Wildfires in eastern Washington have forced the evacuation of approximately 60,000 residents in the Spokane area and destroyed at least 600 homes, businesses, and other structures, officials reported Sunday. The fires, which have burned about 21 square kilometers around Spokane, the state’s second-largest city, are part of a wider outbreak affecting dozens of locations across the Western United States.

State and federal authorities said the fires in Spokane and other parts of Washington have not been fully contained, contributing to a total burn area of roughly 1,000 square kilometers statewide. Despite significant destruction, there have been no confirmed injuries or missing persons, though emergency personnel cautioned that the situation remains fluid. Among those evacuated were patients from Spokane’s U.S. Veterans Affairs hospital.

Visual footage from the region showed active flames engulfing buildings, dense smoke rising near residential neighborhoods, and the charred remains of homes reduced largely to their chimneys. Officials expressed concern over the forecast, which calls for continued dry weather and persistent winds that could exacerbate fire activity in the coming days.

“We are not out of danger,” U.S. Senator Maria Cantwell said during a briefing with federal, state, and local officials in Spokane, emphasizing that the next several days would present ongoing challenges for fire containment efforts.

Investigations into the cause of the Spokane-area fires are ongoing. Meanwhile, firefighting crews remain engaged in a separate blaze stretching across western Idaho and eastern Oregon. That fire, sparked by lightning, has been burning for ten days and has consumed about 1,360 square kilometers of grassland, threatening more than 600 homes and 800 additional structures in primarily rural, cattle ranching areas.

The National Weather Service has issued air quality warnings for eastern Washington, eastern Oregon, western and central Idaho, and western Montana. Red-flag fire warnings are in effect for portions of Utah, Montana, and western Nebraska, alongside extreme heat alerts in southern Arizona, California, Nevada, and northern Montana.

In Spokane, temperatures on Sunday were expected to remain below 27 degrees Celsius, but strong wind gusts of 56 to 72 kilometers per hour were forecast by afternoon, according to Benjamin Cossel, public information officer for the federal response team deployed from California. The complex local terrain—including steep canyons flanking the Spokane River that runs through the city—can channel winds and accelerate fire spread.

There are three active fires in the Spokane vicinity: the Old Trails Fire, the Fairview Fire, and the Meadowview Fire. Washington Governor Bob Ferguson declared a state of emergency on Saturday to marshal resources for the ongoing crisis, while the National Weather Service issued a “particularly dangerous situation” red-flag alert for eastern Washington amid forecasts of escalating fire risk.