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What is established about how the Old Trails Fire started

On August 4, Spokane County Sheriff John Nowels announced that Aaron Farinacci, 37, had been charged with first-degree arson in connection with the Old Trails Fire, the largest fire in the complex. He is being held on a one million dollar bond.

Investigators say the case began on August 1, when a witness reported a man crouched in dry grass looking nervous, and saw smoke rising from that same spot shortly afterwards. Farinacci was found with matches and a lighter.

He is charged, not convicted, and has denied starting the fire. A charge is an allegation that has to be tested in court, and nothing on this page should be read as a finding of guilt.

Officials have said there is no evidence connecting him to data-center interests.

This page does not publish his earlier criminal record or medical history. Accounts of both differ between outlets, neither is established in this case, and neither is information anyone needs in order to stay safe.

Sources: CNN, NPR, NBC News

The data-center claim, checked

What is true

• Spokane City Council passed a one-year emergency moratorium on new and expanded data centers in June 2026, after residents raised concerns about water use, power demand and noise.
• A hyperscale data center and hydrogen project was proposed on roughly 514 acres of the West Plains by Apricus, an Arizona company with almost no track record, and it drew strong local opposition.
• County leaders held discussions with the developer that were not disclosed at the time.

What is claimed

That the fires were deliberately set, or allowed to burn, to clear that land for development and to get around local opposition.

Why it does not hold up

1. Spokane City Council communications director Lisa Gardner has called the claims linking the fires to data-center development unfounded and harmful.
2. The moratorium already blocks these projects. Burning land does not lift a moratorium.
3. Washington's constitution bars taking private property for private use, so cleared land cannot simply be transferred to a developer.
4. Officials say no evidence connects the man charged to any data-center interest.
5. The fires spread under drought, extreme heat and wind. The live conditions on this site have been reading humidity in the low teens.

Measuring “the exact same area”

The posts making this claim say the fires burned where the data center was planned. The ignition point of every fire is published by the National Interagency Fire Center, and the project was proposed on the West Plains, south-west of Spokane. The fires started north and north-east of the city.

Nearest ignition point: about ten miles away, on the other side of Spokane. The site coordinate is approximate, but no reasonable correction to it turns ten miles and the opposite side of a city into the exact same area.

Directed-energy and selective-burn claims

Claims that wildfires were started by directed-energy weapons, or that burn patterns are too selective to be natural, follow almost every major fire. They have never been substantiated. Fire behaviour is uneven for ordinary reasons: wind, slope, fuel, ember cast, and what a given building is made of.

Being angry about a data center and being wrong about the fire are two separate things. The moratorium fight is real and worth following. It is not evidence that the fires were set to clear land.

Sources: AFP fact-check, The Spokesman-Review

Why one house burns and the one next door does not

Fire damage in a neighbourhood is genuinely patchy, and that is the single most commented-on thing about these fires. The reason is well studied, and it is not mysterious.

Most homes are lost to embers, not to a wall of flame

In a wind-driven fire, burning fragments travel ahead of the front — sometimes more than a mile. They land by the thousand. A house survives or is lost mostly on whether those embers find somewhere to lodge and smoulder, which is why the fire front can pass through and leave a street standing, then a single ember hours later takes one roof.

What actually decides it

1. The roof. A Class A roof with no gaps at the edges is the largest single factor.
2. Vents and eaves. Attic and crawlspace vents pull embers straight inside unless they are ember-resistant. Open eaves catch them.
3. The first five feet. Bark mulch, a woodpile, a wooden fence touching the wall, or a deck with debris underneath will ignite a house that the fire front never reached.
4. Windows. Single-pane glass breaks from radiant heat and lets fire in; tempered or double glazing usually does not.
5. The neighbours. In a dense street a burning house radiates enough heat to ignite the next one. Losses cluster for that reason alone.
6. Gutters and roof valleys full of dried needles, which is an ember trap sitting on the most vulnerable part of the building.

Why trees are still standing when houses are not

A living tree is damp, and its foliage is often well above a fast grass or brush fire. A house is dry milled timber with cavities and vents. A flashy surface fire can move through a stand of ponderosa, scorch the trunks, leave the crowns green, and still ignite a deck on the way past. It looks selective. It is just different fuel.

Why a car is a burnt shell and the tree beside it is green

This is the observation behind most of the “this was not a normal fire” posts, and it has a dull answer. A car is a compact pile of concentrated fuel: seat foam, dashboard plastics, carpet, tyres, oil, a fuel tank. A grass fire only has to ignite it, after which it burns on its own for a long time and far hotter than whatever lit it. Aluminium wheels and engine parts melt at around 1,200°F, which a burning car reaches easily and a passing grass fire does not.

The tree next to it is a living thing that is mostly water, with its foliage often well above a fast surface fire. Nothing exotic is required for the car to be slag and the tree to be scorched but standing. It happens in ordinary structure fires in parking lots with no wildfire anywhere near.

On the claim that houses of one colour were spared

Paint colour is not a factor in whether a building survives, and no fire-behaviour research treats it as one. The claim circulated after the Maui and Los Angeles fires too, and it survives on selection: a surviving house next to a destroyed one gets photographed and shared, while the dozens of surviving houses in ordinary colours a street away never do. If you look for a pattern in a patchy outcome you will find one.

The claim is usually attached to the idea that the fires were started by directed-energy weapons. Every factor listed above is measurable, documented, and enough on its own to explain why one house went and another did not.

If you are rebuilding or hardening a house

The list above is the order to spend money in. Roof, then vents and eaves, then clearing the first five feet, then glazing. This is the part of the subject worth your attention, because unlike the colour of your siding, all of it demonstrably changes the odds.

Sources: Insurance Institute for Business & Home Safety, NFPA Firewise USA

Fake fire photos are circulating

As residents return to damaged neighbourhoods, fake images — including AI-generated ones — are spreading alongside real photographs.

Things that give them away: street layouts that do not make sense, garbled text on signs and vehicles, objects that do not resolve on close inspection, and watermarks that have been cropped off. The strongest check is simply whether a named source published it.

Everything in this site's imagery section is a government satellite capture, labelled with its source and linked at full resolution. The artwork on the home page is illustration, and is not presented as anything else.

Sources: KHQ