Spokane Man With Prior Manslaughter Conviction Charged With Arson in State's Worst Urban Wildfire

A 37-year-old Spokane man with a prior manslaughter conviction was arrested Monday and charged with first-degree arson in connection with the Old Trails Fire, the blaze that investigators say became the anchor of the most destructive urban wildfire event in Washington history. Aaron F. Farinacci is being held on $1 million bond and is scheduled to appear in court Tuesday, according to the Spokane County Sheriff's Office. The arrest came as officials revised the damage toll upward again: between 700 and 1,100 homes and other structures destroyed, more than 65,000 people evacuated, and 14 Spokane County residents still unaccounted for as of Monday. No deaths or injuries have been confirmed. The fire that authorities now believe Farinacci started has, in four days, become a statewide emergency, a federal aid request to the White House, and a criminal case that will play out in Spokane County Superior Court even as bulldozers are still cutting fire lines around the neighborhoods he is accused of igniting.

A Convicted Felon Charged With Setting Washington's Most Destructive Urban Fire

Farinacci faces a single count of first-degree arson, a Class A felony in Washington that carries a maximum sentence of life in prison, for allegedly starting the Old Trails Fire, the largest of three blazes that ignited within hours of each other Saturday in northwest Spokane. He was booked into Spokane County Jail on $1 million bond Monday evening and is due in court Tuesday for a first appearance, where a judge will formally read the charge and set conditions, according to a KOMO News report. The Old Trails Fire alone destroyed 640 structures in its first 24 hours, according to incident commanders, before growing further as it merged into what fire officials are now tracking jointly as the Spokane Complex: Old Trails, Fairview and Autumn Lane combined into a single, formally managed incident. Incident Commander Tom Clemo told reporters over the weekend it was "probably the largest, most destructive fire in Washington's history," a description that predates the arrest and stands independent of who is ultimately convicted at trial. The Spokane County Sheriff's Office has not detailed what physical or forensic evidence, beyond the witness reports that first flagged Farinacci, ties him directly to the fire's ignition point, and prosecutors have not yet filed the charging document that will lay out the state's full case against him. That filing is expected around Tuesday's first appearance.

How a Roadside Tip Led Detectives to Aaron Farinacci

The investigation traces back to about 10 a.m. Saturday, roughly two hours before the Old Trails Fire is believed to have ignited, when a citizen who lives near Euclid Road and Old Trails Road called in a report of a man bending down along the roadside in that area. A second witness reported seeing the same individual again a short time later, according to details in the KOMO account of the arrest. An Airway Heights police officer responded, located a man matching the description about 1.5 miles from where the fire would start, and stopped to question him. At that point, with no fire yet burning and no clear evidence of a crime, the officer collected the man's contact information and let him go, a decision that in hindsight placed a person of interest on record hours before the blaze began. Over the following two days, as the fire tore through the West Plains and jumped into north Spokane, detectives with the Spokane County Sheriff's Office worked to corroborate the roadside sighting, build a case file and relocate the man they had briefly stopped. That effort ended Monday around 5 p.m. with Farinacci's arrest. The Sheriff's Office has said it is not releasing additional details about the specific physical evidence connecting him to the fire's origin point while the case moves toward formal charging, a common practice in active arson investigations where officials want to avoid revealing their evidentiary hand before a defense team sees it.

An Arizona Manslaughter Conviction in Farinacci's Past

Spokane County Sheriff John Nowels confirmed Monday that Farinacci "has a previous felony manslaughter conviction," a detail reported by NBC Right Now that has drawn attention as investigators and the public piece together his background. Court records tied to that earlier case show Farinacci was originally charged with first-degree murder in the 2010 killing of his father in Maricopa County, Arizona. That murder charge was dismissed following a grand jury indictment, and Farinacci subsequently pleaded guilty in 2012 to manslaughter and aggravated assault instead. It is not yet clear from public records whether that Arizona conviction restricts him from possessing certain items, or whether it will factor formally into the Spokane arson case beyond background context for the court. Washington's first-degree arson statute does not require prosecutors to show any particular criminal history to secure a conviction, and officials have not indicated the prior case will be treated as an aggravating factor at sentencing if Farinacci is convicted. What is established, for now, is narrower than the headlines suggest: a felony record fourteen years old and roughly 1,400 miles removed from Spokane, and a fresh, single-count arson charge that will be litigated almost entirely on the evidence Spokane County detectives collected over the past four days, not on what happened in Arizona in 2010.

Between 700 and 1,100 Homes Gone, and 14 Residents Still Unaccounted For

Officials gave a wide range for the damage Monday: more than 700 structures confirmed destroyed, with another 400 properties still under evaluation, because ground crews and satellite-based damage assessments across the more than 10,000 acres the Spokane Complex had burned by Monday night have not yet been fully reconciled into one confirmed count, according to the Spokesman-Review and KUOW's reporting. More than 65,000 people remain under evacuation orders, though some zones tied to the Old Trails and Fairview fires were downgraded Monday as conditions improved. Sheriff Nowels was careful to draw a distinction on the 14 people the county has not yet been able to reach directly: "I don't wanna qualify them as missing people. They're people we're just trying to confirm are fine." The county had fielded roughly 290 requests for welfare checks or evacuation assistance since Saturday, and located all but 14 of those callers by Monday morning, officials said, attributing the remaining gap to dead cell phones, poor coverage inside evacuation zones, and residents who found shelter on their own without calling back to confirm they were safe. Spokane Mayor Lisa Brown, addressing residents anxious to check on their properties, said return timelines will vary block by block depending on fire behavior and utility repairs: "It could be a week, it could be weeks, depending on where your home and property is." On the recovery ahead, she added a blunter note for a city still counting its losses: "Hang in there with us. It's really going to be a long-term process of recovery."

Nearly 900 Firefighters, National Guard Troops and a Break in the Weather

More than 900 firefighting personnel are now assigned to the Spokane Complex, including crews brought in from California and, notably, Australia under mutual aid agreements that put international wildland firefighters on the ground in eastern Washington this week, according to a MyNorthwest report on the state's response. The effort includes rotor and fixed-wing aircraft, bulldozers, engines and hand crews working fire lines across all three blazes, which remained at zero percent containment as of Monday. Washington National Guard troops have also deployed to the fire zone. Major General Gent Welsh, the state's Adjutant General, described the scene in terms drawn from his own military service, calling it a "war zone" comparable to conditions he saw during his deployment to Iraq, and cautioning that residents face years, not weeks, of rebuilding ahead of them. Monday brought a genuine, if temporary, break: lower temperatures and calmer winds allowed crews to gain measurable ground on the Old Trails and Fairview fires for the first time since the weekend's explosive growth. That window may be short-lived. Forecasters are calling for hotter, drier conditions to return later this week, the same combination of heat and wind that let the fire cover roughly 3,500 acres within hours of igniting Saturday afternoon, and that firefighters now hope to have a firmer line against before it does again.

Ferguson Presses for Federal Aid as the Fire Keeps Growing

Governor Bob Ferguson used Monday's briefing to press the case for direct federal assistance, describing what the state is asking Washington, D.C. for in specific terms: "search and rescue, debris removal, medical supplies and assistance, temporary sheltering, emergency power," he said, per the same MyNorthwest account. Ferguson said FEMA had agreed to begin sending some resources, generators and emergency supplies to affected jurisdictions and tribal governments, before a formal disaster declaration is even approved, a step state officials characterized as an unusual show of urgency from the federal agency. The Spokane Complex is the most destructive single event in a wildfire season that has now produced 17 major fires burning more than 260,000 acres statewide, a scale that helps explain why the federal request is moving on an accelerated track rather than the weeks-long timeline such approvals often take. For Spokane specifically, the immediate calendar ahead is now twofold and runs on two very different clocks: a recovery effort Mayor Brown says will stretch into a long-term process measured in months, and a criminal case that opens Tuesday morning when Farinacci appears in Spokane County Superior Court to face the single arson count that, if his history is any indication of how aggressively prosecutors intend to pursue it, is unlikely to be the last charge filed in the case.