After the weekend’s wild weather, what will the workweek bring? Check our local weather coverage.
In case you missed them, here are some of the top stories from the weekend:
On her 11th birthday, Alexia Bautista-Matias-Cannon found ways to pass the time before cake and presents.
She ate tacos and played with blue slime she got from another girl who lives at Share Homestead, the family homeless shelter in Hazel Dell. She alternated between holding babies and holding Baby, a dog belonging to her “auntie,” a woman staying at the shelter. Alexia asked Auntie if she brought ice cream for her birthday.
Read more about families in the shelter system and how changes may help them get back on their feet.
It’s 2:10 p.m. on a Monday and northbound traffic has slowed to a crawl near the Interstate 5 Bridge.
Nearby, Steve Johnson is polishing off breakfast at the Cascade Grill in the Jubitz Travel Center.
Johnson’s day started in Pierce County, delivering produce to the Costco Distribution Center in Sumner. After unloading his cargo, he headed south to the Jubitz mini-city at 10210 N. Vancouver Way in Portland. His leased Freightliner Cascadia tractor-trailer sits in the parking lot.
Learn more about how traffic on Interstate 5 complicates shipping.
In order to address citizens across the 18th Legislative District before the new session starts Jan. 14, Sen. Ann Rivers, R-La Center, Rep. Brandon Vick, R-Felida, and Rep.-elect Larry Hoff hosted a marathon town hall session on Saturday starting at 9 a.m. in Ridgefield and ending at 4:30 p.m. in Salmon Creek.
The schedule was so jam packed Hoff even got a speeding ticket trying to get between Ridgefield and Battle Ground in a timely fashion.
Room after room was packed full and the public came armed with insightful questions about everything from opioids and climate change to mental health, education funding and as many might predict, what’s going on with the Interstate 5 Bridge.
Read more about lawmakers’ thoughts on the upcoming session.
In a year filled with heightened political vitriol, two deaths brought the nation together to remember men who represented a seemingly bygone era of U.S. politics.
George H.W. Bush was a president, vice president, congressman, CIA director and Navy pilot during World War II, where he flew 58 missions and was shot down over the Pacific. As a politician, he had his fair share of critics and was voted out of office after one term as president. But the Republican reinvented himself in the years after his time in the White House, becoming a fundraiser for disaster relief and forming an unlikely friendship with the man who ousted him from office, former President Bill Clinton.
Look back at who else of note died in 2018.
The Washington Department of Ecology has fined the city of Vancouver $60,000 for spilling nearly 600,000 gallons of raw sewage into the Columbia River. The fine announced Friday comes after a 15-month investigation into spills on Sept. 30, 2017 and Oct. 25, 2017.
The Sept. 30 spill released nearly an Olympic-sized pool’s worth of sewage from the Westside Wastewater Treatment Facility. City staff characterized the spill as a rare occurrence, noting a similar event had not taken place for at least 26 years.
Learn more about the cause of the spills.
