Forest in the city limits of Spokane were not always thick with trees. Prior to 19th century settlement, the wilderness had its own way of handling its ecosystem. Wildfires were an integral part of the survival of forest, clearing away low growing vegetation. Now it’s a hazard with the integration of a growing community living in and around a pine bounty.

Without regular wildfires to keep a forest healthy and thin, the danger of losing the land all together to raging flames increases. To protect the lavish land that invites recreators, community help is necessary to maintain what fires would have done naturally.

Down the steep hillside along Spokane’s High Drive, Guy Gifford with the Washington Department of Natural Resources marches down the trail head. With his clinometer, he studies the slopes to perform an assessment on the area. His biggest curiosity, can he bring a chipping machine along the trails and thin about 177 acres of forest?

“Can I get equipment in here? If I could fly a piece in here ... I’ve been told we could drive some in,” Gifford contemplates to himself.

The recreational trails used by bicyclists, hikers and runners on the bluff start on a 55-60% slope. Gifford explains that most mechanical equipment can’t operate on it to even chip debris cleared during forest pruning. Due to past wildfires, the soil is prepared like a garden; it's bare, burnt dirt that is sandy and rocky underfoot. The growing Ponderosa pines seed like crazy in the setting, creating a dense hillside.

Gifford described the pines as sun lovers that hate the shade. It's a fire-dependent tree that needs the hot flames to survive. They reproduce better in grand open land. That’s why the taller the tree, the more open the area.

A broken cooling system at Spokane City Hall has some council members loosening their ties, or stripping them all together. City staff have been instructed to keep cool by drinking water and reducing their caffeine intake. The building’s air conditioner picked a great day to malfunction because on some floors it’s nearly as hot inside as it is outside.

On the 7th floor, It’s a dark journey to find the hottest thermostat reading. The lights have been turned off to keep the building as cool as possible. Tucked away behind a pole, some employees use the light of their cellphones to take a reading. It’s 81 degrees inside city council’s conference room while it’s 84 degrees inside management information systems.

The heat is the talk of the office. One employee hugged a bag of ice as she went down the elevator. Another gloats it is 98 in their office as if it was a competition.

Here's last week's top five stories decided by your interaction. A lot of comments on our wolf pups story and a lot of shares of our moose story because readers are very passionate about animal stories.

Our number one story is compliments to a KXLY intern, Adam Lippert, who worked hard following up with Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife to find out when they would be posting visuals of the Huckleberry Pack. You can imagine the squeals from the newsroom when it turns out it was wildlife cam footage of puppies.

Also, our third headline: "Return of The Viking" sounds like a movie that never was. Maybe it's the return of the Vikings that apparently drew runes on a Five Mile Prairie rock. That's local lore for you that leads to more dead ends then a culdesac neighborhood.

And we highly recommend number five which is video of fawns learning to nurse because somebody unknowingly separated them from their mothers. As we said earlier, readers are very passionate about animal stories. We're tempted to re-title ourselves as wildlife correspondents.