Drills teach kids life-saving lessons
There was one smoky disaster after another recently at Seth Woodard Elementary, but nothing fire-conscious third-graders couldn’t handle.
Spokane Valley firefighters didn’t have to rescue any of the dozens of children who got “trapped” in a smoke-filled bedroom. They all got out on their own.
There might have been no emergency at all if firefighters hadn’t been so careless about leaving combustible materials next to heat sources in a travel trailer in the school parking lot.
But the kids did their best to eliminate the hazards in the houselike EDITH trailer. That’s short for “Exit Drills in the House.”
The trailer, owned by the Inland Empire Fire Chiefs Association, is used by fire departments throughout the region to teach home fire safety to children.
The Spokane Valley Fire Department goes to 26 public and private grade schools in its district every year.
Each third-grade tour is preceded by a two-week Junior Fire Marshal program in second-grade classes. Second-graders watch a video and get plastic helmets and badges and certificates when they turn in a home fire safety survey.
Deputy Fire Marshal Bill Clifford said any home without a smoke detector gets one free.
He said the training paid off in June when an early morning fire broke out in a mobile home in the 13800 block of East Wellesley. A 12-year-old girl and her 10-year-old brother heard a smoke detector and alerted their grandparents. Everyone got out safely even though one of the exits was blocked, Clifford said.
Coping with a blocked exit is a big part of what the EDITH trailer is designed to teach. The trailer has one exterior door and three little rooms: a kitchen, a living room and a bedroom.
A fourth room, with a door that stays shut, contains all the equipment necessary to fill the bedroom with nontoxic theatrical smoke and make the bedroom door get hot.
John Craig
Sewer rate to go up
Spokane County sewer customers may pay dearly for a federal mistake and stringent Washington water quality standards.
Spokane County, which provides sewer service in Spokane Valley as well as unincorporated suburban areas, is building a new treatment plant to supplement the regional plant operated by the city of Spokane.
County Utilities Director Bruce Rawls told the Spokane Valley City Council on Tuesday that the estimated cost already has ballooned from $73.4 million to approximately $170 million.
One possible answer for tougher-than-expected water-quality requirements – putting treated effluent on Saltese Flats instead of into the Spokane River – could add $40 million.
Last year, when the estimated cost of the new treatment plant was $106 million, consultants projected relatively small rate increases that would reach a total of $39.48 a month in 2013 for residential customers.
The rates apply to all Spokane County sewer customers, even those in the northern part of the county where sewage would continue to go to the Spokane treatment plant.
Rawls said he isn’t yet recommending a construction moratorium but thinks one might be necessary if a permit can’t be obtained in time.
The situation went from bad to worse in September when the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency withdrew its support for a plan to reduce phosphorus in the Spokane River.
Facing criticism from the Sierra Club, Rawls said, the EPA conceded it improperly decided to consider Idaho’s nutrient discharges into the river separately from Washington’s.
John Craig
Students help plant future
It’s not every day you find prairie dogs in a marsh. But there were nearly 400 of them Tuesday in the Ben Burr wetland project near Moran Prairie Elementary School.
As their mascot does in the drylands throughout the West, the Moran Prairie first- through sixth-graders were digging in the dirt, returning to school with dusty shoes, dirty knees and muddy hands.
Wave after wave of the South Hill kids walked the two blocks from their school near the intersection of 57th Avenue and Old Palouse Highway to assist biologists and landscapers by planting 6,000 bulrushes, sedges and cattails to enhance eight acres where water already pools. The work was part of a Spokane County project to create wetlands to collect and filter runoff in an area where houses and pavement interfere with natural drainages. Much of the water comes from nearby Browne Mountain.
The first prairie dogs to arrive Tuesday morning were third-graders from Heather Moore’s and Karrie Brown’s classes. Before they could leave, the next wave showed up – second- and fourth-graders, followed by first- and fifth-graders who worked together as buddies, and so on throughout the sunny day.
Every group was given a color-coded bucket of seedlings and directed to a portion of the future wetland where each plant will thrive – cattails in areas that will have water most of the time, sedges in places that are slightly drier. Each plant went into a hole bored into the hard earth by workers with jackhammers and drills.
If all goes as planned, the seedlings tamped into holes on Tuesday will be well established in a few years.
Dan Hansen