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Wildfires in eastern Washington state forced the evacuation of 60,000 people in the Spokane area while destroying at least 600 homes, businesses, and other structures, authorities said Sunday.

The fires in and around Spokane, the state’s second largest city, burned about 8.2 square miles over the weekend and were among dozens of wildfires across the Western U.S. that stretched the ability of federal, state and local agencies to fight them.

A total of about 390 square miles has burned across the state, and some of the fires, including those in the Spokane area, have not been contained.

No one hurt or unaccounted for — so far

Fire and law enforcement officials said there had been no reports of injuries or people unaccounted for — but they stressed it was early in the response effort.

Officials also said that the evacuees in Spokane included patients at its U.S. Veterans Affairs hospital.

Video from the Spokane area showed buildings on fire, black smoke billowing up near neighborhoods, and the smoking ruins of homes, with only chimneys still standing. Several officials expressed concern that the area does not appear likely to get a break in coming days from the weather, which is expected to remain dry.

“We are not out of danger,” U.S. Sen. Maria Cantwell said during a news conference with federal, state and local officials in Spokane. “The next couple of days will be challenging.”

Investigators had yet to determine how the blazes started.

Grassland in flames in parts of Idaho, Oregon

Spokane was hardly the only place struggling to contain fires.

Crews using bulldozers and helicopters continued for a 10th day to fight a fire that has burned nearly 525 square miles of grassland in western Idaho and eastern Oregon. The area is home to cattle ranches, and authorities said the fire is threatening more than 600 homes and 800 other structures.

The weather in the area was expected to remain sunny — and dry — well into the week, with temperatures rising to more than 90 degrees Fahrenheit on Wednesday. Officials say the fire was caused by lightning.

The National Weather Service issued warnings about the air quality in eastern Washington, eastern Oregon, western and central Idaho, and western Montana. It issued red flag fire warnings for parts of Utah and Montana and western Nebraska, and extreme heat warnings for the southern parts of Arizona, California, and Nevada and northern Montana.

High winds make it hard to fight fires in Spokane area

While temperatures Sunday in Spokane were forecast to remain below 80 F, wind gusts from 35 mph to 45 mph were expected by the afternoon, said Benjamin Cossel, public information officer for the federal response team from California called in Saturday night to deal with the fires.

“We have weather working against us, and we have terrain working against us,” Cossel said.

There were three fires in the Spokane area: the Old Trails Fire, the Fairview Fire, and the Meadowview Fire. Washington Gov. Bob Ferguson declared a state of emergency Saturday, and the National Weather Service issued a “particularly dangerous situation” red flag alert for eastern Washington.

Cossel said that as it gets warmer during the day, cool air that’s closer to the ground and keeping winds at bay will rise, allowing those winds to move through the area. The Spokane River cuts through the city of about 229,000 people, and there are steep canyons on both sides that channel the wind.

“They push the fire through the canyons, up, up the slopes, and then outside the slopes and around,” he said. “It’s very, very hilly, very, very steep slopes, a lot of canyons that create really turbulent, really challenging sort of wind scenarios.”

Spokane sets up shelter for impacted residents

Authorities in Spokane set up a shelter at the city’s main convention center. About 400 people were staying there, officials said Sunday.

Spokane County Commissioner Chris Jordan said relatives of his were in an area affected by the fires and that they don’t know if their home is still standing. He said he spoke with them as they were leaving the home.

“They’re in their car and all they can see is smoke everywhere, and it was incredibly scary for so many people,” he said during the news conference.

Heather Rosenstrater, president and CEO of Avista Corp., the area’s electric and natural gas utility, said about 10,000 people were without power Sunday, down from a peak of 30,000. Avista needs to repair two transmission lines, she said, so it’s possible that demand for electricity over the next few days could cause outages.

Meanwhile, several larger fires continued to burn in less populated areas northwest of Spokane, including one about 80 miles from the city that has burned about 210 square miles. Another fire in eastern Oregon, about 70 miles to the northwest in the Stinkingwater Mountains, has burned about 336 square miles.

“The whole northwest is heavily impacted right now,” said Keila Vizcarra, the spokesperson for the federal team from California handling what’s been named the Big Grass Fire in western Idaho and eastern Oregon.

CAIRO — With escalating attacks against U.S. bases and its allies over the past week, Iran’s leaders are showing considerable unity over their war strategy: hanging tough, determined to show Iran can endure more than America and its allies can.

But within the leadership, there are sharp differences over what the endgame should be.

On one side, the ultra-hardliners who oppose any negotiations with the United States are pressing for total victory in the war. Known as the “Paydari” movement — Persian for “stability” — they are hard-core ideologues who want to enforce the Islamic Republic’s control over society.

On the other, those who support President Masoud Pezeshkian and powerful parliament speaker Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf — who doubles as Iran’s chief negotiator — see military pressure as a way to win a negotiated deal with the United States. This camp is also spurred by concern over the economic toll Iran is suffering from the war and the need to adapt to social change in the country.

“Negotiation is a political tool and a complement to military action to force the enemy to a point of compulsion and extract real concessions,” an adviser to Qalibaf, Mahdi Mohammadi, wrote on his Telegram channel Thursday.

The unusually open rivalry within the theocracy’s leadership points to a struggle for control over Iran’s postwar future. A huge question mark is where the new supreme leader, Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei, stands. Reportedly injured in the strike that killed his father in the opening minutes of the war on Feb. 28, Khamenei remains in hiding, and both sides have claimed his support.

Iran is determined to show strength

In a boost for Qalibaf and Pezeshkian, the ceasefire deal reached with the U.S. in April received strong backing in Iran’s top leadership body, the Supreme National Security Council. Twelve of its 13 members approved it, including senior figures in the Revolutionary Guard and the military.

The lone vote against the deal is widely believed to have come from Saeed Jalili, the most prominent figure in the Paydari movement.

But the ceasefire crumbled as the two sides trade strikes and as Iran presses for control over passage through the Strait of Hormuz, which before the war carried a fifth of the world’s traded oil and gas. Iran was also frustrated that financial promises under the deal — including the release of billions of frozen assets — didn’t materialize, and now the American blockade is back in place.

With no benefits from the deal, “there’s no serious division” in the leadership over how to respond, said Ali Vaez, Iran project director at the International Crisis Group.

They believe U.S. President Donald Trump “only understands the language of force, and therefore, they would have to gain the upper hand in order to compel him to deliver,” Vaez said.

The hard-liners are pressuring Iranians

The funeral for slain Iranian supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, earlier this month appeared to show the strength of the ultra-hardline Paydari. Crowds called for revenge on the U.S. and Israel for the war. Videos showed mourners in Tehran welcoming Jalili, while Pezeshkian was greeted at one point with insults and cries of “Death to the compromiser!”

The ultra-hardliners have used nightly rallies and their control of state television, known by the acronym IRIB, to drum up opposition to negotiations. At rallies and on TV, speakers have portrayed Iran as headed for total victory and denounced those who compromise with the Islamic Republic’s archenemy, the United States.

State television cut off a June 30 live broadcast with Qalibaf as he discussed negotiations with Washington. Earlier this month, it cut off broadcasting a speech by Pezeshkian to businesspeople seconds after he said that the elder Khamenei had given permission for renewed U.S. talks before his death.

Pezeshkian and his camp have pushed back, portraying IRIB as dividing the country at the time of war. The president accused the broadcaster of making it like “the military are on one side, and the government is on another side.”

Last month, the president’s media office condemned state television for what it described as “censoring” the president and other government heads, signaling an open rift.

The hard-liners have sought to press their influence in other ways. In past weeks, authorities shut down cafes in central Tehran that were popular with residents during the ceasefire. Videos on Iranian social media showed many women at the cafes flouting mandatory veiling laws, and crowds mixing freely.

The closures were brief but signaled that “religious extremist parties” were showing their influence, said Mohamad Ali Abtahi, a reformist cleric and an aide to former President Mohammad Khatami, who is still widely considered to be the leader of Iran’s reformist groups.

While Jalili’s supporters are a minority they are influential, said Vali Nasr, professor of international affairs and Middle East studies at Johns Hopkins University.

“They have a lot of money. They have a lot of power. They have put a lot of people in the bureaucracy” and developed connections in the Revolutionary Guard, Nasr said.

The pragmatists say the public must be heard

The more pragmatic camp argues that maintaining unity during the war requires addressing the public’s unhappiness over the economy as well as political and social repression. This, as Iran’s currency continues to slide, inflation spirals, and unemployment rises. A final agreement with the U.S. could bring Iran a huge windfall with the lifting of sanctions and the return of billions in assets.

Small flashes of impatience with the war have emerged. In July, over 250 former lawmakers, clerics, professors, and other public figures signed an anti-war petition warning of the costs of the conflict. “We believe that the overwhelming majority of the Iranian people want peace and the right to a decent life,” the statement read. Others have spoken out against stepped-up executions of protesters following wide-scale anti-government protests in January.

A top reformist party that assisted Pezeshkian’s presidential campaign warned that the war’s domestic toll was “undermining internal social cohesion.” That brought a rebuke from Tasnim, a news agency close to the Revolutionary Guard, which said the statement amounted to blaming Iran for a war started by the United States.

In mid-July, the president’s son and influential adviser, Youssef Pezeshkian, posted a series of messages about the need to balance realistic military aims with a weak economy. Referring to the decades of sanctions and confrontation with the West, he said Iran has “been prevented from growing and has suffered greatly. It has become sick.”

Both sides are looking to what happens after the war

Ultimately, both sides are jockeying for power after the war, given the unusual uncertainty brought on by the change in the supreme leadership. Abtahi, the reformist cleric, said Mojtaba Khamenei’s real views are still not known, so while some believe he could be more radical than his father, others see the potential for him to bring moderate change.

The supreme leader, because of the power invested in him, could act as a “brake” to restrain the more extremist factions, Abtahi said. But over time, the confrontation with more radical factions could grow more dangerous “if that brake isn’t used.”