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Question of the Week The Supreme Court ruled this week to allow prayers at council meetings. Good decision? To vote in this week’s poll, see www.courierherald.com
The Enumclaw Courier-Herald • Page 6
Crisis is averted, this time at least
I almost hit someone with my car the other day. It wasn’t on purpose or anything, but it also wasn’t the first time this sort of thing has ever happened to me. And, I admit, this was probably the closest I’ve ever come to maiming someone with my vehicle. I was idling at a stop sign, checking to my left on a relatively busy Capitol Hill street, scouting my opening for a right turn. I found my spot and hit the gas, realizing my error just in time to catch the break before a mid20-something had to throw his hand onto my car and twist his feet up like a kickflipping skateboarder. Now, I’ve heard Eric Mandel my bicyclist friends Reporter talk about getting swiped by cars and how they’ve always come out with, at most, a scratch. It’s almost always fine. But this was a pedestrian. And I practically knocked him onto my hood. The man looked at me behind his dark-rimmed glasses, shocked, through the windshield. But he never really stopped walking. His glaring eyes were pretty clearly asking, “What the hell is wrong with you?” I responded with the unhelpful and inaudible, behind closed window hand
Our Corner
See CORNER, Page 7
Volume 114 • Wednesday, May 7, 2014 • No. 34
1627 Cole Street, Enumclaw, WA 98022 360-825-2555 • Fax: 360-825-0824 E-mail: letters@courierherald.com Web site: www.courierherald.com
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LAST WEEK: Are there areas on the Plateau where you worry about an Oso-type mudslide?
Yes: 38.5% No: 61.5%
Wednesday, May 7, 2014 • www.courierherald.com
Letters Not happy with moves made by fire board The following is addressed to the King County Fire District 28 commissioners. I’m totally aghast at what this fire commission is doing. Asking for the fire chief’s resignation is a reflection upon the commissioners themselves. We, the people of Enumclaw, have elected these fire commissioners so that in turn reflects up on us the voters. He takes direction from the commission and his actions reflect on how you, the fire commissioners’ direct him. Chief Clow has made decisions regarding KCFD 28 based upon your
direction. If you are directing him in the wrong direction, he will go that way. Has anyone of you or as a group sat down with him and given him precise direction? I doubt it. The past commissioners made grave errors or appearances of grave errors and off the chief went to appease the direction he was given; ie, the “future site” of KCFD 28. The man is not responsible for those decisions of the fire commissioners. If the fire commissioners can ask for his resignation, can we the people ask for the resignation of those on the fire commission? Makes perfect sense to me. There are people that seem to be sabotaging everything that we were fighting to clear up by this “new” commission. They are just making the air cloudier with the rants of accusations and misstating the facts.
It is a sad time in Enumclaw when we cannot bundle our energies and fight for the same cause. It has become a game of hatred and name calling. No one is excused on this…. as the job is not done. We are supposed to be making and creating a great KCFD 28, not destroying it. We have great people in KCFD 28, let us serve them and not our personal vendettas. The past incident of one of the volunteers being dismissed for saying or writing something the Constitution gives him the right to say. Seriously, I am more offended by the concept of punishment for asserting a Constitutional right than I am by anything the afflictive boor said revealing himself. There are laws and other ways to deal with this type of situation. Keith Mathews Enumclaw
Sometimes government works Carol Smith, resident of Enumclaw, was called to be in Arlington, Wash., at 6 a.m. on March 28 to help manage the aftermath of the March 22 Oso mudslide. Carol is an employee of the State Department of Natural Resources and a member of the Washington Incident Management Team No. 4. Team No. 4 has about 50 members from all over the region. They are made up of those specializing in finance, plans, logistics, operations, safety and public information. Headquarters for the management incident team was in the abandoned Arlington High School building. They had to work with no running
In Focus Rich Elfers Columnist
water and the building was very dusty. Ninety-nine percent of the time Carol and her team are sent to deal with forest fires in a region that includes Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Wyoming and Alaska, although they were sent to Louisiana
after the Katrina hurricane disaster in 2005. The mudslide “was nothing like a fire,” Carol said. Their skills were needed to serve in a different way in Oso. When Carol and Team No. 4 arrived, there were already two Federal Emergency Management Agency Teams (which are made up of federal employees as well as local responders) on the scene. Many of them had gone to the 9/11 attack, hurricanes Katrina and Rita, and to the Colorado flood. Carol’s job was as a planner where
See ELFERS, Page 7
‘Mama’ keeps volunteers happy Ginger “Mama” Passarelli is a warm, effervescent and happy, middle-aged ex-hippie who decided, if she was ever going to have children and a home, she’d have to forsake her life in a teepee on a communal, organic farm and get a job or start a business. So, 10 years ago she opened Mama Passarelli’s Italian restaurant in Black Diamond. The rest, as they say, is history. From the start, it’s been one of the finest dinner houses in our region. In fact, readers of the Covington/ Maple Valley Reporter voted it the finest Italian restaurant on the Plateau. If you haven’t yet eaten there, by all means do so. However, her splendid dining room isn’t the main reason for this feeble column. Instead, I want to alert you to the incredibly unselfish and heroic service Ginger has offered at natural disaster sites
Wally’s World Wally DuChateau Columnist
all over America – from the devastation of Hurricane Katrina in Mississippi to the tornadoes in Shawnee, Okla., and the landslide in Oso. Ginger and a team of FEMA-trained volunteers have worked so many natural disasters in our country, emergency personnel know them on a first-name basis. Frequently operating from the back of trucks and under a canopy or two, her team mainly serves hot, home-made meals to first responders through, on occasion, they’ve been known to feed
victims as well. In one tornadostricken region, they served 13,000 meals in five days. Surprisingly, Ginger receives no funding from any government agency. Her team members even buy their own airplane tickets to the disaster areas. Though she applauds the help she receives from Real Life Church in Covington (nondenominational), Ginger remains the inspiration and driving force behind the operation. Working closely with country and town officials and the state patrol, in 16 days Ginger and her volunteers recently served more than 6,600 hot meals to the rescue crews in Oso. (Ginger, by the way, is a chaplin with the State Patrol.) More than any other disaster site they’ve dealt with, contamination was a major problem in Oso and
See WALLY, Page 7