Nearly a week after the fires roared through northwest Spokane on August 1, Justin De Ruyter’s lungs still hurt. Every time he comes back from fighting the Spokane fires, his eyes water. His clothes stink. His skin and hair are caked in an oily residue.
“I’m sweating profusely every night, like waking up five, six times,” said De Ruyter, “I can’t sleep because these toxins are just flushing.”
De Ruyter, the public information officer for the Spokane Fire Department, was one of many local firefighters trying to stop the Spokane Complex fires from spreading last week…