Nick Eaton

Officers descended on Geiger Corrections Center on Friday after drunken and rowdy inmates sparked a daylong search for contraband at the facility. Four inmates mixed Purell hand sanitizer and Kool-Aid to make an alcoholic concoction and were found drunk about 11 a.m., said Sgt. Dave Reagan of the Spokane County Sheriff's Office. They became uncooperative, so officers used force to get them to obey commands, including strapping two of them into restraint chairs.

A second suspect in last week's sexual assault at a Washington State University sorority is a known pornographic film star. Christopher Jack Reid, 25, whose screen name is "Jack Venice," is being sought by Pullman police on charges of second-degree rape, first-degree burglary, attempted residential burglary, and two counts of residential burglary.

It was just one month ago that Ahmad Kamara was living in his home country of Liberia, rarely eating more than rice and struggling to live in a fractured nation on the mend. On Aug. 11, as 25 friends and family members saw him off, he boarded an airplane bound for the United States. His destination was a far cry from Liberia's capital of Monrovia, an impoverished city of 1.5 million. Now Kamara lives on a small farm in Palouse, Wash., with a friend he met while driving fire trucks for the United Nations. His mission in the United States: gain limitless experiences as he job-shadows the Pullman Fire Department.

Firefighters converged Tuesday afternoon on a brush fire that started small but quickly charged toward numerous homes just north of Spokane. The blaze was first described as 6 feet by 6 feet, but when crews arrived, it was large enough to call in air support. The state Department of Natural Resources sent several helicopters and small air tankers to help the Spokane Fire Department and Spokane County Fire District 9 battle the 9-acre blaze.

A familiar image of a wildfire might be 50-foot flames with water-hauling helicopters circling a tower of black smoke. But for Helitack, the Washington Department of Natural Resources' helicopter firefighting team, the average assignment is much smaller. Helitack's goal is to keep fires under 10 acres. Last year, the team was 96 percent successful, said Dan Boyle, helicopter program coordinator. However, once a fire gets larger than 1,000 acres, it's essentially beyond Helitack's control.

A woman who tried to help extinguish an apartment fire Friday evening was taken to Holy Family Hospital for smoke inhalation. The woman, whose name was not available, and others raced over to the Cedar Hollow Apartments, 5808 S. Regal St., to knock on doors and grab fire extinguishers, witness Matt Hall said.