In brief: Three unoccupied South Hill houses burned

Three unoccupied houses on the lower South Hill were damaged by flames early Sunday, authorities said.

Spokane firefighters were dispatched to 315 E. Fifth Ave. shortly after 6 a.m. in response to reports of a burning house and found three older houses on fire, according to the Fire Department. All were three were described as vacant and no injuries were reported.

The cause of the fires remains under investigation.

Conditions improve for fighting wildfires

RED LODGE, Mont. – A southern Montana ski area resumed normal operations Sunday and weather conditions improved, allowing firefighters to attack wildfires that ignited the previous day in the state and northern Wyoming.

“With the spring conditions, the snow is pretty good,” Jeff Carroll, spokesman for the Red Lodge Mountain, said Sunday morning.

A windy, warm, dry Saturday caused ideal wildfire conditions that normally aren’t seen until summer in the Northern Rockies.

Early Saturday afternoon, a wildfire started about 4 miles west of the community of Red Lodge and was driven by strong winds into the Custer National Forest where the ski area is located, forcing evacuation of the slopes.

The fire has burned just over 1 square mile. There was no containment as of Sunday afternoon.

North of the Red Lodge fire, another wildfire burned more than 4 square miles of mixed timber and prairie in a rural area about 30 miles west of Billings.

Fire spokeswoman Crystal Beckman said the fire forced the evacuation of part of a rural subdivision and destroyed two structures, including at least one home. It also forced closure of Interstate 90 for a time Saturday evening because of heavy smoke, she said.

While there was no containment on the fire Sunday afternoon, Beckman said there was no additional growth or major burning.

Large gift kicks off Alzheimer’s research

SEATTLE – A Bellevue family that lost three members to Alzheimer’s disease has donated $6 million to the University of Washington to advance cutting-edge research into the devastating and incurable brain disorder.

Officials with the Ellison Foundation and UW Medicine announced the gift Friday, saying the new funding will kick off a $20 million project focusing on a rare, precision-medicine approach to the disease.

“This is a major, major public-health need,” said Dr. Thomas Montine, director of UW’s Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center.

The funds will help pay for expanded use of exome sequencing, which analyzes patients’ genes to determine potential markers of Alzheimer’s risk; new research into using patients’ own stem cells to test drugs that can stop the disease; and assessing use of a tool known as functional magnetic resonance imaging, or fMRI, to detect changes in the brain before dementia occurs.