Close to 200 federal, state and tribal emergency preparedness planners gathered around a giant map of the Pacific Northwest this week to rehearse and critique the federal response plan for "The Big One." The three-day Cascadia earthquake discussion exercise partially replaced a much bigger planned dress rehearsal that was canceled due to the coronavirus pandemic. Read More
Smartphone users who opted in to a test of the West Coast earthquake early warning system got an early taste on Thursday of what is to come. Mobile phones from Seattle to Olympia blared with an alarm for imaginary incoming shaking. The earthquake warning system -- already operational in California -- will launch for the general public in Oregon on March 11 and statewide in Read More
Scientists found nine to eleven instances over roughly the last 3,000 years where a Cascadia earthquake seems to have triggered a San Andreas quake. The vast majority of great Cascadia quakes during that period have a correlation on the San Andreas Fault. Read More
The state of Oregon is pushing the community hospitals along the Oregon Coast to improve their earthquake resilience. This comes after a state report predicted none of them would be able to sustain operations after the feared Big One -- a magnitude 9 offshore Cascadia earthquake and tsunami. Read More
The Earthquake Preparedness Roadshow will start in Walla Walla on Sept. 29 with stops during the week in Pullman, Spokane, Grant County, Toppenish and Richland. Continue Reading Practice Drill For ‘The Big One’ Earthquake Read More
People visiting or living along the Pacific Northwest coast may be completely cut off after "The Big One" —the feared magnitude 9.0 Cascadia earthquake and tsunami. For that reason, the U.S. Navy has been scouting landing sites along the coast for disaster relief delivery by sea. The quake preparations ticked up a notch on Monday, with a practice delivery of supplies using Read More
It's not something we typically discuss in polite company, but disaster planners say that when water and sewage service fails, finding a place to poop is a big deal. Continue Reading Have You Planned For Number Two After ‘The Big One’?Read More
Statewide disaster preparedness messaging aimed at households and businesses calls for one gallon per person per day as the goal for emergency drinking water. Scooping water out of a creek or pond is dicey because of the widespread giardia parasite, aka "beaver fever." So inventive residents on Washington's Olympic Peninsula got creative. Read More
When The Big One happens, emergency planners and geologists expect the vast majority of us will survive. But a magnitude 9 rupture on the Cascadia earthquake fault will likely cut electricity, running water and sewer for weeks—or even months afterwards. Read More
No one can say when exactly the next Cascadia megaquake will strike other than there's a fair chance it'll happen in our lifetimes. A new study of likely earthquake impacts in the Greater Portland region finds the exact timing and season make a big difference when it comes to casualties and damage. Read More
Planned student walkouts this week bring attention to reducing the threat of school shootings. One group of Northwest parents is pushing schools to prepare better for another kind of disaster: a major earthquake. Continue Read More
The report cards are in and it’s not pretty if you worry about how you’ll fare after a magnitude 9 Cascadia megaquake and tsunami. Washington and Oregon’s emergency management divisions have now published after-action reviews of last June’s multi-state disaster drill called Cascadia Rising . The four-day simulation was the largest earthquake and Read More
When COVID-19 reached the inland Northwest two years ago, more people took to the great outdoors. The number of visitors to Elk River skyrocketed, and many residents became nervous about exposure to the virus. Continue Read More
Earthquake researchers are eager to dig into a trove of new data about the offshore Cascadia fault zone. When Cascadia ruptures, it can trigger a megaquake known as "the Big One." The valuable new imaging of the geology off the Oregon, Washington and British Columbia coasts comes from a specialized research vessel. Read More
It was almost a year ago that Athena Fitness in Olympia was facing financial doom. The women-owned business had opened just before the pandemic struck. In August of last year, new COVID restrictions threatened to put the owners out of business. So, what’s happened since? Read More
Easterday Ranches and Easterday Farms has provided beef, potatoes, onions and produce to dinner tables for more than three generations. Now in bankruptcy, many of the family’s key properties will be sold to repay debts. It’s one of the largest sales of prime water-rich agricultural lands in the Columbia Basin in recent history. Read More
The starting point of a Northwest-based saga of alleged invented cattle, a multi-million dollar lawsuit and two bankruptcies may lie in a short handwritten list of numbers scrawled on a lined sheet of three-hole punch paper that purports to show Cody Easterday’s annual losses from speculating on the cattle futures market. Read More
The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell nearly 10% — its biggest one-day drop since 1987 — as the coronavirus pandemic continued to rattle markets. Trading was temporarily halted earlier in the day. Continue Reading Dow Read More
NPR Music staffers Marissa Lorusso and Tom Huizenga give out superlatives for the best moments in music this past year, including a single breath of operatic singing and an epic guitar solo. Continue Reading One Big Breath And A Blazing Guitar: Read More
Rosetta Tharpe was a huge star in her era and set the template for rock and roll. So why was she absent from popular consciousness after her death — and why did it take decades to revive her legacy? Continue Reading Read More
It's the bear body-positive competition you didn't know you needed. The results are in. And this year's winner in Katmai National Park and Reserve's annual "fattest bear" contest is 409 Beadnose. Continue Reading Alaska’s Katmai National Read More
San Francisco Bay area company Sila Nanotechnologies purchased a vacant factory in Moses Lake, Washington, and announced plans Tuesday to open a big operation there to produce advanced battery materials to power electric cars. Continue Read More
In recent years, Washington’s Legislature has grown more diverse. And majority Democrats have emphasized diversity and equity as core values. But now three members of color, out of nearly 30, are stepping down from the Legislature after serving just one full term. One of them describes the legislative work environment as toxic. Read More
Alcohol and blood donation don't seem at first glance to go together. But that pairing is one of several creative strategies deployed by major Pacific Northwest blood centers to drum up more donors this spring. Continue Reading Read More
More Murrow News Stories PULLMAN, WASH – A Washington State University spokesman says university president Kirk Schulz is not interested in leaving for the Big 12. This, a day after a report surfaced about Schulz as a strong candidate for the Big 12 commissioner job. The Athletic’s Matt Fortuna cited “overwhelming external support” for Schulz’s… Read More
A battle is raging over how the DNR is managing and selling logging rights to state forest lands Listen NWPB reporter Lauren Gallup introduces us to her 8-part series on preserving what some call “legacy” forests / Runtime – 2:26 LISTEN: NWPB reporter Lauren Gallup takes an in-depth look at the battle over how the… Read More
Washington’s Democratic-majority legislature passes major transportation funding bill Listen Read Democrats who control the Washington Legislature have sealed a deal to raise and spend nearly $17 billion over the next 16 years on transportation projects. This steers money into everything from highway widening, transit and new ferries, to high speed rail and bike Read More
A wintertime race to remember! There are three races to choose from: Coed Recreational, Women’s Competitive, and Men’s Competitive. FORMAT: Each race has a separate start time and will take up to 80 participants. Participants will be assigned a starting position. Race packets will be available at the assigned start position approximately 20 minutes Read More
It's a growing problem in Washington: kids with developmental disabilities and complex behaviors who are stuck in the hospital with no reason for being there. Usually, they end up in the hospital after a crisis or an incident. But once the child is medically cleared to leave, their parents or their group home won't come get them citing inadequate supports to manage the Read More
The risk of the project was destined to match the scale of journalist-turned-author Frank Herbert's Dune. Denis Villeneuve's conception has arrived in theatres (and HBO Max), and its sequel has already been greenlighted by Warner Bros. After two viewings, his intentions have become more clear and convincing. Read More
Whale watchers have spotted a record number of humpback calves in inland Pacific Northwest waters this season. There was also a record streak of Bigg's killer whale sightings that just ended, according to a local whale research nonprofit. Those observations offer some good news to offset the ongoing concern about the survival of the Northwest's iconic, but critically Read More
With all the news about supply chain problems, you might be wondering how to get your online purchases on time. If only the promised future of aerial delivery by drone could be realized during the upcoming holiday shopping season. Read More
The steins of beer. The plates of roast pork and chicken, sausages and dumplings. The brass bands. The throngs of people, many of them in traditional Bavarian dress. Dirndls or lederhosen, anyone? That’s how you probably identify Oktoberfest today. However, in the beginning, it had a very different feel. Read More
Maybe you've noticed the birthday card that arrived belatedly or the check in the mail that didn't pay your credit card quite on time. It's not your imagination. The mail has definitely gotten less speedy. Continue Reading Read More
One of the historically largest farm equipment sales in the country is happening this week in the Northwest. It follows the bankruptcy of the Easterday family empire after its multi-million-dollar cattle swindle. Continue Reading Read More
Since Democrats re-took the Washington Senate after a special election in 2017, they’ve enacted numerous pro-union bills, along with sweeping policy changes backed by unions. Democrats say their agenda is improving working and economic conditions for unionized and non-unionized workers alike. Critics on the right say unions, especially public sector unions, have too Read More
Join us for the event launch of The Listeners Project: Queremos Escucharte, a community collaboration begun by the Walla Walla Immigrant Rights Coalition’s Colectivo de Arte Social, the Whitman College and Northwest Archives, and Walla Walla Public Library. Listener and Colectivo de Arte Social member Guillermo Corro will connect his experiences to the The Read More
President Biden unveiled a new plan on Friday taking aim at powerful industries where a handful of players have so much market clout that they can drive up prices, depress wages and make it hard for small companies to break in. Read More
For the first time ever, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) is opening its doors and inviting the public to a series of free, live, virtual tours of numerous labs on its Richland campus. Researchers from across PNNL will be your hosts as you discover the spaces and instruments behind our science and impact. Learn about… Read More
Wolf poachers go mostly undiscovered — but that hasn’t stopped nonprofit organizations from putting up significant cash rewards for information about these incidents. While rewards generally don’t lead to convictions, Defenders of Wildlife’s Gwen Dobbs says reward offers in cases of wildlife poaching can help raise public awareness, “hopefully serving as a deterrent Read More
Right now, those all-time heat records are preliminary. It will take a committee, more measurements and tests before those numbers can be officially entered into the record books. Continue Reading Not Official (Yet): Read More
Idaho’s ever-growing budget surplus is trending toward a record-shattering and mind-boggling $800 million. The big reason: Individual income tax collections are ahead of forecasts by a whopping $452.2 million. We’ll know the exact surplus sometime after June 30, when the state closes the books on the 2020-21 budget year. Read More
Some of the biggest names in American running have bowed out of the U.S. Olympic Track and Field Team Trials as the 10-day competition moves into the starting blocks in Eugene. The scratches open a lane for a new generation of stars to earn spots in the delayed Tokyo Olympics. Read More
Buying a coffee and grabbing a train is already possible with an iPhone, but Apple wants to replace the physical wallet completely. To that end, earlier this week Apple announced a new feature to let users scan their driver's licenses and save it to their iPhones to use as a legitimate form of identification. Read More
In this Past as Prologue essay, WSU Professor Karen Phoenix explains the history of the shipping container and its Spokane ties. Continue Reading Past As Prologue: The Non-Coastal Inland Northwest’s Big Ties To Read More
The state's new accountability laws might not have happened without the advocacy of people whose family members were killed by police. Continue Reading 3 Washington Families On How New Police Laws Could Have Helped Their Loved Read More
You fall in love with a person, but you get a package deal. That's one of the big messages of two new novels that ruminate on love and family, particularly the family that's thrust upon you when you happen to mate with one of their kith or kin. Read More
Every so often, a fantasy series with adventure, magic and an unfairly attractive villain comes along and captures the imagination and attention of a passionate base of readers. And when that series leaps into a fully realized television adaptation? Well then, that niche fixation can become a global fantasy phenomenon overnight. And Netflix is hoping its new adaptation Read More
A new state capital gains tax. An expanded and fully funded tax credit for lower-income families. Fresh investments in disaster preparation and foundational public health. And significant new spending in early learning and child care. Those are among the elements of a proposed $59.2 billion, two-year budget Washington Senate Democrats unveiled on Thursday. Read More
Among the more daunting challenges President Biden faces in the coming year will be to make good on his goal of admitting 10 times as many refugees — 125,000 — as former President Donald Trump allowed to enter the United States last year. During his presidency, Trump ordered drastic cutbacks in the U.S. refugee program. Read More