Huckleberries Online

AM Scanner Traffic — 5.20.09

Posted by DFO

May 20, 2009 3:57 p.m. • 9 comments

At 8:46 a.m. A tree has fallen on a logger in the Burma Road & Emerald Drive area, east of Turner Bay on Lake Coeur d’Alene, near Harrison. Possible fatality. Update: Emergency responders have had difficulty locating a contact person to take them to the site. They finally found one about 9:15 a.m. Update 2: Law enforcement now on scene. Update 3 @ 12:40 p.m.: Sheriff declares adult male dead in logging accident and are now trying to notify next of kin.

3:41 p.m. A Post Falls mother reports that a 23YO male poked her teen son with a knife, sufficient enough to leave a mark on his stomach. She has the knife. But she’s afraid that the man is returning to her home.
3:23 p.m. R/P reports that an unsecure load on a blue pickup shifted dangerously @ I-90 & Huetter rest stop.
3:13 p.m. A child is running away from Betty Kiefer Elementary/Rathdrum.
1:18 p.m. Man with a history of dementia left for the dump this morning and hasn’t returned.

11:55 a.m. Something brown is in the road on Highway 53, near Rathdrum — possibly a tire.

10:40 a.m. An NIC hired hand is en route to deliver a doghouse, a prize in a college foundation drawing.

10:35 a.m. A motorcyclist is speeding thru the neighborhood @ Maplewood & Riverside.

10:28 a.m. An 18YO female in a w/b vehicle on I-90 @ Sherman Avenue is suffering intense abdominal pain and needs an ambulance.

9:51 a.m. R/P reports that a registered sex offender has given a fake address to the Kootenai County Sheriff’s Department.

Nine comments on this post so far. Add yours!

brentandrews on May 20 at 9:52 a.m.
My prayers go out to this logger … scary, dangerous job, logging.
DFO on May 20 at 10:04 a.m.
I lost one friend to logging in North Idaho. Another was seriously injured in a logging accident. I agree with Brent. It’s a “scary, dangerous job.”
Liz on May 20 at 12:02 p.m.
a doghouse, eh???
I suppose it’s better to deliver a doghouse than to be IN the doghouse…
Stickman on May 20 at 9:05 p.m.
I met a young man about ten years ago at Honeywell in the valley, where I worked for over ten years. He was a logger and his family was as well for many generations. He quit logging and worked where I did because he needed to make a living. He didn’t like it, but he survived. He was laid off one summer and went back to the job he loved, logging. The very next day, doing what he loved, a very big tree fell the wrong way and he was killed. He was 44. I miss him. I would never do what he and his family did for so long, it’s just not my nature.
Kage_Mann on May 20 at 9:22 p.m.
When you work in the woods logging and especially, being a sawyer.It’s not about IF you get hurt; it’s about WHEN you get hurt. Even the best get hurt and how much experience you may have is a good indicator of whether, you’ll survive your mishap.
spokelooneh on May 20 at 11:00 p.m.
Just another reason to minimize logging, in my book. It’s STILL very dangerous, top of the L&I chart dangerous.

Sorry Kage, learn a new trade. It’s time to minimize this barbarism of man and earth.

Marmite, your son should be looking at going to Canada after his college. They’ve got way more forests to exploit, these days, than the US does, and they’re logging at far higher rate than in the US.

The other booming North American extraction scheme is in mid-southern Alberta. Tar/Oil sands. Black gold. Texas tea. Except it’s THE most environmental harmful, per bbl, manner of extracting oil in the world. And there’s a GIGANTIC amount of it.

Working in the forest is nice though, if that were what it was all about.
Kage_Mann on May 21 at 10:14 a.m.
Sorry Kage, learn a new trade.spokelooneh on May 20 at 11:00 p.m.

Ok, do you have any suggestions? What would be a good field to get into, to make a decent living?
Nick_Adams on May 21 at 12:01 p.m.
Kage is right, it’s not if it’s when. Every logger I’ve known has been hurt on the job. Some seriously, even killed.

That said, I believe it’s an important part of our economic mix, particularly in rural areas. I also believe that trees are a renewable resource and should be treated as such in a responsible way. I also support wilderness designation and fairly rigorous environmental protections surrounding the harvest of this resource.

If I had to work in any of the so-called extraction industries: mining, logging, oil/gas, etc., I’d choose logging hands down.
toadman on May 21 at 12:06 p.m.
Logging, another job that should be done by robots.

Bring on the robot overlords.

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D.F. Oliveria is a columnist and blogger for The Spokesman-Review. Huckleberries Online was judged the best 2008 Idaho newspaper blog by the Idaho Press Club. And the best 2007 news blog in the Pacific Northwest by the Society for Professional Journalist. Print Huckleberries is a past winner of the Herb Caen Memorial Column contest by the National Association of Newspaper Columnists. The Readership Institute of Northwestern University cited this blog as a good example of online community journalism.