LEDE: On August first, three wildfires flared up in the Spokane area. For hundreds of people, the Spokane Transit Authority was instrumental in helping them evacuate potentially dangerous areas. By sheer coincidence, the supervisor at the Transit Authority who coordinated the evacuation effort had been in a similar situation before. N-W-P-B’s Erick Bengel reports.
STORY:
Sarah Addington is a supervisor at the Spokane Transit Authority. Three years ago, she was in the communications role when the Gray Fire burned through the nearby city of Medical Lake. Supervisors like Addington frequently change shifts and rotate positions. Yet she found herself in the same role when the Old Trails Fire erupted on August First.
SARAH ADDINGTON: “My first thought was, ‘I wonder if this is going to be very similar.’ And it was.”
 
For both fires, she was responsible for coordinating evacuations. This time, though, one of the people she had to evacuate was her 71-year-old father. He was being treated for Parkinson’s disease at the nearby veterans medical center and was put on a bus along with other VA patients and taken to safety.
SARAH ADDINGTON: “...It sort of just put it into perspective — that it’s not just people we’re getting onto a bus, it’s someone’s dad, grandfather, mother, nurses, doctors, whoever needed to be evacuated at that moment.
 
Even though Addington was the focal point of communications that day, s. She gives credit to her co-workers who also stepped up.
SARAH ADDINGTON: “My specific shift that day may have been at the center of it, but it is a whole team.”
 The Spokane Transit Authority helped evacuate more than 800 people that day.
In Walla Walla, I’m Erick Bengel.