The starlink earth stations in WA are in Redmond, North Bend and Brewster. With another one under construction near Prosser. In the photo that's not a starlink 'trunk' link/earth station antenna, which is much larger. That's an end point CPE.

the beta-test starlink earth stations look like this: https://imgur.com/a/mg3cq9R#RssFOnG

The one in Boca Chica, TX is the same radomes, unknown exact dish/electronics configuration inside, mounted on steel pedestals on concrete foundations. But otherwise the same.

While it does appear to be closer to the consumer antenna than the normal base stations, it's just a radio, there is no reason it couldn't be used as a base station, and unlike the regular base stations it is designed for quick and easy setup so it potentially makes sense to use it as one during a disaster. This explanation definitely makes a hell of a lot more sense than it being a stunt.

More base stations and particularly base stations close to the disaster increase the portion of time that any given satellite has a link to both the end user and a base station. Particularly during this early stage when they have a limited number of pre existing base stations and limited satellite coverage that is very important for connectivity.

The advantage of the ground station being closely located to users is very very small (assuming options are in view and not at the extreme limits). There's not really any latency to avoid, the traffic is going up and down and through a ground station either which way. The current ground stations probably have better (as in lower latency) connectivity than a telco's local exchange anyway.

Considering the high complexity of field-deploying a ground station during an emergency when several nearby ground stations are available, it's difficult to imagine why they would ever do this. Licensing for ground stations is more complex which generally prevents installing one on short notice, and because the "teleport" link requires higher total bandwidth than the consumer links it typically uses larger antennas, higher power levels, and often even a completely different band and encoding both for higher throughput and to simplify managing interference with the consumer-facing antennas.

That said, my assumption would be that Starlink offered to provide redundancy for the WiFi at this site, so while the Starlink service in the photo is not necessarily in use it does serve a function by providing some reassurance in case the telco experiences infrastructure problems subsequent to the fire (not unlikely because fire recovery involves heavy equipment, tends to destabilize hillsides, etc).

The advantage isn't latency but connectivity. Connectivity requires both user and base station to connect to the same satellite, and that happens more often the closer they are to each other.

This becomes less of a problem as you gain more satellites, but right now with the limited rollout I'm pretty sure it is significant.

Base stations that have identical radios to user antennas (which have a general fcc license) probably don't require further licensing. They would be limited bandwidth but that's a lot better than nothing, especially during a disaster.

Documents from Starlink suggest the usable footprint of the satellites is a bit over 500km wide, so roughly the size of Washington. Further, Starlink only reported positive results from inter-satellite relay testing very recently ("first successful test" about four weeks ago).

Combining these, and considering that they are operating multiple ground stations within Washington, I don't think inter-satellite relay is a factor at all right now.

That's... an assumption that went into the logic in the comment replying to and the logic in it's grandparent.

I think you meant to contradict me, so I think my comment is being misunderstood, which might explain the downvotes too... I just can't figure out how your are misreading it.