Firefighters gain ground on Spokane wildfires; 700 structures lost

Fire crews have carved primary containment lines around three wildfires threatening Spokane, Washington's second-most populous city, officials said, though full containment has yet to be achieved.

The blazes have destroyed hundreds of buildings and forced tens of thousands of people from their homes since Saturday.

"With primary containment lines now in place, crews are focused on strengthening those lines through aggressive mop-up and extinguishing pockets of heat near homes and other structures to reduce the risk of additional damage," the Spokane-area fire command said.

The fires have scorched more than 10,000 acres (4,047 hectares) on the northern fringe of the city, home to about 230,000 residents west of the Rocky Mountain foothills near the Idaho border.

At the height of the conflagration, stoked by high winds and unusually hot, arid conditions, as many as 64,000 people were placed under evacuation orders as fast-moving flames swept entire neighbourhoods. At least 700 structures have burned, the bulk of them homes, and early assessments showed another 400 buildings may have been heavily damaged or destroyed, said fire command spokesman Benjamin Cossel.

No casualties have been reported, and as of Wednesday all 14 people initially reported missing in the fire zone have been accounted for as safe, he said.

A local resident, Aaron Farinacci, 37, who had served prison time on a manslaughter conviction for killing his father in Arizona, was arrested on Tuesday and charged with arson in connection with one of the three fires. The cause of the other two remains under investigation, but authorities have determined that none of the Spokane blazes was triggered by lightning, Cossel said.

A cooling trend and calmer winds on Monday and Tuesday helped ground crews and firefighting aircraft make significant strides.

"We're cautiously optimistic about how things are looking, with the knowledge that this weekend is going to test things," Cossel told Reuters by phone. Forecasts call for temperatures in the mid- to upper-90s Fahrenheit with relative humidity in the low teens into the weekend.

The Spokane fires were ranked the No. 1 firefighting priority in the United States. A total of 94 major wildfires were burning in 13 states, more than half of them in Oregon and Washington, according to the National Interagency Fire Center in Boise. It has tallied 45,184 wildfires year to date, the most for this time of year in at least a decade, with nearly 5.5 million acres charred.

Scientists attribute the prolonged drought and extreme heat driving heightened wildfire activity to climate change, largely from heat-trapping gases released by burning fossil fuels.