Spokane County Devastating Wildfires of August 18, 2023: Enhancing Readiness and Response through Communication between NWS Spokane and Core Partners

Two wildfires erupted and rapidly spread across Spokane County on August 18, 2023. Key fire weather indices such as the Fosberg index and the hot-dry-windy index, which integrate atmospheric moisture and wind speed data, indicated an extreme meteorological environment that afternoon. Morning and early afternoon observations from central and eastern Washington had forewarned of the extreme fire weather conditions. During the peak of the wildfire activity, relative humidity at nearby Spokane International Airport reached 6% which falls within the 99.9th percentile of all observed values in the 77 year history. The exceptionally rare weather conditions contributed to the extreme fire behavior (40 foot flame lengths, jumped Interstate 90, grew to 9500 acres in 20 hours with 486 structures lost) and tested NWS Spokane’s messaging strategy and the ability to communicate rapidly changing conditions to first responders.

Following the ignition of the fires, an abrupt wind shift from west to north occurred thanks to a dry cold front which was critical to communicate to the fire dispatch for strategically staging firefighting resources. Over recent years, situational awareness as well as public facing hazard communication has been enhanced through local research and partnerships with local emergency management. This paper will recap NWS Spokane fire messaging strategies and the devastating events that unfolded 2023 August 18. Some examples of fire messaging included daily fire weather briefings, partner emails, spot forecasts and subsequent updates directly messaged to the incident command, relaying evacuation notices via NOAA weather radio and EAS, and usage of Slack to communicate to Spokane media and Washington State Department of Transportation.

Applying lessons learned from this historic event will lead to a more prepared and responsive community, better equipped for future large wildland urban interface fires. One of the biggest takeaways from the event is that it is impossible to over-communicate with partners in rapidly evolving scenarios. Meteorologists also learned the importance of utilizing scanner traffic as firefighters reportedly scrambled for safety as the abrupt wind shift occurred. This prompted further communication to the Incident teams. Decision support services provided during this event can be easily applied to any wildland-urban interface wildfire.