Watching Home Burn
A Personal Account of the Spokane Wildfires
Last Saturday night, I saw a few mentions on social about fires in Spokane, WA, on the opposite side of the country from me. I lived there until I was 14, and later, I returned to go to college there. So, of course I perked up a bit, but thought it was probably something that would be put out pretty quickly. But on Sunday, Joe and I were at the bar having lunch at Puritan & Co. (owned by one of our favorite Boston area chefs, Wil Gilson).
While we waited for our food, I was looking for something to show Joe on Instagram, and a post from one of my oldest friends, Stephanie, popped up. A friend who was evacuating. She lived down the street from me, and her family was one of the most influential in my young life. She sent me a photo that her brother, Steve, had taken from the family’s dock, a dock that I have spent countless hours jumping off the end. The fire had jumped the river somewhere downstream, and the whole area was threatened.
I voluntarily went to Facebook, which I generally loathe doing, because I can’t stand Meta and what the site has become. But that’s where my elementary and college friends still sometimes post, and ohhh the photos, the stories of people evacuating, or having to help their parents evacuate…so heartbreaking. Then I started looking for the fire maps, and my heart sank when I saw where the worst of them were blazing.
That red blob on the top left in that photo from Lookout (updated news daily here) is the area where I grew up. The red isn’t in the area where my childhood house is, but it appears to be just a mile down the road. The map below shows you the areas with fire (darkest red) and all the evacuation areas.
Here’s a very old photo (maybe 1977 or so?) of the house I grew up in (the bark on all the bushes not yet filled in). You can see the massive pines behind it. There was another one in the front yard just out of the frame. And in the photo on the right of the front door (maybe 1983), you can see the Spokane River across the street, behind my father (and no, don’t ask me about my weird pseudo mullet). Note all the massive pine trees lining it.
It’s a land FULL of pine trees. We literally lived among a forest of sorts. Pine trees need a lot of water, and when the climate is hot and dry, the trees become the best kindling a fire can imagine.
The idea of this house that I haven’t seen since I was 14 going up in flames had me tearing up at the bar. I was apparently so visually upset that the bartender gave me a cinnamon roll to take home, which was very sweet.
The images coming out of that area are so heartbreaking.
They arrested a suspect on Monday night, 37-year-old Aaron F. Farinacci, for a single charge of first-degree arson. Farinacci is a convicted felon from Arizona with a previous manslaughter conviction for killing his father (WTF?). Apparently, a man saw him standing by trees near Old Trail and Euclid streets and reported him. He was in possession of waterproof matches and a butane lighter when they arrested him. They confirmed that the location is where the fire started.
Not sure if there was a motive other than being off his rocker, but he wasn’t a very good arsonist. Why would you do it from the side of the road? I guess we should be glad for that so we can at least catch whoever is responsible for this incredible destruction.
They had to stop aerial firefighting for a while, though, because somebody was using a drone without authorization, and of course that’s extraordinarily dangerous to those firefighters. I wonder if this is that video?
I’ve been obsessively watching the Watch Duty app to see where the fires are spreading to. As I am writing this on Tuesday, it looks like the old home is safe, but the Old Trails fire is hurtling toward my Alma Mater, Whitworth College (now University).
That Watch Duty app is both extremely informative and terrifying. It shows you where ALL the wildfires are in the US. If you scroll out, you’ll see that basically half of the US and big swaths of Alaska are on fire right now.
The interwebs are abuzz (internationally, I might add) with a zillion conspiracy theories about how fires like this are being intentionally set so that they can use the land to build data centers. Apparently one of the fires in Spokane is in a hotly contested area for a data center. I saw another Facebook post where a woman was saying that her grandmother’s house that burnt was on land the city had been trying to buy for years for a data center.
The sad thing is that our tech oligarch overlords have proven themselves evil in the name of greed so many times that it’s entirely understandable that this rumor feels so believable.
The truth of the matter is that it’s related to climate change. Don’t believe me. Believe the people that actually study this stuff.
NASA: Wildfires and Climate Change “Extreme wildfire activity has more than doubled worldwide. NASA’s Terra and Aqua satellites detect active wildfires twice each day. Scientists studied this data over a 21-year span and found that extreme wildfires have become more frequent, more intense, and larger.”
Center for Climate and Energy Studies “For much of the U.S. West, projections show that an average annual 1°C temperature increase would increase the median burned area per year as much as 600 percent in some types of forests.
Harvard - The Smoky Signature of Climate Change “Climate change directly accounts for 60-82% of total burned area in western U.S. forests and 33% in central and southern California since the early 1990s. On average, that’s 65% of total fire emissions in the U.S. between 1997 and 2020.”
All of this has been weighing on me for the last couple of days. I’m watching places I love across the globe be impacted by incredible heat and fire, and we are in the midst of incredible political and economic turmoil right now. I’ve always been a news junkie, but that’s not always mentally good to be in this day and age. It’s also easy to say those things aren’t immediately affecting me, so I will go about my life and try not to think about all of this news. This is a bit different. This is touching so many people I love, and their homes and their livelihoods are being destroyed. It’s very difficult to not feel deeply impacted by that.
How You Can Help
I donated through my Alma Mater, Whitworth University, which is still very much in harm’s way. But there are many ways that you can make a difference.
H.O.M.E Starts Here Fund - to help those who may be unhoused
Spokane Local has listed out a bunch of resources in this carousel. Check here if you are in the PNW and are able to donate more than money.
If you want to give gift cards to help people living out of their cars, or tents, this company is helping organize cards and supplies. The information is in the description.
What’s Bringing Me Joy
This hasn’t been a joyful post, I realize, and it feels wrong to throw some frivolous videos and places I’d like to shop at the end of this particular post. What I can say that gives me great joy is that the people I care about are safe, and that it is heartening to watch that community pull together to help each other. And of course, it is good to reconnect with people I don’t often talk to, even if the reasoning isn’t so great. All of that is a bright light for me. And what can bring you more joy than the love 🩷 of the people and places you care about?
Hold your loved ones safe today.
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No words. Just hugs.
These fires are so hard to fathom with all of the destruction they leave in their wake. The weather spares none of us. While not fire, my family was affected by Katrina in New Orleans. After that storm, my mother left New Orleans, something she said she would never do. Shortly after that she passed. These events are so disastrous for so many.