LOS ANGELES, United States — Fast-moving fires roared through Spokane in Washington state overnight into Sunday, destroying hundreds of homes and prompting mass evacuations in one of the city's worst natural disasters on record.

 

Photos and video posted by people driving through the city of some 230,000 showed house after house engulfed by flames or reduced to ash as wind-fueled blazes burned in hot, bone-dry weather.

 

Officials in the city, located in the US Pacific Northwest, have not yet said if anyone was killed or hurt.

 

In some cases it appeared houses were reduced to vacant lots, with not much left of what used to be people's homes.

 

One photo posted by a local TV reporter showed the fire was so hot it melted metal from a car into silver puddles in a driveway.

 

"The damage just keeps going. Nothing but leveled homes as far as the eye can see right now" in one hard hit area of Spokane, Natalie Grant of KXLY said on X.

 

The network quoted officials as estimating 600 structures were destroyed or damaged in the fires.

 

Houses and trees exploded with loud bangs in some areas of the city, The Spokesman-Review, a Spokane newspaper, reported.

 

Thick smoke billowed over the city Saturday evening as cars lined up on highways with people fleeing their homes seeking safety.

 

"I was sitting near an elementary school and saw a wall of flames east of the school and just a cascade of black smoke and a wall of flames coming toward me," said Alexandra Duggan, a public safety reporter for The Spokesman-Review.

 

Washington Governor Bob Ferguson declared a state of emergency and noted that the state is enduring a fourth consecutive year of drought as climate change creates conditions propitious for destructive wildfires. Blazes are burning around the region.

 

As night fell Saturday in Spokane, local TV station KREM aired footage of what appeared to be a hillside off in the distance, with glowing orange dots or jagged lines showing structures on fire.

 

Officials had said they are bracing for the worst Sunday on the US West Coast.

 

"When the sun sets and the sun rises, we are going to be in shock," said Major General Gent Welsh, who oversees National Guard forces in Washington state.

 

He was right. "We knew sunrise would reveal that the worst fears have come true. Entire neighborhoods in Spokane are gone," another KXLY reporter, Melissa Luck, posted on X.

 

Thousands of Washington state residents have seen power knocked out because of the fires.

 

Three are burning in and near Spokane.

 

The biggest, called the Old Trails fire, jumped the Spokane River on Saturday afternoon and crossed into the city.

 

Authorities issued the highest-level evacuation alert, "Go Now," for swathes of northern Spokane affecting thousands of people within city limits, according to the government's evacuation map.

 

As of Sunday morning the three fires had charred a total of 5,390 acres (2,181 hectares), CNN reported.

 

City officials did not report any injuries.

 

Emergency authorities set up a fire evacuation shelter at the Spokane Convention Center.

 

The National Weather Service has declared a "particularly dangerous situation" Red Flag Alert, which called the weather risk "extreme" across Eastern Washington.

 

The Washington National Guard said on X it was "rapidly mobilizing units" to assist Spokane.