The Spokane Wildfires Are a Warning: Settler Colonialism and Climate Crisis Collide

In early August 2026, three massive wildfires tore through neighborhoods in and around Spokane, Washington, destroying at least 600 homes and displacing tens of thousands of people. Among those forced to flee were patients at the Veterans Affairs medical center, a stark reminder that state institutions fail to protect the most vulnerable when disaster strikes. The fires, collectively called the Spokane Complex Fire, burned over 8,000 acres by Aug. 3 and continued to rage. But this is not just a story of extreme weather. It is a story of systemic neglect, colonial land use, and the accelerating violence of extractive capitalism.

What Made the Spokane Fires So Catastrophic?

The National Weather Service issued a rare particularly dangerous situation warning one day before the fires broke out, the first of its kind in Washington state. Historically, red flag warnings have signaled critical fire weather conditions: low humidity, strong winds, and dry vegetation. But this elevated alert flagged an extremely rare and hazardous event. Forecasters had reason to worry. Dry, windy conditions converged in the wildland-urban interface, where neighborhoods have been built into forests, shrublands, and grasslands. This is not a natural disaster. It is a disaster of settler colonialism, where Indigenous land stewardship has been replaced by sprawling development and fire suppression policies that have allowed fuel to accumulate for over a century.

How Climate Crisis and Colonial Land Use Intersect

The Spokane fires resulted from a rare convergence of compounding factors. Widespread drought conditions, driven largely by a historic 2026 snow drought, played a central role. Snowpack acts as a natural reservoir, storing winter precipitation and releasing meltwater into early summer. With far below normal snowfall and exceptionally warm winter temperatures, forests dried weeks earlier than normal, leaving trees vulnerable to fire. Spring rain, interspersed with above-average temperatures, supported widespread growth of grasses and shrubs. Exposed to scorching summer temperatures, this vegetation dried quickly, becoming highly flammable. When a dry cold front crossed the Inland Northwest on Aug. 1, it brought sustained winds of 15 to 25 mph, with gusts up to 45 mph, fueling explosive fire growth.

More than 44,000 wildfires had burned over 5 million acres across the U.S. in 2026 as of Aug. 3, well above the 10-year average. This includes blazes in Utah and Colorado that claimed the lives of three firefighters in June. The Spokane fires are part of a broader trend: more homes are being exposed to wildfire risk. A recent study by fire scientists and climatologists found that 462,069 homes were exposed to large wildfires from 2001 to 2020 across the contiguous U.S. Two-thirds of those homes were in the western U.S., where the number of homes exposed increased sixfold. Home survivability declined by 12% over the same period.

Why the Wildland-Urban Interface Is a Colonial Trap

The extreme fire behavior of the Spokane Complex Fire was not unique. The Big Grass Fire along the Oregon-Idaho border burned over 300,000 acres. But in Spokane, the Old Trails, Fairview, and Autumn Lane fires burned largely within wildland-urban interface landscapes, where forests and grasslands are interspersed with residential and commercial buildings. This environment created dangerous pathways for fire to spread into developed areas, ignite vulnerable structures, and propagate from one building to the next. This is the legacy of a century of fire suppression in fire-adapted Western landscapes that depended on periodic low-severity burns to clear dead fuel. Indigenous communities have long practiced controlled burns to maintain ecosystem health, but colonial policies criminalized these practices, leading to the fuel accumulation we see today.

What Communities Can Do: Abolitionist Approaches to Fire Risk

Wildfires are a natural part of the North American landscape, particularly in the West. Historically, low-intensity fires periodically burned away low-lying vegetation. But with more people living in the wildland-urban interface, fires have been quickly suppressed, allowing vegetation to build up. In conjunction with a warming climate, this has enhanced the risk of larger fires. There are, however, steps that communities can take to reduce the risk of wildfires becoming disasters, but these must be rooted in decolonial and abolitionist principles.

At the landscape scale, locally tailored prescribed burning and forest thinning can reduce the likelihood of fast-moving, high-severity events. These practices should be led by Indigenous knowledge holders, who have maintained these ecosystems for millennia. At the community scale, residents, local governments, and community organizations can collaboratively develop wildfire protection plans that map vulnerable neighborhoods and critical infrastructure. These plans must prioritize evacuation corridors for disabled and elderly residents, strengthen emergency alert systems for non-English speakers, and improve access for firefighting. At the individual-home scale, home hardening and creating defensible space around homes can reduce the probability of fire reaching the home. But these measures are not enough without systemic change.

FAQ: The Spokane Wildfires and Systemic Risk

Why are wildfires becoming more destructive?

Wildfires are becoming more destructive due to the intersection of climate crisis, colonial land use, and extractive capitalism. Droughts are intensifying, temperatures are rising, and precipitation patterns are shifting. Meanwhile, the wildland-urban interface continues to expand as developers build homes in fire-prone areas, often displacing Indigenous communities and ignoring ecological realities.

What role did fire suppression play?

Fire suppression policies, rooted in colonial forestry practices, have allowed vegetation to accumulate for over a century. This has created a backbone of fuel that, combined with climate change, makes fires more severe. Indigenous communities have long practiced controlled burns to manage this fuel, but these practices were criminalized.

How can marginalized communities protect themselves?

Marginalized communities, including BIPOC, disabled, and low-income residents, are often left out of disaster planning. Community-led wildfire protection plans must center their needs, ensuring accessible evacuation routes, multilingual alerts, and affordable home hardening. Abolitionist approaches to fire risk require dismantling the systems that create vulnerability in the first place.

Conclusion: A Call for Systemic Change

The Spokane fires are a warning. They are not a natural disaster but a product of settler colonialism, extractive capitalism, and the climate crisis. As activists and communities demand climate justice, we must also demand the return of land stewardship to Indigenous peoples, the end of fire suppression policies, and the transformation of our relationship with the land. The fires will keep coming until we deconstruct the systems that fuel them.

This article is adapted from original reporting by The Conversation.