SPOKANE, Washington, Aug 4 (Reuters) – A man has been arrested on suspicion of deliberately starting one of three fires that have destroyed hundreds of buildings and forced tens of thousands of people to flee their homes in and around Spokane, Washington.
The suspect, 37-year-old Spokane resident Aaron Farinacci, was jailed on Monday on a $1 million bond on a count of first-degree arson, Spokane County Sheriff John Nowels said.
Farinacci is accused of starting the Old Trails Fire, one of three that erupted on Saturday to the north and west of Spokane, by using matches or a lighter to ignite a roadside patch of grass, Nowels told reporters on Monday evening.
The origins of the two other fires remained under investigation, he said.
The three blazes together are ranked as the top firefighting priority in the U.S. as a whole. Dozens of major fires have for weeks been scorching the drought-parched Pacific Northwest, fouling the air with smoke and soot.
The Spokane-area fires have blackened more than 10,000 acres (4,000 hectares) on the northern fringe of the state’s second city, home to about 230,000 residents.
HEAT AND DROUGHTS SPREAD AROUND THE GLOBE
Scientists say the prolonged heat and droughts driving the growth in wildfires in North America, Europe and elsewhere in recent years are largely a function of manmade global warming, mostly caused by the use of fossil fuels.
At least 700 structures have gone up in flames since Saturday, mostly in residential areas, with another 400, including homes, damaged or destroyed, said Benjamin Cossel of the incident command center.
Some 64,000 people were under evacuation orders on Monday, up from 4,000 a day earlier.
Although no fatalities had been reported, Cossel said there was a high probability that would change, as flames spread out of wooded areas into neighborhoods and commercial areas and search and recovery expands into currently inaccessible areas.
Nowels said the arson suspect was first detained on Saturday after a witness reported seeing a nervous-looking man bending down near some grass at the spot where arson investigators later determined the Old Trails Fire began.
Farinacci was questioned and released that day, but taken into custody on Monday afternoon, once investigators had obtained further evidence, Nowels said.
Prosecuting attorney Preston McCollam told reporters a formal case was filed and Farinacci would likely make his first court appearance on Tuesday. It was not immediately known whether Farinacci had obtained legal representation.
Nowels said the suspect told investigators under questioning that they “didn’t know the whole story.”
Farinacci was previously convicted of manslaughter in an unrelated case in Arizona. Officials gave no details about this.
SPOKANE RESIDENTS GRAB A FEW KEEPSAKES AND GO
Kami Fehlig, 58, was one of hundreds of area residents who fled before wind-driven flames engulfed their homes over the weekend.
Picking through charred ruins of her house, Fehlig paused on Monday to recount how she and her husband watched in disbelief as fire jumped the narrow Spokane River and swept toward their parkside neighborhood on Saturday.
The couple and their two adult daughters hurriedly packed themselves into their cars with the family dog and a few belongings – a wedding album, pet supplies, baby books.
Moments later, the power went out, and the family sped away.
“It was, ‘Go now, go now,'” Fehlig said.
Roughly 1,100 firefighters were battling the Spokane blazes on Monday Cossel said, a fraction of the more than 29,200 fighting wildfires nationwide, mainly in Oregon, Washington state and Idaho, according to the National Interagency Fire Center in Boise.
The agency reported more than 100 large new wildfires on Sunday in 15 states, the bulk of them in the Northwest.
In Canada, flames continued to rage across British Columbia, where record drought conditions have led to what officials over the weekend called “explosive” fire behavior.
Fire crews in Spokane sought to capitalize on cooler, calmer weather conditions expected to prevail through Tuesday, before hot, dry winds return later in the week, Cossel said.
The Interagency Fire Center has tallied 44,722 wildfires nationwide this year, the highest number for this time of the year in at least a decade, with nearly 5.2 million acres consumed, the greatest January-August acreage burned since 2022.
(Reporting by Dave Ryder and Matt McKnight in Spokane, Washington; Writing and additional reporting by Steve Gorman in Los Angeles; Additional reporting by Andrew Hay in Taos, New Mexico; Editing by Deepa Babington and Lincoln Feast)
