Cooling down? Heating up? Find out what’s in store for the weekend with our local weather coverage.
Here are some of the stories that grabbed our readers’ attention this week.
Forty homes were evacuated in Skamania County after the Eagle Creek Fire in Oregon apparently jumped the Columbia River and prompted evacuations.
The fire in Washington was reported about 2 a.m. Tuesday, and in a few hours had burned about 25 acres on the south side of Archer Mountain, west of Skamania and nearly directly across the Columbia River from Multnomah Falls.
The fire was zero percent contained as of early Tuesday.
Wildfires in the Columbia River Gorge continued to blaze Monday, blanketing the region in a haze as temperatures hit the 90s for the fourth consecutive day.
The combination of heat, smoke and dry conditions led to three separate weather advisories: one for air pollution, one for extreme heat and another warning of potential fire danger.
The situation may worsen if overnight winds sweep the west Columbia River Gorge where firefighters are battling fires near Eagle Creek and Indian Creek in Oregon, Colby Neuman, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service, said Monday night.
One man is in critical condition and another is in jail after a stabbing at a home in Vancouver’s Ogden neighborhood.
Officers with the Vancouver Police Department were sent to 8620 N.E. 29th Way at about 11:20 p.m. Sunday for a reported disturbance with a weapon.
When they arrived, they arrested Christopher Ollar, a resident of the home, for suspicion of first-degree assault, Vancouver police spokeswoman Kim Kapp said.
The surviving suspect of a 1997 botched Vancouver bank robbery that ended in a deadly shootout with police will be retried on new charges, including attempted murder, after his convictions were vacated.
Ronald Jay Bianchi, 45, was in Clark County Superior Court on Friday to withdraw his guilty pleas, entered in May 1998, to 13 counts in connection with the robbery at the former Seafirst Bank branch on East Mill Plain Boulevard, court records show. The then-26-year-old pleaded guilty to prevent his wife, who was originally charged as an accomplice, from going to prison and state workers from taking their infant daughter.
Among the charges he pleaded guilty to were three counts of attempted first-degree felony murder.
