Motorcycle rider injured in accident
A motorcycle rider rammed into the back of a pickup along Highway 395 near Deer Park on Tuesday afternoon and was taken to the hospital with serious injuries, the Washington State Patrol said.
The accident happened near the intersection of Owens Road, according to the WSP. Reports state that the injured biker is 52-year-old Richard D. Hanks of Loon Lake.
He was listed in very critical condition at Deaconess Medical Center Tuesday night.
St. Anthony, Idaho
Bear attacks man near Targhee Pass
A man hiking on the Targhee Creek trail was attacked by a bear and injured, the Fremont County Sheriff’s Office said.
The 53-year-old was hiking alone Monday near Targhee Pass when he came across a sow bear and her cub, the Sheriff’s Office said. The bear charged, and the man fell to the ground in the fetal position. The bear bit him in the shoulder and hip before leaving the area.
The man hobbled back toward the trailhead, where he ran into a group of horseback riders, the Sheriff’s Office said.
The group lent him a horse so he could ride to the place where his friends were waiting.
The man received medical attention at a clinic in West Yellowstone, Mont., but was not hospitalized, the Sheriff’s Office said.
PORT ANGELES, Wash.
Victims named in deadly crash
The three people killed in a fiery head-on crash on U.S. 101 included a father and daughter from Beaverton, Ore., the State Patrol said Tuesday.
The deceased Oregon victims were Abani M. Biswas, 43, and his 7-year-old daughter, Ankita. Also killed was Robert J. Norman Jr., 39, of Port Angeles.
Monday’s collision between a westbound 2005 Ford Explorer and an eastbound 2005 Toyota 4Runner closed the highway between Port Angeles and Sequim for five hours. Norman was trapped inside the burning Explorer.
Biswas was driving the Toyota, and his daughter was one of the passengers.
Alakananda Biswas, a 35-year-old female passenger in the Toyota, was taken to Olympic Memorial Hospital, the State Patrol said. A 3-year-old boy, Abheek Biswas, was treated at the Port Angeles hospital for a broken collarbone and released.
The 27-year-old Port Angeles woman driving the Explorer was transported to Seattle’s Harborview Medical Center. A 3-year-old girl and a 9-month-old girl were removed from the Explorer by witnesses before troopers reached the scene. The 3-year-old was transported to Harborview; the baby was treated at Olympic Memorial.
PORTLAND
Rain extinguishes lightning fires
Lightning, largely in central Oregon, touched off at least 100 small fires overnight, but the storms that came with the lightning doused many of them, officials said Tuesday.
The state recorded 5,779 lightning strikes in the 24-hour period that ended at 8 a.m. Tuesday, said Jeree Mills, spokeswoman for the Northwest Interagency Coordination Center, which coordinates firefighting crews and equipment in Oregon and Washington.
The lightning hit hard at the Ochoco and Deschutes national forests, the Prineville district of the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, and private lands protected by the Oregon Department of Forestry, central Oregon firefighters said.
Mills said lightning strikes also were logged near Medford, Port Orford and east of Portland.
On Independence Day, she said, crews would look for fires that burned into the daylight. “They’ll be chasing them all day today,” she said.