane County burned homes, too, though officials hadn’t released the numbers of structures lost as of early Sunday afternoon.

As fires have intensified across the country and world in an era of climate change, firefighters have warned for many years that the kind of losses experienced on Saturday were possible, even likely, in Spokane.

Multiple officials on Sunday called the Old Trails fire the worst in the city of Spokane’s history. And by many measures, it is.

One fire might compete – at least in terms of total impact.

On Aug. 4, 1889, 32 blocks of downtown Spokane were destroyed in the Great Spokane Fire. It was an era when many cities were devastated and reborn in great fires, including Chicago, Seattle and Vancouver, British Columbia.

“All the banks, all the hotels, the post office, the land office, all the large business houses” were destroyed, the Spokane Falls Review reported soon after.