Today's headlines:
- The Spokane Housing Authority and Spokane County are receiving state funds that will go to people impacted by the Spokane Complex Fires.
- The Association of Washington Business took a bus tour through Spokane’s manufacturing industry yesterday.
- And Lisa Leinberger sat down to chat with Spokane author Travis Baldree. His book "Legends & Lattes" has been adapted into a graphic novel, which comes out today.
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The Spokane Housing Authority and Spokane County are receiving $500,000 dollars from the state of Washington. This will go to people impacted by the Spokane Complex Fires. SPR’s Ember Braun has more on how to apply for these funds.
The Spokane Housing Authority is processing applications for the half a million dollars worth of wildfire housing assistance.
Applicants are eligible for the funds if they were temporarily or permanently displaced from their home because of the fires. They’re also eligible if their household income is at or below 140% of the area media income. For a family of four, that’s about $154,000 dollars annually.
Kelly Keenan is with the Spokane Housing Authority.
KELLY KEENAN: “We will be reviewing all those household circumstances in balance, and kind of on a week to week basis, trying to prioritize as best we can households that seem to have a little bit higher need, either by way of being in homelessness or possibly facing an eviction.”
The money can be used for housing expenses backlogged between August 1 of this year to January 30, 2027. That includes temporary housing, insurance or utility bills and car repairs.
Applicants can apply online at spokanehousing.org. You can also apply in person at the SHA's office. Walk in hours are 9:30 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. on Monday, Tuesday and Thursday.
I'm Ember Braun, reporting.
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Multiple Washington state ferry routes were impacted yesterday after nearly two dozen engine room employees called in sick.
According to Washington State Ferries, qualified workers who could step in have refused to fill in.
This has thrown the system into chaos, especially for people living in the San Juans and on Vashon Island.
Depending on weather conditions, Airlift Northwest is available to assist people who need emergency medical care.
Aspen Anderson, the Editor of the Vashon-Maury Island Beachcomber newspaper, says the Vashon Island Fire Department also has a backup plan.
ASPEN ANDERSON: "They would explore a fire boat option from Tacoma or, you know, try to contact WSF and see if a boat could be moved from another route if something extreme happened."
The disruption to ferry service is also delaying shipments to island grocery stores.
Governor Bob Ferguson says he's meeting with ferry officials to try and resolve the situation.
Ferry schedules are being updated.
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Spokane Public Library will host a series of events this week for National Fire Prevention Week. The initiative offers people tips for preventing fires in their own homes.
This year’s theme is “Safe Charging is a Superpower.” The library is offering interactive workshops that will help kids ages 5 through 13 learn to charge electronic devices safely.
One workshop will be Wednesday, October 7th at 4 p.m. at the Liberty Park Library Events Room. The other will be Thursday, October 8th at 3:30 p.m. at the South Hill Library Events Room.
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Providence and MultiCare reached settlement agreements in two class-action lawsuits last week. The suits alleged that between 2013 and 2021, a neurosurgeon who worked for both healthcare organizations performed unnecessary surgeries to try to make more money.
The Spokesman-Review reports that about 2,000 people were part of the suits. Providence and Multicare will pay about $155.5 million total to those members.
Those payments are estimated to arrive sometime after January 1, 2027.
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Spokane’s HAZMAT team will now respond to calls in Idaho’s five northern counties. SPR’s Ember Braun has the details.
Spokane Fire is partnering up with Kootenai County Fire and Rescue. Now, Spokane’s HAZMAT team will respond to certain incidents in parts of Idaho that involve hazardous materials, like chemical releases.
Lieutenant Jason Edwards is a member of the HAZMAT team.
EDWARDS: “We are the only HAZMAT team in Spokane County. Obviously, Spokane comes first with everything we do, but we are a resource for them since they are unable to provide that resources for themselves.”
This new merger took shape in part because of what Kootenai County Fire and Rescue says are funding and staffing challenges.
Edwards says this extension won’t get in the way of them responding to calls effectively in Spokane County. In fact, he says this gives his team more training opportunities.
I’m Ember Braun, reporting.
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Last week, the U.S. Forest Service and Idaho Department of Lands announced five new Good Neighbor Agreements.
One of the new agreements is statewide and will cover all National Forests in Idaho for 20 years. Together, the new agreements provide 12 point 4 million dollars in federal funding for forest management in the Gem State.
Idaho has had similar agreements with the feds since 2016. The contracts provide funding for the state to manage certain federal forest lands.
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Representatives from the Association of Washington Business (AWB) are in Spokane this week. They’re on their tenth annual statewide bus tour — which highlights Washington manufacturers and their priorities.
Yesterday, the tour stopped at Sonderen Packaging. It’s a family-owned packaging company that employs about 155 workers in and around Spokane.
Matt Sonderen co-owns the business. He says fluctuating tariffs and trade policies have made it more difficult to work with Canadian companies.
MATT SONDEREN: "Getting paperboard up there for them is tough. Sometimes things coming back this way is tough. So that’s always been — and that’s kind of a changes-by-the-day thing as well. It’s pretty disruptive."
During a State of Manufacturing address last week, AWB president Kris Johnson noted that taxes, regulatory burdens and uncertainty are some of the leading challenges for Washington manufacturers.
Washington has more than 250,000 people working in manufacturing jobs. Spokane County alone employs almost 16 thousand manufacturers.
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Spokane resident Travis Baldree is a former video game programmer, a current audiobook narrator and an author. He wrote “Legends & Lattes,” a cozy fantasy book that is getting a graphic novel adaptation that comes out today. Lisa Leinberger sat down and spoke with him.
LISA LEINBERGER: Tell me about "Legends & Lattes," the book that’s been adapted into a graphic novel.
TRAVIS BALDREE: So, if you've never heard of "Legends and Lattes" before, it is, I think, what's commonly termed cozy fantasy. It is the story of an orc mercenary who decides that she wants to retire and open up a coffee shop in a town that's never heard of coffee before. And it's — it came out and it did remarkably well, and they kept asking me to write new ones.
LL: Do you find that people are just feeling kind of down about the world, and they kind of gravitate towards cozy novels and cozy fantasy, cozy mysteries, that kind of genre these days?
TB: I think that it reminds us that everyday things are important. You use kind of the trappings, of sci-fi or fantasy or whatever, to put a little fairy dust on stuff that happens all the time. And none of us are going to go and slay a dragon, but we are going to try to find friends in our 40s and deal with career changes and stuff, and we tend to think that stuff is mundane and boring and not important because everybody experiences it. But I think it’s kind of the reverse. It’s the most important because everybody experiences it, and I think there’s just this reaffirmation that these things that happen to us all the time matter.
The graphic novel, I’m really happy with the way the graphic novel came out.
I think if you’ve read the book and you read the graphic novel, you’ll be like, yup, that’s it.
But now I get to see it. And I think for people who have not read the book and that are more graphic novel readers, I think it’s a great way to read it. Because it is the book. "Legends & Lattes" was not an incredibly long book or an incredibly complicated book, and I think it lent itself well to translation.
I think it works really, really well as a graphic novel. And the art’s fabulous, and it’s just very well done.
LL: Tell me a little bit about some of your audiobook narrations.
TB: I started doing it as a hobby. My kids didn't need me to read to them anymore, and I was a big fan of audiobooks, and I stumbled across a service that basically pairs narrators with authors, and I ended up doing it as a hobby. It's fun. I liked it. I like reading out loud.
LL: Had you done any acting in the past? I know that’s coming with voices and emoting. That’s gotta be…there’s gotta be a lot of acting.
TB: If you’re an actor, and you go to act in a movie, they cast you based on who you are. You’re going to play this kind of character because that’s what your physicality is. That’s what your voice sounds like. In audiobook narration, none of that matters. You play all the characters. I’m not a 12-year-old teen princess, and yet I will have to voice one, so it’s very…it’s a very different skill set in a lot of ways.
LL: So, not only have you narrated your own books, you’ve also narrated hundreds and hundreds of other people’s books. One of whom is Matt Dinniman, who is the author of the "Dungeon Crawler Carl" books. You are Raul in "The Eye of the Bedlam Bride." Can you tell me how you got that gig?
TB: I think Matt just asked Jeff. Jeff Hayes is the main narrator for "Dungeon Crawler Carl," for those of you who don’t know. He asked if he could do a bit part for me, and I think that in some ways it’s supposed to evoke a lot of the characters that I have played in other books that I have read, but obviously infinitely more foul. And so, it was really…it was like a 30-minute thing. Got on a Discord with Jeff, banged out my lines. The end.
LL: What are you working on next? Is it another book in the series?
TB: There’s three in the series, and then a collection of short stories comes out in like a week, around the same time as the graphic novel. I’m working on it. Actually, I wrote another book. I’m in editing right now, I’m wrapping it up. But it’s not in the Legends & Lattes world at all. It’s significantly longer, and it is more litRPG [literary role-playing game]. I’ve narrated so many litRPGs that I have opinions, so I wrote one the way that I would write it.
It’s long. But it’s also stand-alone, or can be. One of my beefs with litRPG is that sometimes they just never end, and I like a story that finishes, because I don’t have time to read 20 volumes of a book. So I appreciate a finished story. But yeah, I think that’s going to come out next August, and it’s called Four Bastards and a Baby.
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SPR News Today is a production of Spokane Public Radio.
Reporting today was contributed by Ember Braun, Audrey Nelson, KNKX's Jennifer Wing and Lisa Leinberger, today’s host and producer.
Web support was provided by Audrey Nelson.
