What’s the latest on the heat wave? Check our local weather coverage.
In case you missed them, here are some of the top stories from the weekend:
Thinking about hiking up to Lower Falls on the Lewis River to beat the heat? Don’t. But if you really have to see it, go on the weekdays.
Hoards of visitors are making the site extremely overcrowded, trashed and trampled.
The Gifford Pinchot National Forest is urging people to spare the Lower Falls Recreation Area and seek out new places in the forest to visit.
“There’s way more people at the site than the site was developed to handle,” said Emily Platt, district ranger for the Mount Adams Ranger District. “There’s overuse of restroom facilitates that are already in bad shape. There’s a huge amount of erosion, and it’s really changing the character of the site. It’s not intentional — people don’t mean to do that — but it’s unavoidable with that many people out there.”
A 13-year-old girl was seriously injured Saturday after picking up a plastic bottle tossed from a passing vehicle, only to have it explode in her hands, according to the Vancouver Police Department.
Police dispatched at 7:40 p.m. to investigate a report of a small explosion near Fort Vancouver Way and East 26th Street in the Rose Village neighborhood discovered the girl suffering from significant injuries to her hands and arm, according to a police statement. She was transported to a hospital with serious but not life-threatening injuries.
Investigators learned that a green SUV had been traveling on East 26th Street when someone in the vehicle threw a small plastic bottle onto the ground before the vehicle drove away, according to the statement.
The Clark County medical examiner has identified the woman who died from a fall at Lacamas Lake Park as 37-year-old Tara L. Holyk.
Holyk, a Vancouver resident, died from multiple blunt force injuries caused by an accident, according to the medical examiner.
The Camas-Washougal Fire Department reported last week that Holyk fell in the Potholes area below the dam at Lacamas Lake Park on the evening of July 18.
The incident was reported about 7 p.m. Firefighters arrived to find Holyk had died of traumatic injuries. A technical rescue team spent three hours to safely recover her body.
Two parents have filed complaints against Vancouver Public Schools alleging the district failed to provide their children with state and federally required special education services.
Cara Bailey and Sarah McPartland last month filed due process complaints, a legal term for complaints filed against school districts alleging failure to provide a free appropriate public education to a disabled child in violation of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act.
Though Bailey and McPartland’s sons attended different schools and were eligible for different types of special education services, both complaints point to similar alleged failings by the district. Both claim that over the course of multiple school years and at different campuses, the district improperly restrained their sons and failed to inform them when and why some restraints were used.
Both also say the district failed to correctly implement their sons’ individualized education programs, special education plans formed by school staff and teachers designed to meet a student’s individual needs.
A home shouldn’t have been so hard to find, Morganna Figueroa recalled.
The 37-year-old had just ended a relationship when house-hunting shaped up to be its own kind of heartache.
“My ex-boyfriend and I separated and as we were living together in his house, I was the one to have to move,” she said. Approved for a loan for up to $250,000, she was hopeful to land a house in a nice school district and a safe neighborhood for her preteen daughter. But, as many first-time buyers today will say, homes priced below $300,000 are scarce in Clark County.
Houses in June sold for a median price of $361,000, the highest month on record in Clark County, according to the Regional Multiple Listing Service. Prices have risen in part because enough buyers are willing and able to pay that much for homes. But others fear the costs are leaving them behind. Renters especially worry they won’t find homes in their price range.
