'The fire's right there' - Families recount fleeing Washington state wildfires
Some have returned to find their homes reduced to ash and rubble, with only the charred trunks of trees rising from the smouldering ground.
Families recount their escape from Washington state wildfires, with one resident describing the scene as "like a bomb went off" as fires in Spokane destroyed hundreds of homes.
Amy Mulligan was in her backyard, listening to an audiobook and preparing for her five-year-old's birthday party the next day, when she detected a faint scent of smoke. Living in Spokane, Washington, an area prone to wildfires, she initially wasn't concerned. She went to her deck and saw black smoke in the distance, but a quick check of her phone's alerts showed nothing. "I guess they must have it contained," she thought.
Minutes later, her brother-in-law arrived with news of an evacuation in a nearby neighborhood. When Mulligan stepped outside again, the fire no longer seemed distant. "We saw neighbors, you know, peeling out, driving away, yelling, 'We gotta go! We gotta go,'" she recalled, noting that the smoke was "coming up over the backside of our house." She added, "That activity started to really scare me because that was different than in the past."
Mulligan, her husband, and their two children quickly gathered a few belongings, got into their car, and drove off. Stuck in traffic, their nine-year-old daughter began to panic. "She was starting to hyperventilate and crying, saying, 'The fire's right there! The fire's right there,'" Mulligan remembered. "We were just like trying to do breathing exercises with her in the car as we were driving out because she was having a really hard time." The family eventually reached safety.
As of Tuesday afternoon, no deaths have been reported from the three wildfires that have burned over 10,000 acres in the Spokane area since the weekend, destroying hundreds of buildings. The fires, including the Old Trails fire that consumed Mulligan's home, were still active, according to the state's wildfire tracker. A suspect has been arrested on suspicion of arson in connection with the Old Trial fire, the largest of the wildfires, which has forced more than 60,000 people to evacuate.
James Main and his wife were also among those who had to flee. "We had no warning, by the way, zero warning," Main stated. "Normally, things would come on your phone and say, 'Hey, this area, you know, you've got fire, level three fire, or anything. There was zero warning for this whole deal." Main said he had only 30 minutes between first seeing the fire and realizing, "This is not going good at all."
As he prepared to leave, a "weird" feeling overcame him. "I kind of froze up for just a few minutes. I think it was like an anxiety attack," the 67-year-old said. "I've never had one before, but I think I had one then." Main and his wife made it to their truck, but as they tried to escape, they had to navigate streets obscured by thick, dark smoke. "We don't know if we're heading out of a fire or into a fire because we can't freaking see," he recalled.
When Main returned on Sunday to assess the damage, he found little left of his house beyond ash, rubble, and charred tree trunks rising from smoldering ground. Asked what comes next, Main replied, "We don't know." This is a question Main and countless others will face in the coming days and weeks as they attempt to rebuild their lives.
More than 700 homes and other structures have been destroyed by the Spokane-area fires, including Amy Mulligan's home. "It's all just ash," she said, describing what remained of her home, supported by photos she shared with the BBC. However, it wasn't the house itself that brought her to tears. It was the irreplaceable items inside—those that insurance checks cannot cover and official government trackers do not tally. Among them was a ring Mulligan's grandmother gave her, which her grandfather had given to her grandmother on their 49th wedding anniversary.
"She was confused why he didn't just wait and do the big thing on the 50th, but he passed away that year," Mulligan explained. "She had always said she thought that he knew, and that's why he went ahead and got her this ring. And she had given it to me," she continued, pausing to fight back tears. "And it's gone."