Pacific NorthWest Receives Endless Bad Publicity Recently

Washington and especially, Oregon have received far more than their share of terrible publicity recently. Thursday night, hurricane force winds as high as 107mph hit some areas of Oregon and Washington, leaving 1.4 million homes and businesses without electrical power that may take electrical utility repair crews as late as Monday to get the power restored. A Gresham, Oregon family nearly died of carbon monoxide poisoning when these deadly fumes from their garage gas electrical emergency generator soaked into their middle class home, leaving their three youngest children unconcious and the older child and parents seriously poisoned. All six required an emergency hospital visit. 4 other persons died in other incidents including falling trees through houses and accidents. Seattle's Sea-Tac airport lost most power and aircraft in the air had to struggle with high winds to even be able to safely land at the airport operating on emergency power. But this was not the only events recently.

The nation is still folowing the ongoing saga of three experienced mountain climbers stranded on Oregon's Mt. Hood. And this is only the second serious rescue incident recently, as the week before the saga of the James Kim family, who were stranded in the snow on a remote logging road ended in tragedy, when the mother and a 4 year old daugther, and a baby daughter were rescued from their Saab station wagon after the small amount of baby food ran out, and the mother nursed both young girls to keep them alive, and the family even burned the car's tires as a desperate signal and heat attempt. The father, a 35 year old senior technology expert at C/NET was found dead of exposure in shallow water after wandering as much as 16 miles in an attempt to find help in thin clothing and after not eating much more than a few berries and snow water for a week. This deadly logging road has taken other lives over the years. A few years ago a man survived 66 days on this remote logging road before losing half of his weight and starving to death, waiting for a rescue.

None of these three events are much of a picture postcard to attract tourists to Oregon or Washington. Why so much recent bad publicity at the hands of nature, is anyone's guess. Today the best attempt to rescue the three Mt. Hood mountain climbers will take place, hopefully with a good outcome as 98 mph winds hampered earlier attempts. Hopefully the news for the Pacific NorthWest will start to turn for the better very soon.

Whoever thought that local news was boring, only involving school kids who made paper hats or something.