KUOW Blog
News, factoids, and insights from KUOW's newsroom. And maybe some peeks behind the scenes. Check back daily for updates.
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Stories
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2022's Northwest harvest is not so cherry
Some not-so-good news for cherry lovers: It looks like this year's Northwest cherry crop is going to be the smallest in 14 years.
The president of the Washington State Fruit Commission and Northwest Cherries says an unusual snow event that happened in April has affected crops in Washington and Oregon, Oregon Public Broadcasting reports.
As KUOW previously reported, growers noticed in June that the cherry crop was different this year, following an extended cold spring. Whereas folks expect April showers to bring May flowers, 2022's April brought snowflakes. About 40% of cherries in Washington state hadn't even bloomed in mid-April when snow began to fall on them.
“The bees only work, they only come out of their hives when it's 55 degrees and higher," B.J. Thurlby, president of the Washington State Fruit Commission, told KUOW in June. "And we went through a lot of bloom where the bees just didn't get out and work.”
That has led to the low-yield situation the Northwest is in now. The 2022 Northwest cherry crop is about 80,000 tons less than usual, OPB reports.
Thurlby told OPB that about 130,000 tons of Northwest cherries will go to market this year.
The Northwest is one of the largest cherry exporters in the United States. No word yet on how the smaller yield will affect market prices.
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King County to buy treatment center as mental health beds are on the decline
King County is in the final stages of purchasing a long term residential mental health treatment center in North Seattle.
Cascade Hall, a 64-bed facility, holds about a quarter of the county’s residential treatment beds. This purchase will not increase the county's bed capacity, however, it will preserve the current count which has been declining in recent years.
At a press conference Wednesday at Cascade Hall, King County Executive Dow Constantine said the county decided to buy the facility to make up for the loss of mental health treatment.
“Over the last four years, through a combination of funding and workforce challenges, our community has lost nearly a third of our residential treatment capacity," Constantine said. "Due to the loss of beds, we've had the time that it takes to get into treatment growing and growing.”
Right now, it takes 44 days for someone to ask for help, then get them treatment.
King County Councilmember Sarah Perry also attended the press conference. According to Perry, the county had 355 residential treatment beds in 2018. Currently, there are 264 beds.
Another facility is expected to close later this year. That would drop the number of treatment beds to 244.
"We are losing beds every day," Perry said. "While at the same time we're watching the actual need increase, exponentially, in these last three years with Covid."
Executive Constantine says losing Cascade Hall would place a huge strain on the system.
“Can you imagine reaching out because you urgently need behavioral health care and being told to wait a month and a half," Constantine said. "Clearly, that's not acceptable.”
Therefore, buying Cascade Hall will ensure wait times will not increase further.
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Lawsuit aims to protect a rare West Coast carnivore, the fisher
You can tell that the fisher is a tough customer by its diet. The furry forest carnivore with a long bushy tail is known for its rare ability to eat porcupines.
“The fisher's ability to descend trees head-first, aided by its retractable claws, helps it to approach the porcupine stealthily, attacking the only quill-free spot on its body — the face,” according to Nature Conservancy Canada.
But the fisher has been no match for another dangerous species: Homo sapiens.
Trapping, logging, rat poison, and, most recently, human-caused climate change have pushed the fisher to the brink of extinction in the United States.
The Center for Biological Diversity petitioned the federal government to protect the fisher under the Endangered Species Act more than 20 years ago.
A fisher pauses before disappearing into the wilds of Mount Rainier National Park in 2018 in this clip from a National Park Service video. The bushy-tailed carnivores are considered an endangered species in Washington state but have been denied federal endangered-species protections in most of their range on the U.S. West Coast.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service agreed the fisher deserved endangered-species protection but said other species’ recovery efforts – many of them court-ordered – were higher priorities for the agency’s limited funding.
Eventually, the Fish and Wildlife Service agreed to protect fishers, but only in Southern California.
Now the activist group is suing to give the fisher endangered-species protections up and down the West Coast.
Here in Washington, wildlife officials have released 279 fishers from Canada in the Cascades and Olympics over the past 15 years in hopes of reestablishing the forest dwellers locally.
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Booster shots and Covid 'normalcy': Today So Far
- The West Seattle Bridge reopens this weekend.
- Seattle students went back to class today.
- We're not there yet, but with updated Covid booster shots, Covid "normalcy" could be around the corner.
This post originally appeared in KUOW's Today So Far newsletter for September 14, 2022.
What a difference a few hours can make! After this newsletter was sent out yesterday, Seattle's teachers union ended its strike after educators reached a tentative agreement with Seattle Public Schools. That means the first day of class is ... this morning. Kids are already back in school.
The teachers agreed to halt their strike, but still have to vote on the tentative agreement. That should be interesting to watch. The move to end the strike only passed by a narrow margin — 57% (78% of union members showed up to vote). Some teachers are skeptical of the proposed agreement, saying pay raises don't keep up with inflation. The exact details of the agreement have not been released. What is known is that it is a three-year contract with a pay bump. Special education student/teacher ratios will either be improved or maintained. Mental health staffing is to be added to every school. KUOW's Ann Dornfeld has more details here.
The road into Seattle is either about to get more congested, or a bit better...I'm actually not quite sure. But what I do know is that the West Seattle Bridge is coming back online after a two-year hiatus for repairs. This means tens of thousands (or about 100,000) drivers who have been stuck in West Seattle this whole time are about to be unleashed onto the commute.
Sunday is the big opening day. Seattle leaders are holding a press conference on Friday to highlight the occasion. That's more of a moment to pat themselves on the back. I think the general attitude for the rest of Seattle is, "Yeah, yeah, just open the #&$% bridge!" In the meantime, and more importantly, the city is running a few final tests to make sure the bridge is ready — crews are basically running extremely heavy loads over the bridge to see if it holds up. The bridge is also getting a bit of a facelift in these few remaining days. More details here.
I think we've all been expecting something like this to be said eventually: With the new omicron-updated booster shot, we are heading into a new era, one with annual updated shots similar to how we treat the flu.
That was the message that UW Medicine's Dr. Shireesha Dhanireddy recently delivered to Seattle Now. Dr. Dhanireddy notes that the previous Covid boosters were simply the same shots as the initial vaccines. The idea was to just keep immunity up. But the new boosters, available now, have been updated to account for mutations like the omicron variant. This is what we've been doing for the flu for years — we update the vaccine each year to keep the flu down as much as possible while helping ourselves overcome the illness should we be infected. That's essentially the annual scenario we are looking at with Covid.
"We are not quite there in terms of yearly vaccines for Covid, but we are edging toward that kind of normalcy with Covid, and thinking of this first round of reworked vaccines in that way," Dr. Dhanireddy said.
Officials are encouraging those most at risk to get their boosters as soon as possible, but they are open to all at this point. I already checked with my local pharmacy and they have them ready to go. Read more here.
AS SEEN ON KUOW
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Seattle kids head back to school as educators ponder contract vote
Seattle public school kids headed back to class Wednesday morning.
The start of school is a week later than expected and comes after educators suspended their strike Tuesday afternoon.
They still have to vote on whether to accept the new contract with the district. A tentative agreement was reached late on Monday.
If educators vote to reject the agreement, it’s possible the strike could resume.
Spokesperson Julie Popper said via email that the teacher’s union takes the process of ratifying the tentative agreement very seriously and wants to be sure every member has a chance to review it and cast a vote.
“We haven’t yet scheduled the vote but anticipate the weekend would be the soonest possible given our union bylaws,” Popper said.
At Broadview-Thomson K-8 in north Seattle, students seemed happy to be back in school.
They arrived with backpacks, anticipation, and some mixed feelings.
"This is my first day at school and I'm so excited,” said 5-year-old Nico Coronado. “I'm feeling a little bit nervous but it's still going to be fun for my first day.”
Nico’s mom, Juanita Coronado, said she supported the teachers’ strike and wanted them to get the resources they were asking for.
“When teachers are supported, kids are supported more,” she said.
But Coronado recognizes that strikes can be hard on people.
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Covid boosters safe during pregnancy, UW Medicine study concludes
Researchers at the University of Washington say that Covid-19 booster shots appear to be effective and safe during pregnancy.
"When you vaccinate a pregnant individual, she makes protection and passes it to her baby via cord blood and then breast milk in the postpartum period, so you're getting two protections for one shot," said Dr. Linda Eckert, professor of obstetrics and gynecology at UW.
UW Medicine conducted a study that included more than 17,000 people. The results of the study were recently published. Read more about the study here.
Boosters that target the omicron strains became available last week.
Dr. Eckert says that pregnant people, and anyone who's gone at least two months since their last booster, should get the updated shots. She says the accumulation of data since the beginning of the pandemic points to the safety of the vaccines.
The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists has issued a new advisory encouraging pregnant people to get vaccinated against Covid.
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SDOT ready to hit the road with new leadership
The Seattle City Council has signed off on Greg Spotts becoming the next director of the Seattle Department of Transportation.
Spotts just needs to be sworn in by Mayor Bruce Harrell to make it official.
Spotts has been serving as the acting director of SDOT since the start of the month. He used to be the executive director of the Los Angeles Bureau of Street Services. He's said that he's leaving his car behind so he can better understand how people use bikes, transit, and rideshare services to get around Seattle.
As he starts the job, Spotts is hitting the streets of Seattle for a listening tour. He is asking for Seattleites to take him around their neighborhood via walking, biking, bus, or other. The idea is to get a sense of the ups and downs of Seattle travel. You can request such a meet up here.
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Oregon company designs new app for tribal members
A company owned by an Oregon tribe has launched a new app designed to improve communication among its members.
Cayuse Native Solutions has launched "Camp Crier," an app that has been customized for the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation.
“This gives them another tool to be more targeted in their information," Company President Debra Croswell said. "And it also allows tribal members who don't live locally on the reservation to participate in those discussions and be active in discussions going on around the community.”
The app allows tribal members, employees, and people living on the reservation to create focus groups. Those groups could be for everything from book clubs to small business owners.
Croswell says the app also lets the tribe post necessary and sensitive information that users might not feel comfortable sharing on social media.
For example, the app was used last month to share information about an armed robbery at the tribe's Wildhorse Casino. The tribe was able to quickly post information and let people know the status of the situation.
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West Seattle Bridge reopens this weekend
The wait for 100,000 Seattle drivers — whose daily commutes have been snarled since 2020 — is nearly over. The West Seattle Bridge is slated to reopen on Sunday, Sept. 18, after being closed for more than two years so crews could fix cracks that wouldn't stop spreading.
All restrictions on the Spokane Street Swing Bridge, also known as the West Seattle low bridge, will end on the same day.
RELATED: Photos/video of West Seattle Bridge repairs
Seattle city leaders are ready to celebrate the reopening of the bridge. U.S. Sen. Maria Cantwell will join Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell and other dignitaries on Friday for a press conference ahead of the big day.
In the meantime, the Seattle Department of Transportation is running last-minute load tests to make sure the bridge is safe.
"We do that with big trucks that are loaded with 80,000 pounds," said Heather Marx, program director for the bridge repairs.
Marx says they've been load testing the bridge for several months using an intelligent monitoring system. The agency has also tracked how the bridge responds to extreme hot and cold weather conditions.
"We had like a foot of snow on the bridge, so not only was it cold, but we also had the weight of all that snow," she noted as an example.
So far, city engineers say the bridge has passed all its tests.
"We would not open the bridge if it were not safe and stable and secure," Marx said.
The West Seattle Bridge is also getting a facelift in the few remaining days before Sept. 18. Crews are replacing expansion joins, pouring new concrete, and replacing signage.
The span was initially slated to reopen over the summer, but SDOT says the recent concrete workers strike delayed those plans.
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Seattle teachers' strike halted after tentative contract reached with district
Next steps: School resumes for all students, including preschool and kindergarten, Wednesday, Sept. 14; teachers to vote on the tentative agreement in coming days.
Seattle educators voted narrowly Tuesday afternoon to suspend a strike that has delayed the start of school by a week. School resumes for all students on Wednesday.
Although school can start first, union members still need to vote on to ratify the tentative agreement reached with the district late Monday evening. In an all-day general membership online meeting on Tuesday, some educators objected to halting the strike, saying they have only received a summary of the agreement from union leaders. Seattle Education Association President Jennifer Matter said the agreement needs to be edited and proofread before being distributed to members. Ultimately, 57 percent voted to suspend the strike, with 78 percent turnout.
The union said it would not release the tentative agreement to the public until members have voted, but has said that the proposed three-year contract maintains or improves the same special education student/teacher ratios, adds mental health staffing to every school, and boosts staff pay. Some union members said the district didn’t give nearly enough of what the union membership was seeking, including pay raises that keep up with inflation, enough mental health supports, or the level of additional staffing they say is needed for special education and English learners.
The district largely backed off its proposal to move some special education students out of segregated classrooms and into more mainstream classes, which it said was critical to comply with federal disability law. The union had questioned the district’s willingness to adequately train, hire and place staff for those “inclusion” classrooms.
Neither district nor union leaders have yet granted interview requests, but the teachers union president called the agreement “huge,” and the district released a statement after the tentative agreement was reached calling the proposed contract “an incredible effort by the (Seattle Public Schools) and (Seattle Education Association) bargaining teams,” and thanked both teams for their hard work.
However, because the contract has yet to be ratified, the union retains the right to go back on strike if its members ultimately reject the agreement on in a final vote.
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Is Seattle about to go back to school?: Today So Far
- Seattle's teacher strike may soon come to an end.
- Western Washington may have to get used to wildfires getting closer.
- The University of Washington aims to divest from fossil fuels within five years.
This post originally appeared in KUOW's Today So Far newsletter for September 13, 2022.
If you're a parent of a Seattle student, good news: the teachers' union and the school district have a tentative agreement to end the current strike that has delayed the start of the school year.
If you're a Seattle student, sorry kid, summer is almost over, for real this time.
The tentative agreement came down late last night, so the union still has to vote on it. The district also has to re-plan the start of the school year, but the general vibe from union organizers and the district seems positive. So students can dust off their Pee-Chees and Trapper Keepers, roll out some fresh Lisa Frank stickers, and get those troll doll pencil toppers and milky gel pens ready ... those are all still things, right?
Wildfires throughout the Northwest have had us watching air quality monitors (air quality is pretty good as of this morning). Usually, fire season sends smoke into Western Washington from areas east of the Cascades. But blazes are getting closer and closer west. The Bolt Creek fire is proving to be a lesson in this. So far, it has burned 7,660 acres around the border of Snohomish and King counties.
One lesson came from a pair of hikers who filmed their series of life-threatening mistakes that put them up close with the Bolt Creek fire.
Conditions in the area are making it difficult to control this wildfire. A fire this severe has not been experienced in that area for at least 100 years, so there is a lot of debris/fuel on the ground to feed it. The mountain town of Index, 40 miles east of Seattle, has had to learn how and when to evacuate, quickly.
Amanda Montei is a former firefighter based in Bothell. She says there's another lesson the Bolt Creek fire is teaching us: "It's something we should consider to be our new reality, and therefore start figuring out how we can adapt to those conditions and to the potential for fire in our neighborhoods."
"Moving forward, we can expect to have more events like this," Montei told Seattle Now. "The western Cascades are traditionally known as this high severity, low frequency fire regime ... so when you do see fire, it's going to be really intense, even if you only see it every 100 years in some areas, maybe seen 200 or 300 years in certain areas."
Montei says that the eastside of the state has become used to wildfires in recent years, but the westside is not as aware.
"It's fair to predict that we will see more fires like this in our backyards on the west side of the Cascades, which feels very rare and feels very unprecedented for folks who have lived in this area for decades."
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Omicron booster is step toward Covid 'normalcy'
Heads up: A new booster shot, updated for omicron, is here.
UW Medicine's Dr. Shireesha Dhanireddy spoke to Seattle Now about how this vaccine booster is different and when you should try to schedule an appointment to get it.
"The original boosters are really just the same vaccine that we had been getting for the original series, just to give an additional dose to improve that immunity that may have waned," Dr. Dhanireddy said. "This vaccine is a little different in that it contains the original strain... but it also contains the newer variants."
Dr. Dhanireddy says that we are in a different phase of the pandemic, with fewer hospitalizations, though some people were still hospitalized during the omicron wave. Vaccinated individuals notably held up against the virus far better than unvaccinated people. Dhanireddy says that we could be heading into a situation similar to the flu, which has routine vaccines updated each year.
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