See the full set: my complete Old Trails Fire take on Getty Images.
I spent 14 hours on Monday photographing the Old Trails Fire in Spokane, Washington, on assignment for AFP. Three fires burning through Spokane County have destroyed more than 700 homes and displaced at least 65,000 people. After more than a decade covering California fires, this was my first major fire assignment in Washington, and it followed a pattern I know too well: the fire moves through, and then people come back to see what is left.
Most of what I photographed was not flame. It was aftermath. A woman kneeling beside her dog. Families walking the footprint of a house and trying to match the debris to the rooms they remember. A couple holding hands in front of a home that is now a chimney and a car body. These are the hardest frames to make, and they are the reason I keep making them. Fire statistics do not move people. A person hugging her mother in the ash does.
Some details stay with you. A burned American flag still hanging from its pole. A message spray painted on the street in front of a destroyed house, asking whether anyone had checked under the car for a missing pet, with the pet’s name and years written beside it. Whole blocks reduced to foundations while a house one street over stands untouched under a coat of pink retardant. Fire is not fair, and it is not finished: crews were still working lines outside the city while residents sifted lots inside it.
At a Red Cross evacuation center, people waited for news about homes they could not reach. That is the part of a fire the cameras usually leave before: the waiting. Sixty five thousand people in one county are doing some version of it right now.
My wildfire archive from more than 100 fires across the West is in my California wildfire gallery, and comparable outtakes from my fire coverage are available to license directly for editorial and educational use. If you are covering the Northwest fires and need context imagery, reach out.