Thousands of families were ordered to evacuate their homes as a rapidly spreading wildfire grew on Saturday night in Spokane County, Washington, due to strong winds pushing it toward residential areas.
At the same time, more than a dozen fires remained active across the state, mainly in less populated areas, affecting about 100,000 hectares, according to The New York Times.
“This is an extraordinary fire season”, said the state Public Lands Commissioner, Dave Upthegrove, at a press conference Saturday night. “This is not normal,” he assured.
In eastern Washington, nearly 1,200 hectares were burning late Saturday, with flames spread by wind gusts up to 72 kilometers per hour, according to the disaster tracking platform Watch Duty.
The largest fire, in Old Trails, started around noon and had grown to threaten about 4,000 buildings in the area, according to Washington state ranger George Geissler.
According to The New York Times, much of Spokane County was under the highest evacuation order, level 3, and authorities urged residents in the area to leave immediately.
Videos circulated on social media showing columns of smoke and orange skies while dozens of vehicles, amid slow traffic, tried to move away from the main hotspots.
Authorities reported that as of Saturday night no injuries or deaths had been recorded, while about 4,000 firefighters were working across the state to extinguish the fires, and the National Guard had also been deployed.
“When the sun comes up in the morning, I think we will be shocked to see some of the scenes that emerge from there”, said Major General Gent Welsh of the state National Guard, as reported by CNN.
“There are fires in several cities. Level 3 evacuations are underway like I have never seen before,” Welsh said. “This is a series of very dangerous and complex events”, he added.
On Saturday morning, Washington Governor Bob Ferguson declared a state of emergency and banned burning statewide, after the National Weather Service (NWS) issued a red flag warning for a particularly dangerous situation in the central and eastern region.
This is the first time the agency has issued such a warning in Washington, meaning that “new fires can quickly get out of control, our aerial response capacity may be limited by wind and smoke, and our already overworked wildland firefighters will face more dangerous conditions,” the local Department of Natural Resources stated.
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