By: Erin Gartner, American Red Cross Volunteer

Heather Rosentrater saw smoke rising in the distance, pluming over the forested hills outside Spokane. As an executive at Avista Corp., the utility company serving eastern Washington and northern Idaho, Rosentrater began receiving notifications about a fast-moving wildfire.

Confident her crews were safe, Rosentrater texted a colleague who had recently organized employee training with the American Red Cross, including how to set up emergency shelters in rural areas. She got the OK to respond.

“Not too long after I got out to the shelter, the freeway started getting closed off, and so it was harder to get volunteers to that area,” she recalled. “I just said, ‘How can I help?’”

Rosentrater and her husband were among the first to arrive at the Red Cross shelter as two wildfires erupted within just hours of each other in Spokane County on Aug. 18, 2023. As the skeleton crew worked to prepare for evacuees, they had no time to chat—or even introduce themselves.“We had two huge wildfires on basically both sides of Spokane,” said Megan Snow, the Regional Philanthropy Officer at the Red Cross. “At the first shelter, the Red Cross program manager saw two people wearing Avista T-shirts, and she just started ordering people around. They were incredibly helpful, so she reached out days later to figure out who they were.”

Turns out, she was ordering around the new president and chief operating officer of Avista.

Rosentrater, the first woman named to the role, said her job title was irrelevant. Like everyone who volunteered during the devastating fires, she simply wanted to help.

“I was just trying to identify where the gaps were, what could I do,” Rosentrater said. “I can carry things or support people, community members who are going through an unimaginable stress.”

Responding to a Historic Fire Season

Fueled by strong winds and dry conditions, the wildfires eventually destroyed more than 360 homes—the most in state history, according to the governor’s office—and damaged nearly 450 others. The fires also charred thousands of acres and caused the deaths of two people.

As fire evacuees began arriving at the first shelter, Rosentrater said she and her husband realized many were coming with their pets. The couple headed to a local grocery store to buy pet supplies, including cat and dog food. Rosentrater said distributing the supplies offered an opportunity to talk to people, “just to comfort them.”

Not long after, the shelter was declared part of the evacuation zone, and work shifted to move the shelter to a different location. Then came the call for a second shelter — an hour away — in need of emergency supplies that were in a trailer parked at the Red Cross headquarters in downtown Spokane.

By this time, it was close to midnight. But Rosentrater and her husband volunteered to move the trailer to the new shelter.

“We had a truck and the time, so we said ‘Yep, we'd be happy to do that,’” Rosentrater said. “We were just trying to figure out where can we be of most help and jumping in wherever we could.”

Avista and the Red Cross

Avista has long had a relationship with the Red Cross, raising over $132,000 for the nonprofit since the partnership began, including $50,000 after last year’s fire, according to Snow. Following years of increasingly severe wildfire seasons, both organizations saw an opportunity to work more closely together, in part because both are on the frontlines helping communities during natural disasters.

“The Red Cross helps us have a healthy community, especially in times of crisis,” Rosentrater said. “So if we can help the Red Cross in their mission during those times of crisis, that supports our mission as well.”

The partnership includes offering training to Avista employees in basic emergency response, such as shelter work. About 20 employees went through the training a couple months ahead of last summer’s wildfires, Snow said, and another 30 employees were slated for the fall training. Avista, which is based in Spokane, serves about 400,000 electric and natural gas customers in parts of Washington, Idaho, and Oregon.

Shifting With the Climate

The two wildfires, dubbed the Gray and Oregon fires, were among 1,880 wildfires reported in Washington state last year. That marked the second highest annual number of wildfires in state history, according to state officials.

As wildfires and other natural disasters increase in frequency and number around the world, the Red Cross is focusing more on climate programming, such as reducing climate-related disaster risks in urban areas.

Avista is also adjusting.

“As the risks for our communities change and seem to be increasing in terms of these kind of crisis situations, we need to evolve our tactics. That’s why I really appreciate the Red Cross and Avista teams that identified, ‘OK, how can we be better prepared?’ How can we do training in advance so when one of these situations occurs, we can be ready to help?” Rosentrater said.

“We're just going to need to continue to improve and be creative and figure out new ways to work together to respond to these likely increasing emergency situations.”

Learn more about wildfire preparedness at Avista and about volunteering at the Red Cross.