“I could show you what it looked like before the fire.” Shane Horton pulls out his tablet in the smoke-filled parking lot of Hank’s supermarket, where two Humvees full of tired-looking National Guardsmen are keeping watch for looters. It’s a national emergency here in rural Twisp; nearby, the largest wildfire in Washington State history has been burning for 14 days. On the other side of the Okanogan Complex—which is actually six fires—another fire on the Colville Reservation is burning, too. Some worry the two will merge.
Three firefighters died here the previous week. The land looks like a blackened moonscape. Stress and a thick blanket of smoke blur the days together. Everyone is praying for rain…
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