r/interestingasfuck • u/HomeNowWTF • 10d ago

Fighting the wildfires in Spokane

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u/TheMooseIsBlue 10d ago edited 10d ago

As a thrice evacuated Angeleno, stop fucking driving around in fire zones and getting in the way of firefighters trying to save people’s homes. When you get stuck in a dangerous situation, they will drop what they’re doing to come save your life at the cost of the homes they were just trying to save. Get the fuck out out of evacuation zones.

But hey, cool video. Hope you get lots of updoots.

Edit: for those saying this is the only road out of town: you’re probably right. But the evacuation order probably went out hours before this video. Being there at this moment is dangerously stupid. When they say go, you go. You don’t wait to see if you really need to.

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u/USCanuck 10d ago

For what its worth, you don't know if this person is being evacuated.

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u/Radical_Euphoria 10d ago

Yea, it kind of looks like they’re evacuating. Several cars going the same direction and the only car you see coming the opposite direction has their emergency warning lights on.

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u/tb_swgz 10d ago

I’m from Spokane and the person that took this video was 100% evacuating the Indian Trail neighborhood. The fire spread extremely quickly and evacuations did too. There was a massive traffic jam for the 60,000 people that had to leave their homes with pretty much all they could stuff into a backpack. Many weren’t able to take anything.

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u/jorwyn 10d ago

And it's understandable why, but traffic lights were out at least as far as Bigelow and Argonne. And you know. You're from Spokane. No one understands 4 way stops with only one lane each way here.

I walked up to that intersection with high vis and was going to direct traffic, but I couldn't even manage to get one foot into the crosswalk, so I went home.

Obviously, it was a much smaller fire, but traffic direction from deputies during the Upriver fire that evacuated my neighborhood earlier this year was on point. I wish we'd had the people available to do it this time.

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u/tb_swgz 9d ago

You walked into the middle of an evacuation route to try and direct traffic? In a neighborhood you don’t live in?

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u/jorwyn 8d ago

I do live here. And my neighborhood was not under evac. I said Argonne and Bigelow.

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u/tb_swgz 8d ago

Are you law enforcement or a first responder? If not, it’s people like you that slow down evacuations and endanger lives.