Spokane County fire departments see record fire calls

SPOKANE, Wash. — Fire departments in Spokane County are seeing more calls than ever before for every type of fire.

Spokane Valley Fire responded to nearly 2,300 calls in July, making it the busiest month in the department’s 75-year history. The Spokane Fire Department is also seeing a huge increase in calls, especially brush fires.

“This isn’t just in the city alone, this is a county-wide issue. Spokane Valley, Fire District 9, Fire District 8, Fire District 10, they’ve all been experiencing quite a few suspicious fires,” said Justin De Ruyter of the Spokane Fire Department.

The high call volumes make things more difficult for individual firefighters. Departments around the region are using mutual aid agreements more when there are multiple fires at once.

“When you’re going from one incident to another in 80, 90, 100 degree temperatures and helping out Fire District 8 and Fire District 9 with auto and mutual aid that we have with all of the other jurisdictions, we stay really busy,” said Lee Bauder, Assistant Fire Marshal with Spokane Valley Fire Department.

That includes responding to brush fires like one near Coyote Rock in Spokane Valley over the weekend, where investigators believe it was arson. Spokane Fire has reported some intentionally set fires as well, which creates a much bigger workload for investigators.

“Typically, we have the Spokane Police Department and we’ll get the DNR, two of our major players with investigations. It’s not just one agency, it’s multiple agencies putting resources into these incidents,” said De Ruyter.

Many local fire departments have agreements in place to send their firefighters when other fire agencies need them. That’s something that’s come in handy for many departments, so their firefighters aren’t overworked.

Spokane Fire responded to just over 60 brush fires within city limits this time last year. This year, it has already responded to 100 brush fires.