Washington's horrific wildfires this season are inspiring help from across America. But a fundraising website asking for cash donations for a Washington wildfire relief effort is drawing criticism and questions.
A KOMO 4 investigation has learned that claims and photos on the website are not accurate. Once reporters began inquiring, the website was inactivated, but the status of hundreds of dollars in donations remains unclear.
The campaign using the fundraising website youcaring.com sought $10,000, claiming the Shepherd's Way Sanctuary in Stevens County, west of Spokane, is hosting a "tent city" for firefighters and urgently needs money to feed them.
"The ranch is now the official command center for volunteer firefighters," it says. "We need prayer and finances for food to feed the 150 firefighters that will be here by Monday."
So the KOMO 4 investigators called the director of Stevens County Emergency Services Jim Caruso to see if that was true. The Shepherd's Way Sanctuary is "not the official command center for volunteer firefighters or in any capacity as designated by my office," Caruso said emphatically.
A photo on the website showing firefighters living in rows and rows of tents was not taken on the Shepherd's Way Sanctuary, but was instead shot by Associated Press photographer Rich Pedroncelli at a fire in Placerville, Calif. On September 19, 2014.
The site says the fire is so close, you can hear it "crackling" and that evacuation was imminent. But another photo on the website showing a raging inferno of burning trees was also not taken near the Shepherd's Way Sanctuary, but was instead taken by Kari Greer for the U.S. Forest Service of a different forest fire.