Climate Crisis Is Not 'Some Faraway Threat’: Spokane Inferno Forces Mass Evacuations as Oil Profits Surge

Over 60,000 people were ordered to evacuate the Spokane area over the weekend as it was devastated by what Democratic Washington Sen. Maria Cantwell called the “top fire” in a nation currently being scorched by climate-fueled blazes.

Illustrating how the climate crisis is already impacting lives and communities across the country and the globe, three raging fires reportedly consumed over 600 structures as of Sunday, including homes and businesses, and reduced entire streets to their foundations.

At a briefing on Sunday afternoon, officials said more than 250,000 acres were burning across Washington, but reported no deaths or injuries.

Spokane Mayor Lisa Brown called it "the worst natural disaster our region has faced."

Democratic Gov. Bob Ferguson has requested assistance from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), which is under the Trump administration's Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) wrote on social media that she had spoken with Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin and that he “made clear the federal government will do everything it can to support response and recovery,” though President Donald Trump has previously intervened to block disaster aid to Democrat-led states.

While the fires moderated over the weekend, on Monday they remained largely uncontained and continued to spread due to dry conditions from recent severe droughts in the region, exacerbated by rising global temperatures.

"This is climate change playing out live in real time," said meteorologist and Climate Central journalist Shel Winkley in a video about the Spokane fires.

Warmer temperatures, he explained, have caused a vicious cycle of "weather whiplash" in which greater winter rainfall facilitates plant growth before harsher summer heat domes suck moisture from these plants, turning them into a tinderbox.

“Northeastern Washington and central Oregon now see at least three more weeks of fire weather days each year than they did just back in the 1970s,” Winkley said. “More fire weather days means more chances for a spark, any spark, to turn into this.”

The blazes are part of a nationwide trend, with wildfires this year more severe on average than in previous years. Over the past decade, the average annual acreage burned in the US was more than double the average of the late 1980s and early 1990s, according to data from the National Interagency Fire Center.

Last week, an Oxfam analysis of data published in the journal Nature found that emissions from just five oil companies—BP, Chevron, ExxonMobil, Shell, and TotalEnergies—were sufficient to cause around 1 in 4 heatwaves reported globally between 2000 and 2023—"heatwaves that would have been virtually impossible without human-made climate change."

Using S&P Capital Trucost data, the group estimated that Big Oil was responsible for more than $60 billion in environmental damage last year.

But as costs fall on the public, oil companies like Chevron and ExxonMobil have reported record profits of $12.1 billion and $14.5 billion over the past quarter, in part due to global oil price spikes driven by Trump's war with Iran.

"The fossil fuel industry may not have struck the match, but the climate crisis they drove has loaded our landscapes with tinder," said Clémence Dubois, the campaigns director for the environmental group 350.org. "Chevron and Exxon are profiteering from a model of distraction, leaving ordinary people to pay the price with higher bills and devastating impacts such as these fires. These profits feel almost criminal.“

Jay Inslee, Washington's former Democratic governor and a longtime advocate for policies to combat the climate crisis, said on Sunday that his friend, a legislator from Spokane, had been forced to flee his home due to the fires.

“Climate change isn’t some faraway threat,” Inslee said. “It’s happening right now, to our neighbors and friends. We have to fight for them."