Today's headlines:
- Northwest energy companies convened in Spokane yesterday to talk through some of their biggest challenges.
- Washington’s All-Risk Mobilization Program released data on incident responses this year. The numbers confirm it was a brutal wildfire season for the state.
- Thanks to the nonprofit First Story, one Spokane family got an affordable home with no strings attached.
- And a new exhibit at the Cathedral of St. John the Evangelist explores how Christianity got from the Middle East to Europe to the Inland Northwest.
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A family located in eastern Spokane Valley now holds the keys to their brand new home. That’s thanks in part to a nonprofit called First Story, which touts itself as a provider of affordable homeowning opportunities.
The new home came with some special perks: zero down and a 0% interest loan for 30 years.
First Story said this opportunity is possible with properties built by Hayden Homes. Families or individuals who want to apply for a house through the program must earn 80% of the area median income or below. For Spokane, a three-person household would earn around $72,000 a year.
First Story then requires applicants to complete classes online about how to own a home. Claire Duncan is the executive director of the nonprofit.
DUNCAN: “The homebuyer education is so key for first time homebuyers, because it's not just being able to afford the monthly payments, right? It’s all the other things, the responsibilities that go along with homeownership. Over 80% of our families are the first in their family to ever own a home.”
First Story will open up its next round of applications on November 9.
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It’s been an unusually severe fire season in Washington, according to statistics released by the state’s All-Risk Mobilization Program.
As part of Washington’s emergency response network, the program deploys firefighters and other emergency responders to major incidents, like wildfires. It also helps reimburse local districts for their mobilization costs.
As of yesterday, the program responded to 47 fires. That's the highest number in recent years. From 2023 to 2025, crews responded to around 30 fires each year.
Deputy State Fire Marshal Courtney Chambers said this year’s responses are expected to cost $41 million. That money comes from the Washington State Disaster Response Account.
The All-Risk Mobilization Program expects to receive about $16 million in federal reimbursement. The reimbursement process could take anywhere from three to five years.
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Washington Governor Bob Ferguson has requested additional funds from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), after wildfires swept through Central and Eastern Washington this summer.
If granted, the funds would go toward repairing public infrastructure damaged by wildfires. Ferguson asked for about $13.2 million.
The state recently submitted a request for a Major Disaster Declaration, asking the federal government to release money for recovery. Washington has now requested more than $133 million in wildfire relief funding from the federal government in total.
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The Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife (WDFW) is gearing up for prescribed burns this fall on state-managed lands in Okanogan County.
Weather and air quality conditions will determine when and whether the burns take place — likely between mid-October and late November.
On the roster are 90 acres in the Methow Wildlife Area, four miles south of Twisp. The department is also looking at 100 acres in the Sinlahekin Wildlife area, six miles southwest of Tonasket, and another 40 acres south of Oroville.
The prescribed burns will reduce invasive vegetation, improve wildlife habitat and prompt the growth of native plants.
The 2025–2027 budget for maintaining forest management, fuel reduction and ecological health of WDFW lands is $1.2 million, down from $6 million in the previous biennium. The department is asking that the funding be restored.
In the interim, burns in the Sinlahekin Wildlife Area are funded in part by the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation and the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation.
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A man from Richland, Washington is charged with attempting to provide support to a foreign terrorist organization. Reporter Erick Bengel has more.
A motion has been filed in federal court to keep Ashton Ellaboudy detained until his trial. The 51-year-old was arrested last week and charged with attempting to provide material support to the Houthis.
The Houthis are an Iran-backed rebel group that has taken control of much of Yemen. The U-S has named the group a foreign terrorist organization.
Search teams allegedly found a chemical compound known as a primary high explosive on Ellaboudy’s property. The prosecution says that means he could be a danger to the community. The government also views Ellaboudy as a flight risk. A conviction could land him up to 20 years in prison.
In Walla Walla, I’m Erick Bengel.
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A new exhibit at the Cathedral of St. John the Evangelist uses stained glass windows to explore how Christianity arrived in the Inland Northwest. It doesn’t shy away from what churches and missionaries left in their wake.
DARRYL GURECKY: "The story of stained glass, as I have heard it told, is that stained glass is created to tell stories."
Darryl Gurecky is the co-chair of St. John’s Centennial Committee. He’s in his element — striding from one imposing window to the next.
DG: "So what we’ve done pretty much for every window, there’s a story of a topic, a single topic. On either side it’s flanked by a poster that’s about four feet tall, a couple of feet wide — on the average — that explains some aspect of the window."
The posters are part of an exhibit called “Unto the Ends of the Earth: The Legacy of the Great Commission in the Inland Northwest.”
St. John’s is the seat of the Episcopal Church in Spokane. It opened in 1929; its official centennial is in 2029. But Gurecky and his fellow committee members are marking “bonus” milestones with exhibits like this one.
DG: "This year we’re commemorating 100 years since groundbreaking, when shovel went to earth, okay? And we thought it was a good opportunity to look at the history that occurred before the cathedral was built."
About 2,000 years before the cathedral was built.
Along with posters, the exhibit features artwork, photography and historic church furnishings. It aims to understand how Christianity made its way from the Middle East to Europe to the Inland Northwest.
And it doesn’t glorify that journey.
Gurecky points out a window that shows Constantine the Great declaring Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire.
DG: "At that point, it was kind of a first point of Christianity beginning to displace other cultures, displace other belief systems."
That displacement is a theme throughout the exhibit. It’s been a theme throughout Christian history, too. That’s according to Gonzaga religious studies professor Kevin Brown.
KEVIN BROWN: "So, the Doctrine of Discovery was the claim, essentially, that lands that were discovered by Christians, that were not inhabited by Christians, were able to be claimed by the Christian nations."
The Doctrine of Discovery was issued by the Catholic Church. But after Protestants split off during the European Reformation, they leaned on the justification, too.
KB: "It led European nations, who identified as Christian nations, to read themselves into the stories of the Old Testament where the ancient Israelites were recalled as settling particular lands and encountering people who are in those lands."
That set the stage for many of the interactions between Christian European settlers and Native Americans in the New World.
Across the U.S., settlers forcibly displaced tribes from their land. They sent Indigenous children to Catholic and Protestant boarding schools — which Brown calls a form of cultural genocide.
KB: "But it ultimately was a practice of the deeper reality of genocide as well, because it resulted in the abuse and neglect of many children and the desire to not let a particular people hand on their own way of life."
At the St. John’s exhibit, some posters tell the stories of Indigenous children who attended early versions of those schools.
Also on display are visual depictions of Christian history that missionaries sent home with Indigenous children. The Episcopal Church worked with the Nez Perce tribe to translate some of the writing on the sticks for the first time.
As a history nerd, Darryl Gurecky is excited that “Unto the Ends of the Earth” has uncovered buried stories.
But he also recognizes the more somber opportunity that the exhibit gives his congregation.
DG: "It's important to — not to condemn the past, necessarily — though there's a lot of bad stuff that happened in the past — but to own the reality of the past and build upon that or learn from that to hopefully move in a better direction as we move forward."
For years, Gurecky and other congregants worshiped at St. John’s without stopping to read the story written in its windows.
DG: "But it is our story to own. And a painful story to own."
“Unto the Ends of the Earth” is open to visitors Thursdays through Sundays from 10:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. A collection of Spokane Garry’s Bibles, on loan from the Northwest Museum of Arts and Culture, will be displayed at St. John’s on October 10th and November 7th. The exhibit runs through November 15th.
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SPR News Today is a production of Spokane Public Radio.
Reporting today was contributed by Doug Nadvornick, Ember Braun, Kyrsten Weber, Erick Bengel and Audrey Nelson, today’s host and producer.
Web support was provided by Ember Braun.
