Cover photo courtesy of Derrick Knowles
The word “devastating” doesn’t seem strong enough to describe the impacts of the wildfires that swept through Spokane-area neighborhoods and parkland this past summer. The Upriver Fire in June and the Spokane Complex Fires in early August destroyed hundreds of homes and structures and scarred cherished public lands in Riverside State Park and Camp Sekani Park, upending lives and cutting off park users from beloved escapes from the daily grind of city life.
For those of us who made it through the fires with nothing more than the anxiety of repeated Watch Duty fire alerts or a brief power outage, we are the lucky ones. Hundreds of our friends and neighbors lost so much that it’s difficult to comprehend, and even harder to write about. Please donate to one of the many fire relief charities if you can.
For this feature—scrambled together after the fires to meet our fall print deadline—we included several articles looking at how the fires impacted not just homes and communities, but the parks and trails so many of us use and love. More importantly, we tried to address the question we are left grappling with: What can we do to limit the impact of destructive wildfires on our parks and communities in the future?
