We have been asking since Sunday morning how many people were told to leave. There is now a figure.
Al Jazeera reports that authorities evacuated about 60,000 people from the Spokane area, and that at least 600 homes, businesses and other structures have been destroyed.
The part that does not line up
The same report says that "fire and law enforcement officials said there had been no reports of injuries or people unaccounted for."
The Spokesman-Review's account, updated at 8:56 p.m. Sunday, still carries Fire Chief Cody Rohrbach saying: "There have been no confirmed reports of lives lost, but based on radio traffic, it will be anticipated." Mayor Lisa Brown is still described as saying the city is assessing the potential for lives to be lost.
Those are not the same picture. "No reports of injuries or people unaccounted for" describes a situation where nobody is missing. "It will be anticipated" describes officials who expect to find people dead.
We cannot reconcile them and we are not going to try. Both are attributed to officials, both were current on Sunday night, and the honest thing is to put them next to each other and let a reader see the gap.
The likeliest explanation is mundane: different agencies, different moments, and a fast-moving incident where the search of burned neighborhoods has not finished. But that is our surmise, not a fact, and we are labeling it as such.
The numbers, and why two of them differ
Structures destroyed: at least 600, per Al Jazeera. The Spokesman-Review says 640. Those are compatible. "At least 600" includes 640.
Area burned: Al Jazeera puts it at about 8 square miles in the Spokane area, and roughly 386 square miles across Washington state. The Spokesman-Review's figure for the Spokane Complex is about 7,780 acres, which is a little over 12 square miles. Those two do not match either, and the likeliest reason is that they are measuring different sets of fires. We are giving both with their sources attached.
Neither source gives a containment percentage. Al Jazeera says some fires in the Spokane area "have not been contained."
Cause
Unknown. "Investigators have not determined how the blazes began," Al Jazeera reports, and the Spokesman-Review says the same.
What officials are saying about the next few days
Senator Maria Cantwell: "We are not out of danger. The next couple of days will be challenging."
That is the sentence to carry into Monday. A fire that grew from 5,390 acres to about 7,780 in a single afternoon, in a city where 60,000 people have already been moved, is not a story with a settled ending.
Our own corrections
Two things we have published today have been superseded or complicated.
We reported this morning that no source gave a total for people under evacuation orders. There is now a figure, 60,000, and it is above.
We have repeatedly published the fire chief's expectation of fatalities without a competing account, because there was not one. There is now, and it is above too.
