Spokane Wildfire Recovery: The Guide Is Still Available

When the Spokane wildfires forced families out of their homes, we published a free one-page recovery guide. It is still available, and it still works — because the order of operations after a disaster does not change from one hazard to the next.

The instinct after a fire is to wait for FEMA. That instinct costs people money. Federal Individual Assistance takes time to open, it pays on documentation, and it is explicitly the payer of last resort — it cannot duplicate anything your insurance covers. Which means the work that determines what you eventually receive happens in the first days, before any federal program is accepting applications.

What is in the guide

• Why to call your insurer today — and exactly what to ask for before you apply for federal aid.
• How to document damage so it holds up with both your adjuster and a FEMA inspector.
• The specific documents FEMA asks for when Individual Assistance opens, so you are not assembling them under pressure.
• Direct lines to shelter, food, and utility relief in the Spokane area.

The four steps that apply to every disaster

1. Document before you clean up. Photograph everything before you move, discard, or repair anything. Every program you will deal with — insurance, FEMA, a state relief fund, a utility regulator — asks you to reproduce the same evidence. Households that have it get made whole. Households that do not, largely do not.

2. Insurance first, always. File your claim before or alongside your federal application. FEMA will ask for your settlement or denial letter, and cannot pay for anything your policy covered. Do not wait for the insurance outcome to apply federally — run both in parallel.

3. Know what federal aid does not cover. FEMA covers disaster-caused damage to your home, personal property and vehicle, plus displacement and certain medical, moving and transportation costs. It does not cover lost wages, spoiled food, or general inconvenience. Knowing the boundary saves you weeks of waiting on a check that was never coming.

4. Put your experience on the record. Where a utility, a landlord, or an agency failed, there is almost always a regulator, an ombudsman, or a consumer division that accepts formal complaints. Almost nobody files. Filing is what builds the record that changes how the next event is handled.

Also available

We have since published a companion guide for residents of Gary and Lake County, Indiana, after the August 2026 derecho and the fourteen-day NIPSCO blackout. Different hazard, same order of operations.