(The Center Square) – A wildfire that has forced evacuations in Spokane County and burned about 222 acres as of Thursday is renewing concerns over whether taxpayers are best served by one countywide emergency dispatch network, or separate dispatch agencies as the city of Spokane launches its own.
Ryan Rodruck, a spokesperson for the state Department of Natural Resources, told The Center Square on Wednesday morning that the Upriver Fire is currently at 10% containment. Local officials expect that to improve throughout what could be another hot, dry day if the wind dies down in the hours to come.
Fire officials didn’t have a firm count on the number of structures destroyed as of Wednesday morning, but evacuation orders remain in place for some areas. At a Tuesday press conference, Spokane County Fire District 9 Chief Matthew Vinci said nearly 12,000 residents and 2,340 structures were threatened.
This week’s fire comes ahead of an upcoming split between the city of Spokane and Spokane Regional Emergency Communications throughout the next year or so. The Spokane Business Association called on city and county officials to reunite the fractured network in a statement Tuesday as the fire burned.
“Today is not about second-guessing firefighters, dispatchers or emergency managers. They are doing the work,” wrote Gavin Cooley, SBA president and former chief financial officer of the city of Spokane.
“Today is about asking why regional leaders have spent years fighting over governance, fees and control instead of delivering the coordinated regional system voters believed they were paying for,” he wrote.
SREC spokesperson Kelly Conley told The Center Square on Wednesday that the city of Spokane’s split didn’t affect Tuesday’s response because none of the major operational changes have taken effect yet.
Conley said SREC and Mayor Lisa Brown’s administration are maintaining the “status quo” before the city takes over fire dispatching for its residents next year and departs the network completely in 2028.
“When it comes to public safety, borders don’t matter; they’re all hands on deck to make sure that the public is safe and structures are safe,” Conley said when asked if the city’s upcoming split could impact response times. “But will there be things we’ll have to work out? I would not be surprised if there are.”
The fire burned Tuesday in the Camp Sekani/Beacon Hill area, which includes city-owned parkland in unincorporated Spokane County within SCFD 9’s jurisdiction and not far from city limits. The Spokane Fire Department sent more than 50-duty firefighters and some apparatus to assist Vinci’s own team.
“We are still operating under SREC, so things operated like they have in previous years. I’m not aware of any significant issues yesterday related to dispatching or coordination,” SFD spokesperson Justin de Ruyter wrote in an email to The Center Square on Wednesday morning in response to SBA’s concerns.
Cooley argued that voters thought they were integrating services across the region when they passed the county’s emergency communications tax. While that was the plan to an extent when they renewed it in 2017, county officials didn’t establish SREC until 2018, and issues with the city began soon after.
The SBA president said incidents like the Upriver Fire “require seamless coordination” and called on city and county leadership to reunite the fractured model. Conley also stated that whenever dispatch agencies require integration between their systems, it creates a risk of becoming “a point of failure.”
The city of Spokane has fought with SREC over fully joining the model, how much money its citizens pay into the network and what control city leaders have over it for years now. Reporting by The Center Square last year showed that leaving SREC may cost the city about $100 million over the years ahead.
“Voters did not approve emergency communications funding so agencies could duplicate systems,” Cooley wrote in SBA’s press release. “They approved it so Spokane would have an integrated system.”
“That should still be the goal, and it should not take another crisis to remind us,” he wrote, referencing the Gray and Oregon Road Fires that burned through 23,000 acres of Spokane County back in 2023.