SPOKANE, Wash. — Eight United Methodist volunteers spent three days in late August helping families sift the remains of homes lost in the Spokane Complex fires, recovering ceramics, coins, medals, jewelry and family keepsakes from the ash.
The Early Response Team served Aug. 28-30 in the Old Trails area, roughly four weeks after the three fires broke out Aug. 1 and forced the evacuation of some 65,000 people across the Spokane area. Incident command later reported 833 structures damaged or destroyed, and no deaths.
Volunteers came from the Pacific Northwest, Mountain Sky and California-Nevada Annual Conferences, an example of the connectional aid that moves between neighboring conferences when a disaster exceeds local capacity. The deployment was coordinated by Dana and Kathy Bryson, Co-Disaster Response Coordinators for the Pacific Northwest Conference, and followed United Methodist Committee on Relief (UMCOR) training and protocols.
The team worked with four households and met 12 family members, including veterans and people connected to local United Methodist congregations. Much of the work was personal property retrieval. Survivors themselves directed the search, pointing crews toward the spots most likely to hold something that survived.
“You cannot replace a house in three days. What you can do is find the wedding ring, or the medal, or the one bowl that came through unbroken. Survivors told us where to dig, and we dug,” said Kathy Bryson, Team Leader.
Two Spokane congregations kept the team fed. Covenant UMC and Audubon Park UMC provided three breakfasts, three lunches and four sit-down dinners, plus at least 72 cookies and a supply of peanut bars and brownies that the team declined to count.
“Covenant and Audubon Park fed us every day we were there. Our team could give its full attention to these families because two congregations decided that feeding and housing us was their part of the work,” Kathy added.
Early Response Teams are neither first responders nor long-term rebuilders. They arrive in the weeks between, securing property, clearing debris and offering a steady presence as survivors begin to absorb what has happened. The work is as much about accompaniment as it is about labor. Team members spent much of the deployment working alongside survivors and listening to them and to one another.
What you can do to respond
In addition to your prayers, there are two other ways you can be involved in our disaster response efforts.
A UMCOR-certified ERT Basic Training runs Saturday, Sept. 26, from 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. at Des Moines UMC. Registration is $25 and closes Monday, Sept. 14, with prerequisites due before class. Register at gnw-reg.brtapp.com/ERTBasic2026.
Recovery in Spokane will continue long after the media turns its attention to the next big thing. Gifts to the PNW Conference Disaster Fund (Advance #352) or UMCOR Advance #901670 support the work ahead. Give at pnwumc.org/wildfireresponse or learn more at pnwumc.org/spokane-area-wildfires.
Media contact: Patrick Scriven, communications@pnwumc.org
