Spokane Complex Fire · August 2026
They came from twelve states and from Australia. Most have never been to Spokane, and most may leave without meeting anyone whose house they saved. Record a short message and we'll make sure it reaches them.
Messages received from
Update counts as messages come in. Add neighborhoods as they appear.
Four steps, and only the first one is yours.
Fifteen to sixty seconds. Upright or sideways, either is fine. You don't need to write anything down first.
First name and your neighborhood. That's all we ask for. You can leave your name off if you'd rather.
Every video is reviewed by a real person before anything is posted. Nothing goes up automatically.
Messages go out publicly and directly to firefighters through the supply points where crews come through.
Send a message
If you're not sure how to start, try finishing one of these out loud.
Try this one
“To the crews who came here — thank you for ___.”
Who is out there right now
No powers, no suit that protects them from much. Just people who went toward a fire that everyone else was running from — and then went back the next day.
More than four thousand personnel are working fires across Washington, drawn from twelve states and from Australia.
Crews worked past twenty-four hours straight on the first night before relief arrived.
They cut and held dozer lines in fifty-mile-an-hour wind, in the dark, on ground none of them knew.
Hundreds of homes were lost. Thousands more are still standing because someone stood between them and the fire.
Most of them will pack up and drive home without ever knowing whose kitchen is still there because of them. That's the part we can fix.
Why we're doing this
This isn't only a nice gesture. Expressed gratitude is one of the most studied interventions in psychology, and it holds up.
In a landmark 2005 study, people who wrote and personally delivered a letter of thanks showed the largest happiness increase of any intervention tested — larger than journaling or counting blessings — with effects lasting about a month.
Seligman, Steen, Park & Peterson · American Psychologist, 2005Across three randomized studies, people assigned to a grateful outlook reported better wellbeing than comparison groups on several measures. The effect on positive emotion was the most reliable finding.
Emmons & McCullough · Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 2003Algoe's “find, remind, and bind” theory describes gratitude's social job: expressed thanks builds a real tie between the person who helped and the person helped. For crews from out of state, that tie doesn't exist yet. This is how it gets made.
Algoe · Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 2012Worth saying plainly: much of this research is associational, and recent meta-analyses caution that gratitude's effects are sometimes overstated. We're not claiming a video fixes anything. We're saying there's good reason to believe it matters more than nothing — and the crews here right now are working eighteen-hour shifts for a town most of them had never seen.
Ask us to take your video down at any point, including after it's posted. No explanation needed — just email us.
Submissions are reviewed with guidance from a licensed mental health counselor, so that everyone's contribution is handled thoughtfully. This isn't therapy, and no clinical relationship is created by sending something in.
Your email is never published. Only your first name and neighborhood appear alongside your video, and only if you've said that's okay.
This project is narrow on purpose: messages to the crews. It isn't a place to document losses or share your story of the fire, and we're not equipped to hold those well.
Free to download and share
We put these together for the Spokane Complex Fire. Print them, forward them, pass them along to anyone who needs them — no permission needed.
Shelters, pets and livestock, evacuation maps and alerts, federal and state disaster assistance, crisis support, utilities, and verified donation channels.
Download PDFHow Loss of Use / ALE actually works, what to expect on deductibles and limits, a first-steps checklist, free state help, and every wildfire relief loan program we could confirm.
Download PDFLast updated 08/05/2026 · This situation is moving fast. Confirm current status before relying on any of it.
This project is for gratitude. If you're carrying something heavier right now, these are built for that.
Please read this part. We're a volunteer community project, not a crisis service. We don't monitor submissions in real time and we can't respond to emergencies. Listing these numbers isn't the same as being able to help — if you need support now, please contact one of them directly, or call 911 if someone is in immediate danger.