‘Wiped out’ – BBC reports from Spokane neighbourhood devastated by fires
Last year, Chris Matthews was forced to flee with his family of five after a brushfire threatened their home in Spokane, Washington.
That evacuation lasted only a few hours. So when an ominous column of dark smoke raced towards him last Saturday, and he and his family were evacuated again, he expected he'd be back home soon.
Instead, he returned to find nothing but smouldering ruins.
"All of us thought we were going to be able to get back to our houses," he recalls. "And we didn't think it'd be a situation where we were going to lose our homes or anything like that."
Smoke and fires are a normal occurrence here in the US Pacific Northwest every summer, as residents wait for the autumn rains to arrive. Small evacuations are not unexpected. But the scale of this year's fires in Spokane is unprecedented.
Kira Townsend, 39, says she realised the immense danger when word came that the fire had jumped over the river, which normally acts as a barrier protecting the city from fires.
"It's never jumped the river like that, and just roared up the hill that fast," she says.
Nearly a quarter of the city population – 65,000 people – were forced to evacuate since the fires began. For those whose homes did not burn down, officials say it may be weeks before it is safe to return to their neighbourhoods.
Miraculously, there have been no deaths or major injuries reported from the fires.
Matthew Kincanon, 31, fled for his life as the fire entered his neighbourhood of Prosperity Lane on Saturday night. He returned 12 hours later to discover that there was nothing left.
"As soon as I stepped out of the car I threw up," he says. "I felt sick. I couldn't control it. I just lost it. It hit me all at once," he says.
While firefighters battle three large fires around the city that remain less than 40% contained, the recovery effort is beginning for people who have lost everything.
"We have two fronts going at the same time. We're actively fighting the fire and trying to put that out. But we're also starting recovering for folks that have lost their homes," City Councilman Zack Zappone, who grew up in the devastated Indian Trails neighbourhood, tells the BBC.
"There just a lot of uncertainty and frustrations and difficultness," he says at a city shelter, describing the tensions in the city.