SPOKANE, Washington – Wildfires raging on the outskirts of Spokane, Washington, for a third day have destroyed at least 700 buildings and forced tens of thousands of people to flee their homes in and around the state’s second-most populous city, officials said Monday.

The cluster of three blazes are ranked as the top firefighting priority in the U.S. as a whole — including the drought-parched Pacific Northwest, where dozens of major wildfires have been burning for weeks, degrading air quality across a wide region.

The Spokane-area fires have scorched more than 3,200 hectares since erupting Saturday on the northern fringe of the city, home to about 230,000 residents west of the Rocky Mountain foothills near the Idaho border.