Were you away for the weekend? Catch up on some big stories.
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When Martin Knapp woke up 73 years ago today, he knew it was a Sunday he’d never forget.
Dec. 7, 1941, was going to be his wedding day.
“I was starting to go on liberty,” the Vancouver veteran said a few days ago. “I was planning on getting married. I’d been going with a girl for a while.”
Knapp’s wedding never took place.
o o o
When Paul Johnson’s ship steamed into Pearl Harbor, he figured his seafaring days were just about done. Once they sailed back to the West Coast, Johnson would start a new life with the woman he’d married in Vancouver on Nov. 18.
Want to help?
• If you missed the Walk & Knock food collection Saturday morning, don't despair. Numerous local businesses and nonprofit agencies are serving as drop-off sites through Tuesday. You can find a list of donation sites on the Walk & Knock website, <a href="http://www.walkandknock.org/one/volunteer_barrels.htm">www.walkandknock.org/one/volunteer_barrels.htm</a>
• Financial donations can also be mailed to the Clark County Food Bank, 6502 N.E. 47th Ave., Vancouver, WA 98661 or can be made online at <a href="http://www.walkandknock.org/one/donate.htm">www.walkandknock.org/one/donate.htm</a>. All donations will be used to purchase food.
But on that morning, Lucille Johnson, a bride of less than three weeks, suddenly was wondering whether her husband was alive.
Knapp and Johnson are among at least nine local veterans who were at Pearl Harbor that Sunday. The Japanese attack on America’s Pacific stronghold killed about 2,400 people and propelled the United States into World War II.
Knapp was aboard the USS Medusa, a Navy repair ship. Johnson was a crewman on the USS Castor, a transport ship carrying 10,000 tons of ammunition.
Other local Pearl Harbor survivors were on a variety of Navy vessels, from a noncombatant hospital ship to battleships that were high-priority targets.
- Read the complete story here.
Last month, Nancy Schultz moved into one of what local experts say is the first of its kind near downtown Vancouver: A collection of three single-family houses squeezed onto one 5,500-square-foot lot on West 16th Street between Lincoln and Markle avenues.
The arrangement is more common in Portland, where high demand and skyrocketing housing prices are leading to dense infill development, especially close to the city core. But it remains a rarity in Vancouver.
Designer Dana Harroun and her husband, builder Jack Harroun, think the Hough neighborhood could soon see more of the dense housing options found in Portland’s close-in east side neighborhoods.
The couple took a gamble in July 2013 when they bought the lot, which was zoned for what Jack Harroun described as “almost anything except a single-family home.”
The Harrouns design and build high-end custom homes. They also invest their own money in urban redevelopment within Vancouver.
The Harrouns faced an unusual incentive to develop this particular lot: They live about 300 feet from it.
“I didn’t want another multiplex rental right next to my house,” Jack Harroun said.
They wound up with three separate houses, each with a tuck-under garage and small fenced yard. Each house has three bedrooms and totals about 1,700 square feet. Each home has a small front porch and an oversized single car garage, which means it fits a full-sized SUV and still has room for bike and kayak storage.
- Read the complete story here.
In a move former Clark County Commissioner Ed Barnes calls an attempt to save Don Benton’s job as director of Environmental Services, commissioners will vote this month to formally establish existing departments by ordinance.
The proposal directly conflicts with a county charter approved by voters in November, said Nan Henriksen, a former Camas mayor who served as chairwoman of the county freeholders who wrote the charter.
The charter, which takes effect Jan. 1, gives executive authority over departments to County Manager Mark McCauley, the current county administrator.
The ordinance would prevent McCauley from consolidating any of a dozen departments.
A public hearing on the proposal will be 10 a.m. Dec. 16 at the Public Service Center, 1300 Franklin St., Vancouver.
Before leaving office, Barnes said dissolving the Department of Environmental Services and eliminating three positions — the director, finance manager and administrative assistant — would save the county $713,225 over the next two years in employee costs, a figure confirmed with the county budget office.
Barnes suggested the environmental services staff could be reassigned to the Community Development and Public Works departments, which handled most of the responsibilities before the county created the new department in 2009. Public Works could take solid waste, clean water, conservation and legacy lands, vegetation management and environmental permitting for county capital projects. Community Development could take forestry, biology and private environmental permitting, he suggested. Madore and Mielke didn’t appear to take his suggestion seriously, even though Barnes said they are always trying to find ways to cut costs and create a more efficient government.
- Read the complete story here.
A few months after Gary Brill Jr. was hit in January 2013 by a vehicle while crossing Fourth Plain Boulevard, he had to put down his dog of nine years, Buddy.
A friend, who knew Brill had lost his black Lab-Newfoundland mix, later gifted him two dachshund puppies, a brother and sister that Brill named Danny and Annie.
But now, Annie is missing.
“I was so hurt when I got them,” Brill said. “They saved me when I needed something the most.”
Brill said that Danny and Annie were a huge part of his recovery. But now, Annie’s been missing for a week.
At about 8 p.m. on Nov. 28, Brill said, he drove in his van from his trailer at 315 N.W. 194th in Ridgefield to say a quick thank you to his neighbor. When he returned to the van, Annie was gone.
“I left her in the car … it only happened in a matter of seconds,” he said.
He has checked area Humane Societies and has knocked on neighbors’ doors, but hasn’t had any luck in finding his dog.
Brill is offering a reward of $200 for Annie. If anyone sees the dog, they are asked to call Brill at 360-449-9365.
- Read the complete story here.
Want to help?
• If you missed the Walk & Knock food collection Saturday morning, don’t despair. Numerous local businesses and nonprofit agencies are serving as drop-off sites through Tuesday. You can find a list of donation sites on the Walk & Knock website, www.walkandknock.org/one/volunteer_barrels.htm
• Financial donations can also be mailed to the Clark County Food Bank, 6502 N.E. 47th Ave., Vancouver, WA 98661 or can be made online at www.walkandknock.org/one/donate.htm. All donations will be used to purchase food.
An estimated 1 of every 4 children in Clark County goes to bed hungry. Thousands of volunteers who scoured neighborhoods on a rainy Saturday morning hope to change that statistic — at least for a few months.
For the 28th year, volunteers fanned out across the county to collect bags of food and cash donations for the community’s largest one-day food drive, Walk & Knock.
Volunteers walked house to house to collect the goods. After filling their cars with donations, they delivered the food to one of numerous sorting centers. There, volunteers unloaded vehicles while more volunteers emptied bags and boxed up the items. The boxes were then loaded into trucks and later delivered to the Clark County Food Bank.
The Food Bank will redistribute everything to 32 satellite food pantries and other emergency food sites — all within our community. The donations should stock Food Bank shelves for several months, organizers said.
Walkers hit the streets at about 9 a.m. By 9:30 a.m., cars with stuffed trunks and trucks with beds full of food were pulling into the sorting station at Wy’east Middle School. High school students made up the majority of volunteers at the Vancouver school.
“It’s really fun, actually,” said Faith Jenkins, an Evergreen High School junior, as she packed boxes. “I like the systematicness of it.”
Faith and other members of the Evergreen High School Key Club manned one of the tables at the school. As donation bags came in, they sorted the items, pulling out perishable items, toiletries and pet supplies. Those items all still go to the Food Bank, said Becky Writt, Walk & Knock treasurer, they’re just boxed separately from the nonperishable food items that can sit in the warehouse for a couple of months.
- Read the complete story here.
Recent announcements of hotel and restaurant deals by the leader of a $1.3 billion commercial and residential redevelopment of Vancouver’s waterfront underscore the progress that’s being made on the long-planned project.
However, that momentum also raises a question: Is an oil-by-rail transfer terminal, proposed less than 2 miles west of the 32-acre waterfront site, far less of a threat to the waterfront project than its developer, Barry Cain, has described in his previous public statements?
The question arises after Cain, speaking during a panel discussion Thursday, said he’s inked a deal to build a 10-story hotel at the site and that it would begin construction in 2015. At least one restaurant has been signed and is expected to begin construction in 2015. A separate mixed-use building with retail, housing and office spaces also is in the works.
Previously, Cain, president of Tualatin, Ore.-based Gramor Development, has said the oil terminal would either kill or severely curtail what he’s described as a “world-class” waterfront project, including restaurants, up to 3,300 residential units, office space, retail space, a hotel and a public park. Cain has cited multiple safety and other concerns, including a spate of explosive oil-train derailments in the U.S. and Canada.
In a statement issued to The Columbian on Friday, Cain said the waterfront’s initial development won’t be as close to rail tracks as other phases. He also said he doubts the oil terminal — proposed by Tesoro Corp. and Savage Cos. to receive an average of 360,000 barrels of crude per day at the Port of Vancouver — will ever be built. He said it remains incompatible with the waterfront’s revitalization.
“We are proceeding with potential purchasers and tenants as we have planned all along,” Cain said. “The first blocks will all be waterfront development and not those closest to the rail lines.” He also said: “If the oil terminal gets approved at all, the eventual impact will be 660 rail cars a day, so this isn’t just about the waterfront future development, but other riverside and downtown opportunities. It’s our understanding that at current oil barrel prices, it’s not economically feasible to mine North Dakota oil now, anyway. It will be a contradiction to the beauty and the economic opportunities now underway at the waterfront.”
- Read the complete story here.
