Briefly

County firefighter collapses from heat

A Spokane County firefighter collapsed from the heat Tuesday afternoon while helping rescue a woman who fell 20 feet at the climbing rocks near Upriver Drive, according to fire officials.

Fire District 9 Chief Bob Anderson said they responded to a call at 11:15 a.m. of a fallen climber. The extent of injuries was unclear but were not life threatening, Anderson said.

The woman was stranded on a ledge. A second technical rescue team was called in from Spokane Valley Fire when the firefighter collapsed, said Cooper Kennett, Spokane Valley Fire Battalion Chief.

“That firefighter wound up recovering enough where he could walk to an ambulance,” Kennett said.

The stranded climber appeared to have been climbing with minimal gear. “She was pretty much bare bones,” Kennett said. “We found shoes and a water bottle at the base of the rock.”

The name of the woman, in her 20s, was not released.

Duplex fire forces residents to flee

A Tuesday night duplex fire at 1220 S. Pittsburg forced the occupants to flee the building, according to a Spokane Fire Department dispatcher. The call came at 8:46 p.m. No injuries were reported, and no further details were available late Tuesday. By 10:15 p.m., a fire engine and a ladder crew were still on the scene.

Suspicious package closes ferry terminal

Seattle The discovery of a “suspicious” package prompted Washington State Ferries to close the downtown terminal for about two hours Tuesday night, leaving several hundred Seattle Mariners fans waiting for boats.

Bomb squad members determined shortly after 10 p.m. that the package, possibly part of construction work, was not dangerous, ferry system spokeswoman Pat Patterson said.

A ferry worker found the package at about 8:15 p.m., leaning against a pillar on the Pier 52 terminal’s car deck level where cars are held before boarding, she said.

The State Patrol responded and called the bomb squad, which X-rayed the package.

One ferry en route from Bainbridge was diverted north to Edmonds while a second boat traveling from Bremerton was sent to the West Seattle dock at Fauntleroy.

Late Tuesday night, both of those boats were being called back to Seattle to pick up Seattle Mariners fans leaving a just-concluded game at nearby Safeco Field.

Official: No federal funding for lake cleanup

A week after the Coeur d’Alene Tribe challenged other governments to come up with money to monitor the health of Lake Coeur d’Alene, U.S. Rep. Butch Otter, R-Idaho, said he sees no federal funding on the horizon.

A week ago, Coeur d’Alene Tribal Chairman Ernie Stensgar pledged $5 million in tribal money to get a cleanup and monitoring plan for Lake Coeur d’Alene off the ground. He challenged federal and state governments to pony up a matching amount. The tribe is worried, officials said, that any plan to keep an eye on toxic heavy metals lining the lakebed will wither for lack of funding.

No funds are coming from Washington, D.C., this year, Otter said Tuesday. “We are way too late in the appropriation process,” he said.

Otter and other members of the Idaho congressional delegation last Friday announced the appropriation of $15 million to clean up mining and milling pollution upstream from Lake Coeur d’Alene as part of the 30-year Superfund cleanup of lead, zinc, cadmium and other heavy metals left by more than a century of mining in the Silver Valley.

On Tuesday, the congressman said that with limited money, it makes more sense to deal with upstream pollution before funding a management plan to monitor the heavy metals that coat the bottom of Lake Coeur d’Alene to the tune of an estimated 70 million to 77 million tons.

Public input sought on Sand Creek Byway

State and federal agencies are seeking public input Thursday about potential environmental impacts from the proposed U.S. Highway 95 Sand Creek Byway.

The controversial project was proposed by the Idaho Transportation Department in an effort to improve traffic flow through Sandpoint. The project calls for a new interchange with U.S. Highway 2 and the realignment of U.S. Highway 95 with an auxiliary southbound lane.

The comments are sought by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the Idaho Department of Lands, which are reviewing applications for permits that would lead to construction.

Those wishing to speak will be asked to sign an attendance card. Elected officials will speak first, followed by organizations, individuals and government officials. The hearing will begin at 6 p.m. in the Sandpoint High School, 410 S. Division Ave.

Diseased coho may have infected hatchery

Quinault, Wash. The release of 44,000 diseased young coho salmon upstream from the Quinault National Fish Hatchery may have contaminated the operation, a preliminary U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service report says.

The coho fingerlings were released June 9 despite substantial evidence that they were sick, according to Friday’s report, which added, “This action may have contributed to the spread of the disease to other ponds in the hatchery.”

The hatchery produces more than 640,000 salmon annually.

Two current hatchery employees reported the release to the office of U.S. Rep. Norm Dicks, D-Wash., when their complaints to hatchery managers were ignored, The Daily World newspaper in Aberdeen reported.

“What happened was a fluke,” said hatchery project leader Paul Hayduk, who authorized the release. “We should have had the salmon checked out by our Fish Health Center prior to releasing them… . I have no reason for why we didn’t.”

The preliminary diagnosis was furunculosis, which creates boil-like lesions on the skin and musculature of infected fish.

Untreated fish will die, the report said. The disease also remains in carcasses and in surrounding waters, so the hatchery could be infected as the dead fish float downstream.

“Now our entire hatchery are considered carriers. They’re all sick, they’re all diseased. All the ponds are affected,” said Herb Lawler, one of the whistleblowers. “They could all die.”

Fish & Wildlife agents have begun treating the ponds with antibiotics, said spokeswoman Amy Gaskill at the agency’s regional office in Portland.

The Quinault Hatchery is on Cook Creek, which flows into the Quinault River 20 miles from the Pacific Ocean.

The government operates the facility on Quinault Indian Nation land.

Dad dies, 2 boys survive ocean emergency

Long Beach, Wash. Two boys survived a scare in the Pacific Ocean on Tuesday, but their 46-year-old father died, the Coast Guard said.

The Coast Guard station at Ilwaco received an emergency call just before 1 p.m. about an adult and two children in distress in the water off Long Beach.

By the time rescuers reached the scene, one child had swum to shore, said Fire Chief Thomas O’Donohue of Pacific County Fire District No. 1. The other child was rescued by Coast Guard officers in a lifeboat. The two boys are 10 and 11 years old; O’Donohue could not say for sure which one swam to shore.

The rescue unit lost sight of the father, Paul Doumit of Puyallup, and requested assistance from a Coast Guard helicopter, which directed the rescuers to the man.

Doumit was unresponsive when pulled from the water and was pronounced dead at Ocean Beach Hospital in Ilwaco, O’Donohue said. The two boys were under observation at the hospital.