Arlington Times, August 29, 2015

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An Edition of

Heat intense for firefighters BY KIRK BOXLEITNER kboxleitner@marysvilleglobe.com

Health: Back

to school means updating your child’s immunizations. Page 16.

INDEX BUSINESS

Courtesy Photo

Arlington firefighters battling blazes in Eastern Oregon faced some intense heat. were still alive. Greg Koontz was finally able to contact our wives.” Monson will have served as a part-time firefighter for a full year this September, while Knepper has been in the fire service since 1994. Despite their disparity of time in service, they agreed that the 16- and even 24-hour days they did in Chelan, Okanogan and

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9-10 7

Vol. 126, No. 3 Kirk Boxleitner/Staff Photo

Lori Emerson and Salley Worthley sort clothes.

“When you hear people say that the fires were moving about a hundred miles a day, you should believe them,” Monson said. Knepper, Monson and Urtz resorted to back-burning as many as 60 acres to protect neighborhoods of close to 30 houses, preburning a bulldozed line to serve as a wall against the fire’s spread, and hoping

SEE FIRE PAGE 2

Trying to keep up with need

BY KIRK BOXLEITNER

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WORSHIP

Omak were like nothing they’d ever experienced. “What struck me is just the sheer size of it. At night, the sky would be filled with an ominous orange glow,” Monson said. Knepper agreed. “It’s not something that a structural firefighter would ever see.” Complicating their efforts were winds estimated as much as 50 miles per hour.

ARLINGTON — Even after a decade in operation, the Arlington Kids’ Kloset is still evolving. While its all-volunteer staff works to get a new website online soon, they’ve already seen a greater influx of Darrington and Lakewood students than previous years. Penny Peeters joined nine years ago, one year after it

Philanthropy special section - Inside

started, and now serves as the group’s vice president. Peeters estimated that Kids’ Kloset served 1,300 kids last year, but noted that the group will only be able to serve its eligible clientele of free and reduced-price lunch students in the three school districts once a year, as opposed to its previous twice-a-year-service. It will

also be closed during the summers. Peeters reported that Kids’ Kloset averages as many as 15 volunteers a week, but admitted it could probably use at least 25 a week. That adds up to roughly 3,000 hours a month. SEE NEED, PAGE 2

1375099

Sports: Posters inside on Arlington and Lakewood provide all the sports fall schedules. Pages 9-14.

ARLINGTON — Fighting a wildfire is a lot different than battling a structure blaze. “When you’re dealing with structure or even vehicle fires, the fire tends to stay where it is,” said Arlington Fire Capt. Phil Knepper. He and fellow firefighters Craig Monson and Matt Urtz were called to help from Aug. 14-22 in Eastern Washington. Blazes cut across a highway, cutting them off in both directions for several hours, while their families back home heard that three responders had died in the Methow River Valley in Twisp. “That was probably as intense as it got,” Knepper said. “We saw all these beautiful houses being torched, and we couldn’t do anything about it. We didn’t have any cell phone service, so we couldn’t let our families know that we

that no sparks would jump the line. “We found out the fire did jump the bulldozer line, so we had to head over to an RV park at ten one night to stop its spread,” Knepper said. “There must have been two or three million dollars worth of RVs that would have been lost otherwise.” Even the firefighters’ brief breaks brought news of new fires they needed to halt, as when a woman from Starbucks brought them donated coffee, then overheard the fire was spreading to another set of houses. “She told us her house was there,” Knepper said. “It was about to go off. The fire singed her deck and did some damage to her siding, but we caught it in time.” At one point, the firefighters resorted to placing commercial sprinklers in the path of fires. “The biggest challenge was the unpredictability,” Knepper said. Ironically, that unpredict-


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