Seven wildland firefighters dead as crews stretch thin at top alert
Piles of twisted metal and ashen debris line the cul-de-sacs where the tranquil suburbs of Spokane, Washington, once stood. The scale of devastation from a historic fire season has come into sharper focus as firefighters wrangle a trio of blazes that consumed at least 846 structures on the eastern side of the state.
More than 2.9m acres (1.1m hectares) have already burned across Washington and Oregon this year, as extreme conditions fuel fast-moving fires that have draped the region in toxic plumes for weeks on end. Oregon has already logged more burned acreage this year than any in recorded history, and Washington is in the midst of its most destructive fire season. The dangers are far from over: firefighters were battling 95 large blazes across the U.S. on Friday, and more than 6.3m acres have burned nationwide since the start of the year, according to the US National Interagency Fire Center (NIFC).
The number of fires ignited has also been exceedingly high — more than 45,800 blazes have demanded a response since the year began, and 100 new fires erupted in a single day last week. “We are living through climate change and it’s accelerating,” said Dr Susan Prichard, a fire ecologist at the University of Washington. “There’s a longer window where if we get the dreaded ignitions – whether they’re accidental, or purposeful, or lightning – the forests become really receptive to burning.”
The stage was set for an intense summer long before the flames ignited. Vegetation across the region cured during an exceptionally hot, dry July, according to an outlook from the NIFC, after swathes of Oregon and Washington received only half or a quarter of the rainfall typically seen in the month. With the terrain primed to burn, more than 600 fires exploded to life in a 10-day period in July, started by rounds of lightning and fueled by strong winds, with some spreading through terrain that should still have been covered by snow this time of year. The so-called Old Trails fire, one of at least three fires that converged around Spokane, may have been ignited by an arsonist, and a man has been taken into custody.
Thousands of people rushed from their homes as the fires closed in on Washington’s second-largest city, and whole neighborhoods were wiped from the map as flames swept from structure to structure. The resulting urban conflagration followed a pattern of destruction seen in other cities hammered by wildfire in recent years, including Los Angeles in 2025; Lahaina, Hawaii, in 2023; and the suburbs of Boulder, Colorado, in 2021.
“Spokane has joined the rapidly growing list of our communities that have been devastated by these climate-exaggerated fires,” said Jay Inslee, the former Washington governor.
Most of the fire activity has been concentrated on the eastern side of the Cascade mountains, an area hotter and drier than the rainforest landscapes and dense coastal fog nearer the Pacific. But Prichard expressed concern about the risks that still lie ahead, pointing to the deadly and devastating Labor Day fires of 2020, when flames howled through communities on the western side of the Cascades in Oregon, scorching more than a million acres, destroying thousands of homes and killing 11 people. “I hope I’m wrong,” Prichard said. “But western Washington and western Oregon are ready to burn.”
Conditions across the region are not expected to ease any time soon. The NIFC projects increased significant fire potential to extend through September, and precipitation that might otherwise provide relief across the parched landscapes is forecast to be below normal into November. The El Niño climate pattern, characterized by warming surface temperatures in the equatorial Pacific, could also push fire risks higher through the end of the year, with models showing a 95% chance of a very strong El Niño developing by September. “It’s unprecedented, dangerous territory – Washington state has never been so exposed to multiple losses,” Inslee said. “You layer El Niño on top of that, and there could be additional catastrophes even this summer.”
Across the Atlantic, Europe is also having a historic season, fueled by deadly heatwaves that baked moisture out of desiccating landscapes across the continent. More than 1.3m acres have burned so far this year, and researchers found the extreme weather driving the fires in several countries was made more likely by human-caused climate change — concluding that the fires in south-western France were twice as likely, and in central Spain 20 times more likely, because of greenhouse gas emissions, according to a study released at the end of July.
“This is a new beast that is attacking our communities across the western United States and across the world,” Inslee said. “We’ve got the way to fight this beast right at its heart, which is climate change induced by pollution.”
The explosion in fire activity in the Pacific north-west in July made the region the focus of firefighting efforts over the last month, but across the U.S., crews are already spread thin. The country has been classified at “preparedness level 5” — the highest level, indicating resources are fully deployed — since 18 July. “PL5 means triage – it means some fires aren’t going to get firefighters,” a federal fire captain who works out of the Pacific north-west said, requesting anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the press. “A well-staffed and well-functioning fire service should mean that there’s never a PL5, or that it’s very, very rare.”
The fire captain described the emotional and physical strain inflicted on first responders who are taking on longer, harder and increasingly more dangerous assignments as the wildfire crisis outpaces the resources provided. “We are trying to save what we can, but we’re just watching houses burn,” the fire captain said. “As a wildland firefighter, no matter how much you give, your presence is never enough.” Injuries are common among the crews who spend seasons away from friends and family in the harshest environments, and seven wildland firefighters have reportedly died in the line of duty so far this summer.
“We need to have a more realistic expectation about what our firefighters can do when we’re experiencing fire seasons like this one,” said Bobbie Scopa, a retired fire chief who now serves as a vice-president for the firefighter advocacy group Grassroots Wildland Firefighters. Scopa also emphasized that thousands of fires are quickly extinguished before they become infernos — an estimated 98% are suppressed before they spread across 100 acres, according to federal statistics — and rarely reach public perception. “We live in a fire environment and it’s getting worse,” she said. “If we really expect to put out every single fire before it gets big, we would need double the workforce and probably triple the budget. Otherwise, we’re going to kill people trying to put out those last couple per cent and we’re going to spend a lot of money doing it.”