Let’s begin with the planet’s destruction: The Little Giant fire near Lake Chelan has grown to 111,429 acres, or 174 square miles, and is 2 percent contained as of this morning. Little Giant has consumed two homes, three cabins, and 21 outbuildings, said the Entiat Fire Department and Chelan Fire and Rescue. The Chelan County Assessor’s Office will determine the full scope of the damage when “conditions allow,” KING 5 reports.
A lightning storm sparked the Chelan fire in July, but climate change created the conditions that allowed it to grow. Evacuation orders continue, including in an area upslope of the blaze that jumped the lake last week. Meanwhile, the fire evacuation zones are receding in Spokane, allowing many people to return to their homes. Another potential consequence of out-of-control wildfires: the Spokesman-Review reports the fires could further strain the city’s housing market.
Weather: It will be cool this morning with highs moving into the mid-70s throughout the day. Air quality is back in the low-to-moderate zones west of the Cascades. Air out your stuffy apartments while you can.
Destruction cont. A 7.4 magnitude earthquake struck Colombia and Ecuador on Monday. The epicenter was about 250 miles west of Bogotá, Colombia’s capital. The quake injured people and damaged buildings, officials say. At least twenty are dead. The 7.2 and 7.5 magnitude quakes in Venezuela this June killed 5,000 people and destroyed hundreds of buildings.
Interim (?) Seattle police chief Andre Sayles says he “won’t rule out” applying for the job. He says the skills he learned as police chief of Beloit, Wisconsin would serve him well here. I’ve been to Beloit. Charming little rust belt town, population 36,636 per the last census, a justttt a hair’s breadth away from our 2020 population of more than 784,000 people. We’ve grown to more than 816,000. Consider me skeptical. Sayles says he plans to continue the course set by Shon Barnes, the outgoing SPD chief who brought Sayles here from Wisconsin, with some “tweaks” (a good idea, the course set by Barnes did not work out well for Barnes).
“Seattle’s police chief churn could make it harder to find top candidates,” reads a Saturday Seattle Times headline. Yes, the exit to that office is a greased chute to the sunroof of a clown car. The last chief with us longer than a blink of an eye was Gil Kerlikowske, who, after nine years, left Seattle to lead President Obama’s Office of Drug Policy before heading Customs and Border Protection. Since 2018, Seattle has had four police chiefs: (the ironically named) Carmen Best, Adrian Diaz, Shon Barnes, and now Sayles. Sayles is the only one of them without a scandal or two. Give it time.
By the way, the Seattle Times turned 130 today! The Blethen family is still in charge, which is much better than being run by a conglomo-corp. But, a word to the wise, give your union journalists a fair contract! The latest that front: “After weeks of pressure, the Seattle Times Union finally received a wage proposal from the company,” the union wrote on instagram. “But it was far from enough.” A flat $1,040 raise per year, or about 20 extra bucks a week. “Insultingly low,” as the union put it, and I agree. Follow the Seattle Times Union here.
Note: My editor says this makes the Seattle Times a Leo. Going by the date of our first issue, we’re Libras, something the Seattle Times could never be, both because of the alignment of the planets and that Libra is way too close to a very scary word for the paper’s editorial board: Library.
Maybe your next flight should be on a plane: Amtrak has indefinitely suspended trains between Seattle and Portland after a fire at the abandoned Centennial Mills warehouse half a mile from Portland’s Union Station. The structure is unstable, and if it collapses it could release asbestos into the air; the water tower on its roof could fall onto the railroad tracks, reports KOIN 6. The City of Portland gave the warehouse’s owners until Friday to begin demolition.
“Captain Jeeves, let them drift”: “I’m on a small-ship Alaska cruise with my son,” wrote Michael Love, a passenger aboard the Wilderness Legacy, on Bluesky. “Our boat rescued a stranded vessel last night and apparently we did that after the Coast Guard radioed Mark Zuckerberg’s yacht – which was closer – and they repeatedly refused to respond. (There was near unanimous booing when the captain announced this).”
The vessel, a 21-foot skiff, had run out of fuel between Petersburg and Juneau, reports the Alaska Beacon. Meta says by the time the crew of Zuck’s yacht, Launchpad, heard the call, the cruise ship was on it. “As the Coast Guard noted, the boat was not in distress,” a Meta spokesperson told the Alaskan Beacon. Ah, yes, much better, thank you.
$$$: The Gates Foundation will give half a billion dollars to the University of Washington, to support the Institute of Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME), a research institute that measures global population health data. The foundation supported the IHME’s mission from the start, and contributed to initial investment in 2007, as measuring global health data is one of things Bill Gates is a slut for. The grant is the largest-ever single donation in the school’s history, and comes at a time when federal grants for science and medicine have dried up.
Amanda Knox’s comedy journey has reached The New York Times, and I have yet to read a good joke in any of the articles about it.
Biden is dying: Joe Biden’s son Hunter told the BBC on Friday that his 83-year-old father’s stage 4 prostate cancer “has spread, metastasized into his bones and further.” Last week, Jill Biden told Kelly Ripa that her husband “will live forever with cancer. It’s daily. And I think that’s challenging.”
