A destruc­tive, fast-spread­ing wild­fire in Spokane Coun­ty prompt­ed author­i­ties to close Inter­state 90 and order the evac­u­a­tion of the entire city of Med­ical Lake and near­by com­mu­ni­ties just a few hours before night­fall on Friday.

The Gray Fire is present­ly zero per­cent con­tained and get­ting more dan­ger­ous by the minute. Fire­fight­ers are scram­bling to com­bat the blaze, includ­ing with heli­copters that were busy dur­ing the after­noon and evening dump­ing water on the fire. How­ev­er, gusty winds have made it dif­fi­cult to fight.

The fire orig­i­nat­ed in Lake­land Vil­lage and has spread from there.

An esti­mat­ed 3,000 acres have burned so far.

Lev­el Three evac­u­a­tion orders have been issued for:

• The entire city of Med­ical Lake
• The south­ern end of Clear Lake, includ­ing West Mal­lard Bay Road
• The entire town of Four Lakes and the area south along SR 904 and Mur­phy Road to Jensen Road
• South of SR 904, West of I‑90 and North of Medi­al Lake Four Lakes Road
• East of Sil­ver Lake: Specif­i­cal­ly, the area encom­passed by Med­ical Lake-Four Lakes road to Lake Side Dri­ve to Gran­ite Lake Road, with the south­ern bound­ary of I‑90
• Res­i­dents West to Gray Rd, East to Sil­ver Lake, South to Med­ical Lake Tyler Road, and North to the Med­ical Lake city limits
• Fanch­er Road

Struc­tures have already been lost with­in the City of Med­ical Lake.

A KXLY reporter vis­it­ed a neigh­bor­hood that has been burned to the ground.

Not long after sun­down, Nathan Hyun of KREM 2 News wit­nessed a struc­ture burn­ing to the ground and cap­tured it on video.

Jonathan Fox of the Nation­al Weath­er Ser­vice cre­at­ed a time­lapse video to show the pro­gres­sion of the smoke col­umn as the fired burned this evening.

Erik Smith cap­tured video of homes on fire at Gran­ite Lake.

The Wash­ing­ton State Patrol has west­bound Inter­state 90 closed at the US 2 inter­change in Spokane. No signed detour is available. 

“Avoid I‑90/Medical Lake and SR 902 at this time due to the wild­fire,” WSDOT says. East­bound I‑90, mean­while, is closed at the Tyler/SR 904 inter­change. A detour is cur­rent­ly avail­able via SR 904 through Cheney. 

High­way clo­sures in the Spokane area (Graph­ic: Wash­ing­ton State Depart­ment of Transportation)

“My thoughts are with the Med­ical Lake, Wash­ing­ton, res­i­dents who have been ordered to evac­u­ate as the Gray Fire grows,” tweet­ed Gov­er­nor Jay Inslee.

“I’m also pray­ing for the safe­ty of the first respon­ders work­ing to con­tain the fire. May you all remain safe and out of har­m’s way.”

“Our mem­bers report push­ing res­i­dents’ wheel­chairs a mile to safe­ty after their first evac­u­a­tion point was over­tak­en by the fire. Lis­ten to local author­i­ties,” tweet­ed AFSCME Coun­cil 28 (WFSE).

“We’ve got a long night ahead of us, but please keep your­selves safe, and we’ll focus on bring­ing these fast-mov­ing fires under con­trol,” tweet­ed Com­mis­sion­er of Pub­lic Lands Hilary Franz. 

The Wash­ing­ton Nation­al Guard has ser­vice­mem­bers deployed to evac­u­ate patients and staff from East­ern State Hos­pi­tal.

Near­by, two oth­er fires were also burning.

One is the Ore­gon Road Fire, out­side of Elk, which was orig­i­nal­ly esti­mat­ed to be around one hun­dred acres, then revised upwards to 2,000 acres. “Air­craft are engaged with Lev­el 3 evac­u­a­tions in place,” DNR says.

Satel­lite imagery shows the fire has been expand­ing extreme­ly rapid­ly.

In Whit­man Coun­ty, the Winona Fire is also burn­ing out of con­trol. It’s esti­mat­ed to be at least 5,000 acres. The fire is main­ly burn­ing in grass and brush. It is believed to have begun around 2:30 PM in the after­noon.

“Crop­land, range land, pri­ma­ry struc­ture and sec­ondary struc­tures are threat­ened. Evac­u­a­tions are in place,” DNR tweet­ed. 

Shift­ing winds unfor­tu­nate­ly have the poten­tial to bring the Gray Fire to the City of Cheney, prompt­ing the state, coun­ty, and local gov­ern­ments to begin prepar­ing for Cheney’s evac­u­a­tion, if necessary.

Winds are sup­posed to ease overnight, which will help fire­fight­ing crews as they strug­gle to attack the Gray Fire and pre­vent it from con­sum­ing more buildings.

Smoke is expect­ed to almost com­plete­ly envel­op the Pacif­ic North­west by the end of the week­end, accord­ing to the NWS’ lat­est smoke pro­jec­tion. Get ready!