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Monday, March 18, 2024
March 18, 2024

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Morning Press: Fire, food danger; local wine, shopping; grass-roots policy

The Columbian
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Were you away for the weekend? Catch up on some big stories.

Thanksgiving week should be mild and moist. Local weather coverage is online here.

In apartment fires, neighbors share the danger

Apartment fires are on the rise in Clark County, causing more deaths and twice the amount of property damage this year than usual.

Fifty seven fires were reported in occupied apartment buildings in Clark County through October of this year, according to The Columbian’s analysis of data from local fire agencies. That’s already more apartment fires than the average rate of about 50 a year.

Of the four fatal fires in the county this year, two of those deaths occurred in an apartment complex. Those were the first apartment fire deaths in the county since 2011.

By the end of October of this year, the damage to apartment buildings and residents’ property totaled nearly $4.4 million, according to the data. That’s more than double the average value of property destroyed yearly by apartment fires from 2009 to 2013, which was about $2 million a year.

As the number of renters in the county increases and new apartment complexes are built to higher safety standards, officials remain focused on fire prevention for renters. Local fire marshals and landlords say they are intensifying their efforts to curb risky tenant behaviors that can cause these kinds of fires.

“The trends that we’re seeing are accidental fires caused by human behavior,” Vancouver Fire Marshal Heidi Scarpelli said. “Families in apartment buildings live close together and affect each other’s risk when it comes to fire.”

  • Read the complete story here.

Badly handled turkey may be stuffed full of danger

Thanksgiving is right around the corner. Plates will soon be filled with turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, pumpkin pie — and a side of salmonella?

Each year, an estimated 48 million people in the U.S. get sick from foodborne diseases, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Norovirus and salmonella pathogens account for 69 percent of those illnesses, according to the CDC.

This holiday season, health officials and food safety experts are offering advice to keep foodborne illness off of the Thanksgiving menu.

The food with the most potential to cause illness is the main attraction — the turkey.

Frozen turkeys should never be left out on the counter to thaw. Meat or poultry left in the “danger zone” between 40 degrees and 140 degrees foster the perfect environment for bacteria to rapidly multiply, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

One safe way to thaw a turkey is in the refrigerator, which takes about 24 hours for every 5 pounds. With that method, a 20-pound turkey would take about four days to thaw, said Sandra Brown, food safety and nutrition faculty at Washington State University Clark County Extension.

Another method is to submerge the frozen turkey, enclosed in a leak-proof bag, in a sink of cold water. The water will need to be changed every 30 minutes to ensure the turkey doesn’t rise above 40 degrees, Brown said.

“You can’t put it in there in the morning and go off to work,” she said. “Eventually, that water is going to get warm.”

With this method, a 20-pound turkey will thaw in about 10 hours, Brown said.

  • Read the complete story here.

Follow Thanksgiving with a wine-tasting tour

Clark County wineries and tasting rooms have a special after-Thanksgiving treat for residents and out-of-towners alike aimed at bringing them out of their turkey-induced coma.

Beginning Friday and lasting through Sunday, vintners will be swinging wide their cellar doors to help shoppers stock up on locally crafted wines for the remaining holiday season.

Wine tour

Andee Mowrey, sales and marketing manager at English Estate Winery, says the Clark County Wine Country Thanksgiving was spawned from an early November meeting of several area winemakers and tasting room owners.

Along with print advertising, social media is being leveraged through scheduled Facebook blasts in an effort to draw a wider audience to the burgeoning Southwest Washington wine scene.

Tasting fees were dropped to anywhere from one-half to one-quarter what people will find in the Willamette Valley for the event, and area vintners will be making use of estate-grown grapes as well as sourcing from Eastern Washington, Hood River, Ore., and beyond.

  • Read the complete story here.

Local shoppers stop in at local shops

From ukuleles to archery lessons to full rain suits for children, shoppers this Christmas season can find a variety of unique gifts in local stores, many of which are seeing the fruits of a growing “buy local” ethos.

Clark County’s own “buy local” movement seems to be catching on with shoppers at a time when consumer spending is on the rise, said Mary Sisson, co-owner of Kazoodles toy store in Vancouver and president of Buy Vancouver USA.

“The first week of November kind of blew us away,” Sisson said, noting sales were up 46 percent from the first week of November last year. “We’re kind of hoping that the trend continues.”

Clark County has almost caught up to pre-recession sales numbers, when inflation-adjusted sales in retail stores peaked at about $578.8 million in 2007, said Scott Bailey, regional economist for the Washington Employment Security Department. The current growth rate is likely to slow down as people move beyond deferred spending during the downturn, he noted.

“I’m thinking that there’s a fair amount of catching up that’s going on right now,” Bailey said. “I think there’s probably a fair amount of people who put off purchases while times were tough.”

Local merchants say there are plenty of good reasons for Clark County residents to spend their dollars in their home communities.

“If you’re buying at a local store you’re really supporting the local economy,” said Gabby Navidi, owner Navidi’s Olive Oil and Vinegars in Camas. “There’s also a lot that small businesses do in giving back to charities. It’s a good cycle. It stays within the community and it’s going back through the community.”

She also said it’s more convenient to shop at independent stores.

“When people shop locally, they don’t have to worry about going to the big malls and fighting for parking and traffic to travel so far,” she said. “The best thing is just revitalizing and keeping your downtown areas very unique and personalized.”

  • Read the complete story here.

Diverse group asks Inslee to block oil shipping

The latest group to go public with its opposition to new oil terminals in Washington is a diverse group including firefighters, physicians and neighborhood association leaders.

In a letter to Gov. Jay Inslee on Friday, the coalition urged the governor to stop the proposed oil terminals in Vancouver and Grays Harbor and prevent the expansion of oil refineries in Anacortes.

“We are asking you to follow through on your commitment to a clean energy future and a robust sustainable economy by denying their permitting and construction,” the letter to Inslee reads.

Geoff Simpson, a firefighter with the Kent Fire Department, said the letter was a result of meeting with a variety of people from those in the fishing industry to farmers to union representatives.

“We learned a lot from each other and universally everyone is really concerned about the potential for disaster here in Washington,” Simpson said.

Eric LaBrant, president of the Fruit Valley Neighborhood Association in Vancouver, said he signed the letter, in part, to highlight his neighborhood’s primary concern: projected emissions.

Fruit Valley neighborhood is located next to the Port of Vancouver.

“Certainly the Vancouver oil terminal proposal, in particular, involves a lot of toxic air pollutants and these are going to have a cumulative impact for the people living right there,” LaBrant said.

Projected emissions could include nitrogen dioxide, sulfur dioxide, arsenic, cadmium, hexavalent chromium, benzene and diesel engine particulate.

  • Read the complete story here.

On the front lines, it’s clear what the homeless need: housing

Agency officials who work with homeless populations in Clark and Multnomah counties championed a no-barriers, “Housing First” approach to protecting the most vulnerable street people during a brown-bag lunchtime session Thursday at the Vancouver Community Library.

Housing First means providing chronically homeless people — many of whom are dealing with mental and physical health problems as well as substance abuse issues — a stable roof over their heads.

It doesn’t require them to kick their addictions and get clean and sober first; it doesn’t even require them to get services once they’ve been housed. That’s why it’s called no-barrier housing, said Rachael Duke of Home Forward, the public housing authority for Multnomah County.

The question of services — just what sort and how intensive? — is a sore point. Some have maintained that the target population is so troubled and ill, any building aiming to house them must be just as much a medical and psychiatric facility as a dormitory.

But, Duke said, just as important is that tenants have choice in the matter. Forcing services upon troubled people who tend not to get along with others, who don’t like authority, who don’t “fit in,” tends to turn them off, she said. But having the services available for folks to opt in gives them a feeling of control over their own destiny.

She credited the “skill and art” of the staff at Bud Clark Commons with building trust and relationships with tenants, and offering services “over and over and over again” until some of the most reluctant tenants finally said yes.

“When you bring people inside and give them the opportunity to get better, some work hard to continue that process,” she said.

  • Read the complete story here.
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