Nine-year-old Cole Churchill was on his way from Spokane to Omaha, Neb., on Wednesday to see his father, just returned from deployment to Afghanistan. Then came the blizzard, trapping the boy in Denver. Unaccompanied by an adult, he was bewildered and lost until a fellow United Airlines passenger and later airline representatives helped him find his way through the chaos of a snowed-in airport.
The stickers sealing the envelopes said simply, "To a friend, from a friend."Inside were Christmas cards being handed out on several North Division Spokane Transit Authority buses. The woman distributing them Thursday morning was a complete stranger to the passengers, whom she greeted with a "Merry Christmas" before quickly exiting. If they saw her again, though, they might give her a big hug.
Spokane Community College students and North Side residents will soon have a new place to catch the bus. The Spokane Transit Authority is planning to build a transit center on the southeast corner of Mission Avenue and Greene Street, across the street from SCC.
They'll give impaired drivers a free tow home from the tavern, or from that Christmas gathering where the holiday cheer flowed a little too readily. Just don't ask the tow truck operators participating in Spokane's "Towing for the Holidays" program to drive to another party.
Condition green, condition yellow, condition red – colors aren't just for traffic lights and terrorism warnings; they also guide how street departments handle plowing. In Spokane, green means monitoring wet roadways. Yellow brings deicing trucks to slick roadways, freezing rain conditions and up to 2 inches of snow. Any more snow than that, and crews go into red mode, using snowplows to clear streets, said Engineering Department spokeswoman Ann Nolan.
Light rail plans ran off-track Thursday evening when the Spokane Transit Authority disbanded the group charged with planning rapid transit between Liberty Lake and downtown Spokane. STA Board members unanimously voted to set aside the project, although they commended the Light Rail Steering Committee for its work.
Light rail backers are determined to keep pushing for a commuter train system between Spokane and Liberty Lake even though voters turned down two advisory measures on the issue last month. Thursday's Spokane Transit Authority Board meeting will likely decide the light rail question. Board members will vote to continue the project or to kill it for the foreseeable future.
There's a Jeep Liberty in north Spokane that is anything but free to roam. Commuters may have noticed it locked up tight in a cage in a Washington Department of Social and Health Services parking lot on Boone Avenue between Ash and Maple streets – one vehicle, one parking space, fully encased in chain-link fencing.
A night on the town kept Floyd M. Johnson alive during the Japanese assault on Pearl Harbor. "Old-Fashioneds saved my life," said the Lewiston resident as he recalled the stark details. Johnson plans to drink those same cocktails again today, as he and his sons mark the 65th anniversary of that Dec. 7, 1941, surprise attack.
Two Fairchild Air Force Base explosives disposal experts are being awarded military medals for heroism displayed in Iraq earlier this year. Tech. Sgt. Jesus Hernandez, 36, will be awarded the Bronze Star for his ongoing leadership during explosive ordnance disposal missions, including one day when he and his team disabled three improvised bombs on one road while under attack, and another in which he disabled a car bomb without destroying evidence needed to find the bomb maker.
Kootenai County residents envious of all the traffic information available online in Spokane County may soon have their own Interstate 90 cameras monitoring traffic and highlighting trouble spots. Planners with the Idaho Transportation Department, highway districts and cities are considering installing cameras and weather sensors along I-90 from the Washington state line into Coeur d'Alene, as well as adding message boards on the freeway and nearby arterials.
Streetcars remind many of days gone by, but a group of college students sees them as part of Coeur d'Alene's transportation future. The students, enrolled at Washington State University's Design Institute in Spokane, are proposing a 6-mile electric streetcar loop connecting the Riverstone development, North Idaho College, downtown Coeur d'Alene, midtown and Kootenai Medical Center.
Washington was rated one of the 15 deadliest states for drunken driving by a national group of physicians working to prevent traffic fatalities. The Coalition to End Needless Death on Our Roadways' "Fatal Fifteen" report was released Thursday, just a day before Washington launched its annual drunken driving enforcement emphasis campaign.
It's tough to prove. But a Gonzaga University law student believes National Guard soldiers and other reservists are having a harder time finding jobs because of the uncertainty over future deployments, even though both state and federal law forbids such discrimination.
Gotta love getting something for free, so hop on the bus Friday, Saturday and Sunday and ride for nothing. The Spokane Transit Authority is offering the free days while it upgrades fare boxes on all its buses.
For all the worry over El Niño, the phenomenon that can throw typical winter weather patterns astray, travel experts suggest keeping the tire chains handy and the snow skis waxed up. And those considering winter forays to the sunny southwestern U.S. should still take sunscreen even though the latest government weather maps show greater risk of wet months ahead.
Three crashes in eight days were just too much for Broadway Avenue resident Barbara Tuttle. She's pushing for Spokane Valley to install left-turn signals at Broadway and University Road.
The Spokane Transit Authority Board Thursday delayed discussion of whether to proceed planning for a proposed $265 million light rail project between Spokane and Liberty Lake. Voters rejected two advisory light rail propositions. The first asked whether STA should conduct a study on how to pay for the project. The second asked if STA should use its existing resources to pay for preliminary engineering and design for the light rail line.
Spokane Transit Authority staff are a month behind in preparing the 2007 budget and plan to give taxpayers just hours to review and comment on their proposed spending plan before seeking final board approval. A draft budget is typically presented to the board in November and then tweaked and adopted in December, but other projects and union negotiations have slowed the budgeting process, said STA Finance Director Jim Plaster.
Puff away and your Spokane Transit Authority job hopes may disappear in the cloud of smoke. STA executives want a nonsmoking work force but are limiting the proposed employment ban only to nonunion positions, including management jobs. An across-the-board policy likely would require renegotiation of labor contracts.
Light rail efforts are getting close to running off the tracks. The Spokane Transit Authority Board will consider this week whether to continue funding design and planning for a proposed light rail system between Spokane and Liberty Lake. Voters last week said they've had enough.
Old soldiers may never die, but unlike Gen. Douglas MacArthur's famous observation, they don't all just fade away either. Many local veterans work to help their brothers in arms, including those in Iraq and Afghanistan, by providing financial aid, moral support and political clout. They say helping the next generation of veterans is a natural extension of the brotherhood they feel for those who served beside them on the battlefield.
Horseback riding, fishing, songs around the campfire and … war games. An Idaho anti-terrorism school has plans to add military and law enforcement training to the list of activities at a ranch near Harrison.
Lucas T. White loved his wife, Jennifer, and their two Jack Russell terriers. The Moses Lake man enjoyed fishing, hunting and snowboarding. He relished his job as an Army sergeant, serving with a Fort Lewis-based Stryker brigade deployed to Iraq.
At a time when many Americans are questioning the wisdom of invading Iraq, one prominent Iraqi general says it was the United States' best and only choice to help Iraqis and protect itself. Gen. Georges Sada, an Assyrian Christian, rose through the ranks in the Iraqi military, starting as a pilot and eventually becoming an adviser to Saddam Hussein.
