LEILA FADEL, HOST:
It's been a brutal summer season for wildfires in much of the West. Only a few weeks after a fire destroyed hundreds of homes in Spokane, Washington, people are already returning to damaged neighborhoods. But there are big questions about whether it's really safe to go back in. NPR's Kirk Siegler reports.
KIRK SIEGLER, BYLINE: The wind-driven Old Trails Fire, suspected to have been started by an arsonist, levelled whole neighborhoods when it jumped the Spokane River. Melissa and Chris Matthews say it's jarring. As they walk up their street, Melissa is seeing their destroyed property for the first time.
MELISSA MATTHEWS: I even told my husband, Chris, when we turned onto our road, Old Fort Drive - I said, it looks like a bomb went off here.
CHRIS MATTHEWS: Yeah. It looked like a war zone, is what...
M MATTHEWS: Yeah.
C MATTHEWS: ...You said.
SIEGLER: They lost pretty much everything. There is a twisted hunk of metal that looks like a car.
M MATTHEWS: Yeah.
C MATTHEWS: My Prius did not make it.
M MATTHEWS: No.
SIEGLER: That's the Prius we see right there on the left?
C MATTHEWS: Yeah.
SIEGLER: OK.
Their home, built some 30 years ago, is obliterated. They've already got their insurance claim filed and hope they can rebuild one day, but they're in limbo.
C MATTHEWS: It's just daunting. And I'm expecting it to be, like, three to four years before anything...
M MATTHEWS: Yeah.
C MATTHEWS: ...Happens.
SIEGLER: Matthews is probably right. A year after deadly wildfires in Colorado and on Maui, no homes were fully rebuilt. One study showed that three years after the Camp Fire in Paradise, California, only 14% of the burn zone was rebuilt. First off, you have to make sure it's safe from toxins. Think lead paint from siding, exploded propane tanks, melted batteries and plastics.
C MATTHEWS: Yeah. The air's not good, you know?
M MATTHEWS: No.
C MATTHEWS: And I've had a sore throat for the last few days because of coming down here and everything.
SIEGLER: A few lots over, someone in a hazmat suit is combing through burned, potentially hazardous debris. Then a couple blocks away, where a crew is cutting down a burnt pine tree, the structures look untouched.
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SIEGLER: And right here is a dementia care facility with a sign that says, welcome home. We missed you. Some buses just pulled up. And they're bringing the residents and patients back in here, right kind of in the middle of a burned area.
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SIEGLER: Is it safe, especially for vulnerable populations? It's a question Sarah Nuss is fielding a lot. She's Spokane's director of emergency management.
SARAH NUSS: I think a lot of the work right now is going to be on helping people understand risk.
SIEGLER: People want to go back in. That's the tension, 'cause it's their house.
NUSS: Yeah.
SIEGLER: And maybe they don't have anywhere else to go.
NUSS: Sure.
SIEGLER: But do we know it's safe?
NUSS: It is a very challenging thing. While folks are allowed to go back in those areas, there is still a hazmat situation going on. The burned houses and damaged places are going to have things like lithium-ion batteries, hazardous chemicals - all those things that could be...
SIEGLER: The city has posted signs everywhere alerting people whose homes are still standing to wear PPE, have their properties inspected and flush their water pipes. Nuss says they're still testing Spokane's water.
NUSS: We have no legal ability to keep people out, nor are we trying to do that, let's say. So I think what we are doing right now is just really trying to understand and document all the risks across what kind of household people are going back into.
SIEGLER: But is everyone listening? One bright spot is there have been so many devastating fires now in the West, Spokane has a recovery playbook to turn to. Andrew Whelton is an environmental engineer at Purdue University. He helped water managers in Paradise rebuild their contaminated system. In Los Angeles, after the Eaton and Palisades fires, he's been pushing for more stringent soil testing for dangerous chemicals, even after all the debris has been officially removed from burned-down lots.
ANDREW WHELTON: If you don't test for it, you won't know that there's a health hazard still on your property. And that is what Spokane should take away from these past disasters.
SIEGLER: Spokane isn't there yet. The EPA is only just arriving here to begin removing toxic debris. That's an arduous process that will likely take months, and the trauma is all still raw for survivors like Don Simpson.
DON SIMPSON: This started burning, so I took the hose and tried to stop it. But then this caught on fire - these trees and this.
SIEGLER: He lives right by that memory care center, which was unscathed. With minutes to evacuate, he loaded patients into the back of his pickup, abandoning their wheelchairs on the sidewalk.
SIMPSON: And by that time, it was either propane or stuff started blowing and shooting in the sky.
SIEGLER: Simpson has already moved back into his apartment. The building also survived. He didn't have many other options.
SIMPSON: But I've learned the hard way. I try not to open my window too much. And at night, when the smoke comes in, it just fills the apartment up.
SIEGLER: Simpson's not sure he'll stay long-term. Everything he loved about this place, he says, is gone.
Kirk Siegler, NPR News, Spokane.
(SOUNDBITE OF A SOUND FOR YOU'S "HEIDI") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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