Wildfires tore through the Spokane, Washington area over the weekend of August 2 and 3. The fires destroyed more than 700 structures and forced tens of thousands of residents to evacuate as three separate blazes burned roughly 8,000 acres with zero containment, according to state and federal officials.
The outbreak is collectively managed as the Spokane Complex, consisting of the Old Trails Fire at 3,619 acres, the Autumn Lane Fire at 3,351 acres, and the Fairview Fire at 1,056 acres, according to federal incident management. Washington Gov. Bob Ferguson declared a state of emergency and issued a burn ban through September 30.
The state's congressional delegation wrote to President Donald Trump on Monday urging approval of an expedited federal emergency declaration. Incident commander Tom Clemo said aerial imagery indicated as many as 1,100 structures may have been destroyed, though he cautioned those figures remain preliminary.
"It's unprecedented in this community," Clemo said at a news conference Monday with Ferguson. "Frankly, it's unprecedented in many areas of this country."
Washington has already recorded more than 1,000 fires this year burning approximately 425,000 acres, with more than 200,000 acres actively burning in 12 large fires as of Monday, according to Fox Weather. Spokane's worst fire on record before this outbreak was an October 1991 fire that destroyed 114 structures across 35,000 acres.
Farmers Insurance deployed its catastrophe response team to the Spokane area and is operating a mobile claims center at 5204 E. Sprague Ave., Spokane Valley, from August 4. The center runs from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. and serves Farmers, Foremost, and Bristol West customers.
Customers can also file claims online, by phone, or through the company's mobile app, or by calling Farmers and Foremost at 1-800-435-7764 and Bristol West at 1-800-274-7865.
The Spokane fires arrive as US wildfire exposure reaches levels that are pushing insurers and brokers to recalibrate across the country. According to a Triple-I brief on growing national wildfire exposure published August 2, more than 35,000 fires burned over three million acres nationwide in the first half of the year, well above 10-year averages for the same period.
Wildfire's share of total US insured catastrophe losses has climbed from approximately 1% before 2015 to roughly 7% today, according to Swiss Re data cited by Amwins. That shift accelerated after the January 2025 Southern California fires produced $40 billion in insured losses, the costliest single wildfire event on record, according to Markel.
That event, along with an active 2026 fire season, has accelerated carrier responses across the West. For brokers, carrier moratoriums and rising wildfire deductibles after active fire events are creating immediate placement challenges in the commercial property market, with percentage-based wildfire deductibles increasingly common for larger habitational risks.
