When wildfires hit home: Inside The Spokesman-Review’s race to inform Spokane

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Editor’s note: At the time of this interview, The Spokesman-Review Executive Editor Rob Curley remained on administrative leave pending an outside investigation. E&P reached out to President and Chief Operating Officer Aaron Kotarek and Publisher Stacey Cowles for comment; the newspaper’s official statement can be accessed here. This interview was arranged specifically to examine the newsroom’s extraordinary wildfire coverage, which remains the focus of this story.

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Reporting from the fire’s edge

When wildfires swept through the Spokane area, The Spokesman-Review’s journalists were not covering a distant disaster. They were reporting on a catastrophe threatening their own community, their colleagues’ homes and people they knew. At one point, 60,000 residents were under evacuation orders and more than 14,000 structures were threatened.

Public safety reporter Alexandra Duggan recalled standing on Tiffany Avenue before the neighborhood was destroyed. From a cul-de-sac, she could see flames moving across a nearby bluff. “I turned to them and I was like, ‘I think we need to go,’” Duggan said of the residents around her. As she drove away, people stopped her to ask whether they should evacuate. She told them yes. When Duggan returned the following day, she discovered that “the entire street was gone.”

Senior journalist Thomas Clouse said the newsroom’s experience covering the Gray and Oregon Road fires in 2023 helped prepare its staff, but nothing could fully anticipate this disaster. “When we’re covering this as a newsroom, it’s all hands on deck,” he said. Despite earlier coverage of wildfire risks and preparations, Clouse added, “Nobody could understand the scale of what we just went through.”

Balancing urgency with accuracy

With evacuation maps, road closures and casualty information changing rapidly, the newsroom had to publish quickly without allowing urgency to overwhelm verification.

Managing Editor Lindsey Treffry said some information could be confirmed directly by reporters in the field, while other details required restraint. “In some situations it was verified by our own reporters’ eyes, and in others we were patient,” she said. Officials sometimes provided conflicting information, requiring editors and reporters to question figures and compare accounts. “There was the sense of urgency to get the information out as soon as possible, but we were also careful to make sure that it was right.”

That discipline became especially important as rumors and conspiracy theories spread. The newsroom addressed them by explaining what was known and why some claims were probably untrue, rather than amplifying speculation.

Duggan had seen the person later arrested in connection with the Old Trail Fire near the scene and recorded a detailed description. Still, the newsroom waited for official confirmation. “I wrote it down because I was like, ‘I don’t know if this is relevant right now because we’re focused on evacuating thousands of people,’” she recalled. Treffry said there was “no way in heck we would’ve reported that without verification, or an arrest or police going on record with us about that.”

Documenting loss with humanity

The assignment also demanded sensitivity toward residents encountering the remains of their homes, often only hours after escaping.

Duggan said she approaches people in those moments knowing that nothing a reporter says can undo what happened. “Nothing I can do or say is going to change the outcome,” she said. Honesty and humanity, she explained, help establish trust with people still processing trauma. “Being honest and approaching them as a real person instead of approaching them like a reporter changes how they respond.”

Clouse said the first realization that a home is gone may be followed by even more painful discoveries. Previous wildfire reporting showed that insurance payments may not cover the full cost of rebuilding, particularly when expenses such as asbestos removal consume a substantial portion of a settlement.

“Before it was just an idea that they’d lost everything. They knew it was gone,” Clouse said. “But then to put their hands in those ashes and to see the destruction, it’s a completely different layer of psychological pain.” Another reckoning may follow when families discover “there’s no way that they’re ever going to be made completely whole through our current processes.”

Lessons for every newsroom

The Spokesman-Review placed its wildfire coverage outside the paywall and used stories, maps, photography, video, podcasts and YouTube to reach the community. Treffry described the effort as less a carefully choreographed plan than a newsroom responding continuously to urgent needs. “We were literally flying by the seat of our pants every day and just trying to get out as much as we could,” she said. On one day alone, the newsroom published about 18 wildfire stories, not including its photography and digital video.

For other news organizations, Clouse recommended annual wildfire training, accessible protective clothing and a staff prepared to respond immediately. “You have to have a newsroom that’s willing to just drop everything and go,” he said. His central lesson was equally direct: “Covering news is not that complicated, but you can’t do it if you don’t go out there.”

Duggan urged journalists to “trust your gut and trust your instincts,” while Treffry emphasized caring for them afterward. Because newsroom employees also knew people who lost homes, Treffry said leaders must allow staff members to experience the emotional consequences of their work. “Giving them grace is really the only thing you can do in the aftermath of that,” she said, “because it’s pretty impossible to prepare for.”