News, views and advertising of the Grand Coulee Dam Area
News, views and advertising of the Grand Coulee Dam Area
Sorted by date Results 840 - 864 of 1840
You get to choose, but I don’t? Not only that, but your ability to choose is more important than me living. That’s the end logic of the current cry for liberty, defined here as our citizens’ God-given right to ignore the ultimate welfare of all others so they can do whatever they want: party together, worship together, infect together. If we accept our Declaration of Independence, we value “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” The last two conditions, it should be obvious without saying, can’t be valued without the first being secur...
A man from Grand Coulee has died of complications from COVID-19, Grant County Health District said Monday night. The district was notified Monday that the man in his 50s, who was hospitalized, had died. The health district did not report where he had been hospitalized. “Our hearts are with his family and friends. On behalf of Unified Command, our staff, Health Officer, and Board of Health, we are so sorry for your loss,” a statement on the district’s website said. The death brings Grant County’s total to four, with 192 confirmed cases and ano...
Some people are expressing little but regret over the fact that high school graduations across the country, Lake Roosevelt’s included, will not be what anyone had in mind this year. That much is certain, but, graduating class, it’s also true that if you’ve learned anything in your dozen or so years in school so far, you’ve likely learned to roll with the punches and make the best of the situation in which you find yourself. There is no course syllabus or homework for that. But our current situation is the best lesson (call it your final h...
A man from Grand Coulee has died of complications from COVID-19, Grant County Health District said Monday night. The district was notified Monday that the man in his 50s, who was hospitalized, had died. “Our hearts are with his family and friends. On behalf of Unified Command, our staff, Health Officer, and Board of Health, we are so sorry for your loss,” a statement on the district’s website said. The death brings Grant County’s total to four, with 192 confirmed cases and another 35 “probable,” the district’s demographics on the disease say....
Okanogan County officials Tuesday debated possible paths for the county to progress into the state’s Phase 2 toward easing COVID-19 restrictions. To qualify to move to Phase 2 of the state’s “Safe Start Washington” phased recovery plan, a county won’t gain permission if it hasn’t seen three weeks since its last positive test for COVID-19. County commissioners met with Okanogan County Health officials in an open Zoom meeting, as a line of division became evident, following arguments similar to those heard across the state and nation: Mor...
Fishing has resumed in most of the state following Gov. Jay Inslee's adjustment to his Stay Home – Stay Healthy orders. Fishing has not opened up all the way on the Colville Indian Reservation, however, as the Colville Tribes is keeping it closed to non-members until May 29. The state opened boat launches on Banks Lake Tuesday, and anglers were on the water in the early morning. On Lake Roosevelt, within Lake Roosevelt National Recreation Area, boat launches are open as water levels allow, t...
A charitable-giving organization that manages millions and has grown 380 times its initial size in 24 years is reaching out to smaller communities, including this one, wanting to make a bigger impact. Not that it hasn’t given to local causes in the past. Just recently, the Ephrata-based Columbia Basin Foundation has given the Grand Coulee Dam Area Chamber of Commerce $1,000 for local business support, and it’s donating another $1,000 to the Care and Share Food Bank, both under the foundation’s “ReCOVIDery,” initiative to help during the COVID...
A person in Electric City has tested positive for COVID-19, the Grant Health District said Tuesday night putting a bit more local emphasis on the national crisis that local governments struggle to address. That person joins at least one other in the local community, in Okanogan County, with the illness. Grant County reports a total of 161 cases so far, including three deaths and the three new cases reported Tuesday, the others in Moses Lake and Quincy. Okanogan County Public Health has recorded 26 confirmed cases, including one death. Twelve...
After helping build a community of faith for decades, a longtime local couple recently made the "heart-wrenching" decision to move away to start their retirement. Steve and Janice Archer directed the final effort to load a 24-foot moving van in front of their Coulee Dam home Saturday, as friends, neighbors and Faith Community Church members packed more into the truck than they'd thought could fit. Pastor Steve Archer delivered his first sermon to the young church that recruited him in 1984, on...
The Colorama Rodeo will not be held this year, a decision Ridge Riders President George Kohout said it pained him to make April 15. Kohout, who worked to bump the rodeo up to the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association this year, had been looking forward to a season that would bring in more cowboys than ever and more recognition to the event and the community. But after making calls, he realized Colorama wouldn’t be alone in the disappointment. PRCA told him they’d already had over a 100 cancelations for the season, with more calling every hou...
The local public hospital district that governs Coulee Medical Center approved applying for a so-called “loan” Thursday under the federal Payroll Protection Program (PPP) of the CARES Act passed by Congress in March to help keep workers employed during the current pandemic. The commissioners of Douglas, Grant, Lincoln, Okanogan Hospital District 6 approved Resolution 1096 authorizing the issuance of a promissory note for up to $3 million to pay for eight weeks of payroll. CMC, like many other hospitals all around the nation, has stopped ele...
A home was lost Friday night when a fire started while no one was there. Grand Coulee Fire Chief Ryan Fish said those who lived in the house in Coulee Dam had been down the street when it started to burn. The fire at the home of Shayla and Shawn Deckwa apparently started about 8:30 p.m., Friday, April 10. At least four fire departments were on scene at 1103 Camas Street with equipment and firefighters, dousing the flames on a windy night and spraying down the siding on neighboring houses to...
The annual early-May Colorama festival has been called off by the organizing chamber of commerce due to the uncertainties created by the coronavirus pandemic and the cancelation of a major vendor, the carnival. The Grand Coulee Dam Area Chamber of Commerce board of directors met in special session last week, a time when preparations either had to move ahead or refunds made to vendors who had applied to work the event. Although starting at the end of the second week in May the event would have come after the statewide emergency is set to...
Everybody is anxious to get back to their normal lives, but with spring budding out all over, local golfers are really champing at their putters. Jim Keene, president of board of commissioners for Grant County Port District 7, which owns Banks Lake Golf Course, said Monday he sees some confusion among local golfers, some of whom believe the decision to shut down the course in response to Gov. Jay Inslee’s general shutdown proclamation was optional. It was not, Keene said. He cites Inslee’s “Stay Home, Stay Healthy” March 23 proclam...
Most kids won't enter their classrooms again this school year, following Gov. Jay Inslee's announcement Monday afternoon that in-person teaching would not be allowed in any schools in Washington at least for the remainder of the school year. The decision was based on the latest data available on the trend curve of COVID-19, the illness caused by the novel coronavirus that had sickened nearly 8,000 in the state and killed 338 as of Sunday night, Inslee said, even as some noted what might be an...
A home was lost tonight. Those who lived in this house on Camas Street in Coulee Dam were down the street when it started to burn; no one was home, Grand Coulee Fire Chief Ryan Fish saiid. The fire at the home of Shayla and Shawn Deckwa apparently started about 8:30 p.m., Friday, April 10. At least four fire departments were on scene with equipment, housing the flames on a windy night and spraying down the siding on neighboring houses to keep them cool as neighbors watched from a sidewalk...
Among 10 people who tested postive for the novel coronavirus in Okanogan County as of Tuesday, five are on the Colville Reservation, one a local woman whose daughter posted on Facebook that her mother and siblings were sick. “I want our community to know that the virus IS HERE,” Micki BearCub Hudson posted April 1. Okanogan County Public Health said four cases are in the Methow and one other is in “South County,” an area it did not specify in a Tuesday update. The agency noted that two of those cases have fully recovered. Grant County has had...
Indications are that Washington’s fairly early emphasis on social distancing and staying home have been effective at helping to slow the spread of the novel coronavirus, but more local focus could help this area weather the crisis even better: We all need to wear a mask in public, and a method is needed for delivery of groceries to those who are supposed to stay at home. The first one is easy. The second one isn’t. Anyone who has been exposed to some known to be sick with COVID-19 is definitely mandated to stay home to protect everyone els...
After days of reports of droves of people not complying with his pleas to stay home, Gov. Jay Inslee issued a mandatory order Monday to shut many public places and non-essential businesses in an effort to slow the spread of the new coronavirus. Inslee emphasized that the though the orders are legally enforceable, officials would still emphasize voluntary compliance. And sheriffs in Lincoln and Grant counties issued similar statements assuring people that law enforcement's role in the shutdown...
Kids up to 18 years of age have been getting meals from the Grand Coulee Dam School District at their bus route pickup spots while school is out for the virus-related shutdown. That plan will change on Monday, the school district said Thursday. Meal deliveries will now be made at eight specified places from 11:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. just three days a week: Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Academic packets for students in grades 7-12 will also be available then. Nespelem School District will still provide Grab and Go meals to students in that area...
Everything depends on everything else, it seems, so stopping one part of our economy, our society, affects every other part. We’re all so interconnected. That’s partly why Gov. Inslee’s earlier hopes that people would “just do the right thing” were dashed. In more populous parts of the state, the slowdown he ordered was interpreted at a vacation by so many that recreation sites were flooded with cars and people. Even outdoor sites were reportedly impossible places to accomplish “social distancing.” And so the order announced Monday evenin...
Local institutions are rapidly adjusting on the fly after a series of cascading emergency announcements from state and national authorities mandating increasingly harsh measures to stop the spread of the new virus that has infected nearly 190,000 worldwide and killed more than 7,500 as it overwhelms some healthcare systems. Preventing that kind of quick and overwhelming spread is what the new restrictions are all about. Washington Gov. Jay Inslee announced March 13 that schools statewide would close. Then Monday, he said restaurants, bars, thea...
Grant County Health District issued three advisories Saturday — a day when the number of confirmed cases of COVID-19 jumped from 11 to 18 — urging people in high risk groups to “shelter in place,” leaving home only if absolutely necessary for medical reasons. Of the seven new cases of the disease confirmed Saturday, which increased the confirmed number by 64 percent, five were in Quincy, two in Mattawa, the two most impacted communities in the county. A statement issued at 5:20 p.m., however, no...
Students in the Grand Coulee Dam School got their first taste of bus-delivered meals Friday with 215 of them picking up meals delivered by bus two hours after their normal bus pickup time. Superintendent Paul Turner said the school board meeting on Monday will hopefully occur via Zoom, a teleconferencing software service available for free to anyone with a Mac or Windows computer or a mobile phone or tablet running iOS or Android. Tuner’s update with more detials on other aspects of the school shutdown, upcoming academics, schedules and m...
Honestly, it’s not you, it’s us. As these extremely inconvenient — no, let’s call them what they are — horrid, restrictions on our social freedom clamp down on society and commerce in favor of health, that’s a concept some either don’t get, don’t want to get, or just refuse to believe, and that affects us all. Whether they’re just delayed in getting the information because they have lives not tied to any media, or they’re just stubborn because they think this another Y2K-like false alarm, or they just can’t deal with the stress and want to pret...