Today's headlines:
- Spokane wildfire evacuees are headed home, many of them anyway. But public health authorities say they’ll need to do some evaluation and cleanup of their properties before moving back in.
- The resource center opened last week to provide help to wildfire evacuees will stay open a few more days.
- Crews responding to wildfires that broke out over the weekend in the Palouse are making progress in controlling them.
- In our feature segment, we talk with the head of an organization that works with wildfire-affected communities like Spokane to rebuild.
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Spokane authorities are allowing many wildfire evacuees to return home.
New boundaries released Sunday afternoon change areas that have been in level 3 — or go now — to level 1 — be ready. Some areas remain in level 3.
Tom Clemo says teams in hazmat suits will spend the next few days doing final cleanup work in the remaining level 3 evacuation zones. Clemo is the incident commander for the California team in charge of battling the fires.
“Every one of these residential homes are pose a significant threat to the community not just because of the heat but because of the materials that were burned in everyday modern homes," he said.
Clemo is asking the public to stay out of the areas where the teams are working.
As for the people allowed to return, Health District Medical Officer Frank Velazquez is warning people to take it slow.
“We want all residents as they return to take the time to carefully examine all the environment around them before they proceed. For homes that are standing and have no obvious fire damage you still have to think about smoke, ash, damage utilities and other hazards before settling back in," he said.
The Red Cross is handing out free personal protection equipment kits, says Denise Everhart from the Red Cross.
"Those kits will have Tyvek suits, N95 masks, eye protection, eye drops, booties to put on your feet so you don’t bring the toxic ash back into your car, a tub so that you can put your belongings in the tub for later cleaning,” he said.
They're available at the disaster assistance center at Shadle Park High School.
The Spokane Regional Health District has a list of returning home after a wildfire to-dos at its website.
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The Red Cross is opening eight stations where people who are returning home can first stop and get protective equipment. That’s especially important if you house sustained fire and smoke damage.
Here’s the list:
Mead High School; the Rosauers in Nine Mile Falls, Union Stadium in Mead; the Indian Trail Shopping Center; the River Ridge Shopping Center, across the street from the VA Hospital; the Rosauers at the Five Mile Shopping Center; the Five Mile Park and Ride; the Nom-Nom on West Nine Mile Road.
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When people go back to their homes after being away for several days, they’ll find Avista has restored the power. The next step is turning on the natural gas. Chief Executive Heather Rosentrater hopes that work will be done in the next two or three days.
20260810_wildfires-Avista_CC. :13 “…don’t miss us.”
“We'll have resources in the area, just knocking on doors, systematically going through the neighborhoods multiple times, so you don't need to worry if you're not there. We'll still be there in the future. You don't need to rush home to make sure that you don't miss us," she said.
Rosentrater warns people not to restart their own gas service, for safety reasons.
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The resource center that has served Spokane wildfire evacuees for the last four days will remain open, at least through Wednesday.
The facility stood up at Shadle Park High School has seen thousands of visitors. Some made their way to a row of trailers and tents manned by insurance company claims representatives.
Others went inside to talk with people from government agencies and social service organizations. Some accepted food outside for themselves and their pets.
Rochelle Monger from the Shadle Park Boosters was coordinating an area where people drove up with donations of clothes and other things.
“We are now offering for people to come in and take what is needed, no questions asked. So even if you may not have been impacted by the fires, we're all one community and we want to make sure that your needs are taken care of as well," she said.
The Spokane Business Association delivered clothes for professional people who haven’t been able to go home and get work-appropriate attire.
The hours for the resource center will be from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Also at Shadle, Spokane Public Schools will operate an emergency drop-in camp for children four and older. The hours are 11-to-3 and lunch will be provided.
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Crews are making progress on the two fires burning in the Palouse in eastern Washington. Officials say the Palouse River fire burning in grass and timber near Colfax has now charred a little more than 600 acres. A level 3 – or go now – evacuation has been downgraded to a level 2 – be ready. The fire is considered 40-percent contained.
To the northwest, the Wells Road fire is now estimated to be about two thousand acres, but is in the mop up phase. That fire threatened the town of Malden this weekend, but the evacuation level has been reduced to a level 2 and a level 1 for nearby Rosalia.
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Idaho Governor Brad Little came to Coeur d’Alene on Friday to talk about wildfires.
“Above everything right now, I want to express our incredible thoughts and sympathy for the people of the Spokane area. The families, the businesses, everyone that’s been dislocated. It’s just heartbreaking what’s taken place over there," he said.
Little talked with reporters at the Coeur d’Alene Interagency Fire Cache.
He said agencies in Idaho are working closely together on wildfires and could use help from the public.
“Preventing the next wildfire may be the single greatest way people can help support the firefighters who are already working nonstop. Human-caused wildfires are preventable. If there are fire restrictions in your area, follow them," Little said.
Also at the meeting was U.S. Forest Service Chief Tom Schultz, who said the number of reported fires this year is at 127% of the ten-year nationwide average.
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It’s been more than a week since the 2026 Spokane firestorm ignited. The
suppression work continues. But the recovery has also begun.
Jennifer Gray Thompson knows what that’s about. In 2017, her house in northern California was threatened by a mega fire and she had to evacuate for 10 days. She was inspired to help others in similar situations. She has created an organization, After the Fire USA, that goes to fire-ravaged communities to help them recover. We talked with her recently.
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DN: When someone invites you to Spokane and you decide or any community, what are the first things that you start to teach a community?
Jennifer Gray Thompson: The first thing we want them to know is they will get through it. And so I look at the community in front of me and then I design a delegation of people who've been through it, a variety from the public sector, city managers or county directors, public works, that kind of thing, emergency management. I have the best roster in the nation on experienced community leaders and then, in your case, I already started thinking about mental health and also block captains like people who've actually organized to in their community and that really accelerates rebuilding. But I don't want to move people too quickly to that space. It depends on what they're asking for.
What I do is that I will bring a delegation of about eight to 11 people. We will come and we will listen and we want to hear like what's the love language of the community? What do they care about the most? What are they most sad about losing and that informs our response a lot. I know that sounds a little like woo-woo, but it is actually what people need at the first touch of it. They need to know like what happens next and we explain things like debris removal.
I have an insurance expert on my team and people have, you know, how many renters do you have? Looks like you have about 35, 33 to 35 percent renters from the zip codes that are affected. How do you deal with mobile home parks? I think you have a mobile home park that was also burned.
How do we even navigate this disaster? We have all of those experts and we bring them. We then sit in community and they add they can ask us anything and we will answer them.
The most important thing we do is establish hope and relationships so that people know that they're not alone and that we do have the expertise to back the community and anything they may need. Then we start to deliver webinars, whatever they're asking for.
Los Angeles has a very different personality. They wanted a lot and so we've ended up bringing people once a month for the next year and then every other month in year two in the meantime, though it was about 80 to 90 percent of our workflow because there was a lot of one-on-one coaching. How do you stand up a nonprofit after disaster? How do you push money out?
One of the things that's really hard about disaster is as soon as you get one phase of it down, you've moved on to the next phase. That can be really tough. It's a little bit like new parenthood where you're like, oh, I finally understand how to take care of this baby and then the baby changes its entire schedule. It's not that different.
Then there's the language too. There's a ton of acronyms and there are processes to navigate that are rather opaque. Navigating individual assistance with FEMA is tough. SBA comes in and you're like, oh, I thought they were just for businesses and it turns out that they do a lot of work with individual individuals who need low-interest loans, but they also have to qualify for those loans. And so there are just a lot of surprises and not always good ones around the corner.
We're also dealing with a very different federal landscape for disaster than we've had previously. This has been a huge challenge in the Los Angeles recovery. And so we want to start to talk to the local leaders from the public sector and what to expect. It doesn't mean we have all of the answers, but we definitely walk alongside of them. They always have somebody to call and pick up is a ton of peer-to-peer support.
DN: I think you made an allusion to this earlier, but how long do you stay with a project like this? So you say you establish a relationship with the community. How long do you keep working with them?
JGT: Well, we still have a relationship with Paradise and they are almost eight years in my community. It will be nine years in October.
We still respond to requests when it's needed here. We're pretty much past all of that. But sometimes we get new disasters like in Lake and Mendocino for more fires.
So we will stay with them until they are all the way home. And the other thing is is that, in our model, we bring people we bring people who are brand new to it. Maybe they have a year and a half under their belt of disaster leadership and then all the way to people from my fires nine years ago because you want that entire span of understanding and we don't want people who are again like wizened in any way shape or form.
You have to remember it has to be fresh what it feels like and what the challenges are because it's easy to forget. It's kind of like a fog of war. And so I've already had Lahaina or Maui County leaders reach out and offer their assistance to Spokane people like to come in with us because we are very organized.
But they also like the respect with which we enter a community. So we stay as long as they need us, which sometimes it's a light touch, but we never actually go away. They can call us at any time.
Jennifer Gray Thompson is the chief executive of After the Fire USA. Hear more of our conversation in our most recent Inland Journal.
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SPR News Today is a production of Spokane Public Radio.
Reporting today was contributed by Lisa Leinberger and Doug Nadvornick, today’s host and producer. Web support is provided by Anna Gyure Havlek.
