SPOKANE, Wash. — Garages at two homes just a few blocks apart in northeast Spokane may have been targeted by an arsonist early Monday morning.
Firefighters with the Spokane Fire Department arrived at the fires in the city’s Bemiss neighborhood just a couple of hours apart. In fact, firefighters said a man approached them while they were fighting the first fire to tell them about the second one.
Investigators are now looking for that man as they look into the cause of the fires, although they didn’t immediately identify him as a suspect.
While data collected by the Spokane Police Department has consistently shown reports of most types of crime are down in 2024, arson has bucked that trend.
As of the department’s most recent report, released Aug. 5, 73 arsons had been reported in Spokane. That’s 40% higher than the 52 arsons reported by the same date last year. By year’s end in 2023, arsons also exceeded those from 2022.
In July, police on the South Hill, including .
As investigators try to track down suspects in the unusually high number of arson cases, they have .
Fire investigators can be reached at 509-625-7120.
