{"id":1516207,"date":"2026-06-17T11:41:12","date_gmt":"2026-06-17T16:41:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/?guid=cb597a6f3d9455c4dae5a3d438f074fa"},"modified":"2026-06-17T11:48:06","modified_gmt":"2026-06-17T16:48:06","slug":"nearly-12000-residents-have-been-evacuated-as-a-wildfire-spreads-in-washington","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/?p=1516207","title":{"rendered":"Nearly 12,000 residents have been evacuated as a wildfire spreads in Washington"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure><img src=\"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/wp-content\/media\/2026\/06\/c236065f9e4b328ba2419a414a0681d9.jpg\" alt\/><figcaption>Stock image of fire hose. (Visoot Uthairam\/Getty Images)<\/figcaption><\/figure><p>(NEW YORK) -- Nearly 12,000 residents and over 2,000 structures have been evacuated after a wildfire broke out Tuesday in Washington state, spreading to 250 acres. No injuries have been reported.&nbsp;<\/p><p>The fire was 0% contained as of Tuesday night.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p><p>Officials said there&nbsp;\"was an urgent need for evacuations,\" in a press conference on Tuesday.&nbsp;<\/p><p>\"Our teams are working hard to protect your homes. Stay out of the area. Please don't come back, that makes it very challenging for our crews,\" Spokane Fire District 9 Fire Chief Brian Mather said.&nbsp;<\/p><p>The active fire is expected to last a couple of days, according to Mather.&nbsp;<\/p><p>\"Wind-driven fires are very, very dangerous. They're dangerous to work in. They move very rapidly,\" Mather said.&nbsp;<\/p><p>\"We have a lot of fuel in that area, it's a very densely populated area, and it's tough conditions,\" Mather said.&nbsp;<\/p><p>There are 10 to 15 aircraft assigned to the fire with more expected, officials said.&nbsp;<\/p><p>Washington Gov. Bob Ferguson said he has been briefed on the fire and is monitoring the situation closely.&nbsp;<\/p><p>\"I just requested a fire management assistance declaration from FEMA, which I expect to be approved this evening. This gives our state access to federal funding for extraordinary costs in fighting this fire,\" he wrote in a post on X.<\/p><p>The fire started on Tuesday at around 12:30 p.m., according to Spokane County officials. A red flag warning was issued around 10:30 p.m. local time on Tuesday.&nbsp;<\/p><p>The cause of the fire is under investigation, the Spokane Fire District said.<\/p><p>Copyright \u00a9 2026, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Stock image of fire hose. (Visoot Uthairam\/Getty Images)(NEW YORK) &#8212; Nearly 12,000 residents and over 2,000 structures have been evacuated after a wildfire broke out Tuesday in Washington state, spreading to 250 acres. No injuries have been reported.&amp;&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8843,"featured_media":1516211,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/wp-content\/media\/2026\/06\/c236065f9e4b328ba2419a414a0681d9.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1502,1447],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1516207","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-abc-heads","category-abc-national-news"],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-19 14:05:43","action":"change-status","newStatus":"trash","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/wp-content\/media\/2026\/06\/c236065f9e4b328ba2419a414a0681d9.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1516207","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/8843"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1516207"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1516207\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1516212,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1516207\/revisions\/1516212"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1516211"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1516207"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1516207"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1516207"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}