Where there’s smoke, there’s The Columbian’s top story of 2017

Typically, our story of the year is all about the eyeballs. It’s the coverage that drew our subscribers and online readers.

This year’s top story was also about the noses. Not everybody in the area could see the wildfires in the Columbia River Gorge, but we all could smell the smoke.

Health officials urged people to limit their exposure to outdoor air; the smoke prompted officials to issue an air-pollution advisory.

The can’t-get-away-from-it nature of the wildfire season, and its impact on a natural treasure, made it The Columbian’s top story of the year.

Members of our news team reviewed a ballot with 20 nominations. They selected their top 10 stories, then picked one as story of the year.

1. Gorge fires (41 votes)

The Eagle Creek Fire started on Sept. 2 on the Oregon side of the Columbia River Gorge.

It jumped to the Washington side on Sept. 5, prompting the immediate evacuation of 40 homes in Skamania County. It wound up burning several hundred acres near Archer Mountain in western Skamania County, on lands managed by the state Department of Natural Resources and the U.S. Forest Service.

It took three months before the fire on the Oregon side was declared 100 percent contained on Nov. 30.

Authorities said the fire was started by a 15-year-old Vancouver boy playing with fireworks. He has been charged with reckless burning.

It scorched about 75 square miles in the Columbia River Gorge National Scenic Area. Many trails on the Oregon side remain closed.

2. Port election (28)

In one of the state’s most expensive election campaigns, Don Orange beat Kris Greene for a Vancouver port commission seat.

Contributions totaled more than $1 million — almost $20 a vote.

Orange, a Vancouver auto shop owner, is an opponent of Vancouver Energy’s plan to build an oil terminal at the port.

In the final returns, Orange had 34,238 votes (64.7 percent) and will replace outgoing commissioner Brian Wolfe. Insurance agent Kris Greene received 18,699 votes (35.3 percent.)

Orange and Eric LaBrant are expected to form a majority on the three-person board that will oppose the project.

3. Oil terminal (27)

The Vancouver Energy oil terminal stirred passions across the ideological spectrum and was the central element in a handful of court cases.

It took more than four years for the state Energy Facility Site Evaluation Council to make a recommendation in 2017 for Gov. Jay Inslee to turn down the crude-by-rail terminal. But the proposed 360,000 barrel per day rail-to-marine transfer terminal’s fate likely won’t be resolved until sometime next year.

The port’s lease with Vancouver Energy renews every three months. Just before every renewal, people on both sides of the issue filled port commission meetings to advocate canceling or preserving the lease.

Those groups organized demonstrations and gave lengthy testimony during hearings in Vancouver.

EFSEC unanimously voted last month to recommend Inslee deny permits to the project. The governor will make a decision in the next couple of months.

4. Ilani casino opens (26)

The Ilani Casino Resort opened in April after years of legal and administrative wrangling, including a victory by the Cowlitz Tribe and its partners in the U.S. Court of Appeals.

The 368,000-square-foot, $510 million casino opened on April 24 west of La Center at Exit 16 on Interstate 5.

After seven months, casino managers said they were encouraged by a lot of numbers. An average of 7,000 to 11,000 visitors arrive every day from a 90-mile radius. And about 1,500 employees show up for work every week — the biggest single injection of jobs in Clark County in at least five years.

Meanwhile, La Center leaders have been discussing the casino’s impact on the city’s budget. At one point, cardrooms provided more than 70 percent of La Center’s revenue.

5. Affordable housing (25)

Affordable rent and homeownership continued to elude many people. Rent on one-bedroom apartments hovered above $1,300 and median home prices passed $325,000.

Experts say 2018 will remain a hot housing market.

But, 2017 was a busy year for residential construction that attempted to fill some of the demand.

Regulations on accessory dwelling units were relaxed in the city of Vancouver. For the first time in many years, more multifamily units were under construction than single-family homes in Vancouver.

And, several projects got funding from the city’s Affordable Housing Fund. Some of them are under construction and will be available to low-income renters in 2018.

6. (tie) Camas mill (18)

Georgia-Pacific announced plans on Nov. 14 to shut down several operations at its Camas mill and cut up to 300 jobs. The mill was once the lifeblood of Camas, and the financial backbone of the city, responsible for more than 70 percent of its property tax revenues.

When the mill cuts those jobs next year, up to 140 employees will remain, a far cry from the 2,400 employed at the mill in the 1980s. Thinking in Camas has started to shift to the mill property, especially the 189 acres between downtown Camas and the Camas Slough. It will most likely take years of cleanup to get the site ready, but should that happen, how could the land be redeveloped?

Even if the mill does shut down fully one day, Camas Mayor Scott Higgins is confident the mill will always be remembered as an integral part of city history.

“They are the reason we’re here,” Higgins said. “They formed our culture and our vision. Frankly, they probably taught us to value good jobs in your community.”

6. (tie) Luyster triple-murder verdict (18)

Convicted triple murderer Brent Ward Luyster — a local man with a long, violent criminal history — was sentenced Dec. 15 to three life sentences without possibility of release plus nearly 54 additional years.

A Clark County Superior Court jury in November found Luyster, 37, guilty on three counts of aggravated first-degree murder, attempted first-degree murder, and first- and second-degree unlawful possession of a firearm.

Luyster fatally shot his best friend Zachary David Thompson, 36; friend Joseph Mark LaMar, 38; and LaMar’s partner, Janell Renee Knight, 43, on July 15, 2016, at LaMar’s home southeast of Woodland.

Thompson’s partner, Breanne Leigh, then 32, was wounded but lived to testify against Luyster. Luyster plans to appeal.

8. (tie) Waterfront Vancouver project (16)

Restaurants, apartments and office buildings began to rise from The Waterfront Vancouver, a 32-acre swath of property that once was the Boise Cascade paper mill. The first wave of restaurants, a 7-acre park and a 90-foot pier will highlight the new neighborhood when they open in July.

Just upstream, the Port of Vancouver officially signed The AC by Marriott as its first tenant at Terminal 1, marking the first steps into turning the former Red Lion Hotel Vancouver at the Quay into a 10-acre mixed-use plaza.

8. (tie) Homelessness issues (16)

Homelessness in Clark County grew by 8 percent, according to the 2017 census of homeless people.

An idea to turn a Hazel Dell wedding venue into a homeless shelter was shot down. Decriminalizing camping, the lack of restrooms, laundry facilities and shelter during adverse weather were addressed.

Things came to a quite-literal breaking point during the summer when sewage backed up on the first floor of the men’s homeless shelter downtown.

A nonprofit is working to open a mobile shower trailer. Another is running an overnight program in church parking lots.

Soon to come: a decision on whether the city can move a day center for the homeless to the former state Fish & Wildlife Building in central Vancouver.

8. (tie) Solar eclipse (16)

On Aug. 21, Clark County residents became some of the earliest witnesses to a live spectacle that was seen by more than 200 millions Americans.

It was the first coast-to-coast total solar eclipse to cross the United States since 1918.

Its 70-mile-wide path of totality included Salem, Ore. Locally, the eclipse peaked at 99 percent totality, blacking out all but a thin slice of the sun at 10:18 a.m.

According to a University of Michigan study, 88 percent of American adults — 215 million — viewed the eclipse. About 154 million American adults watched it with eclipse glasses or pin-hole viewers; about 61 million viewed it electronically.