Lewis County Sirens.com

By Sharyn  L. Decker
Lewis County Sirens news reporter

A 51-year-old man was arrested yesterday after he allegedly tried to fire bomb his ex-wife’s home in the Mossyrock area.

Matthew P. White was subdued by his 23-year-old son, who at one point kicked away a device his father said was Napalm before it exploded in the kitchen.

No injuries were reported. White, who lives in Centralia, was booked into the Lewis County Jail on multiple offenses.

It happened on the 100 block of Koons Road, south of Mayfield Lake.

Deputies were called about 12:30 p.m. by the son, who said he was concerned about his father and followed him to the home, according to the Lewis County Sherif’s Office.

“The son watched his father carry a gas can and an incendiary device to the front door then kick in the door,” Chief Civil Deputy Stacy Brown said.

Nobody was home at the time, according to Brown.

The son and his 22-year-old friend followed the father into the kitchen, where they found he had lit the device, Brown said.

Brown said White looked at the device and threw it at his son.

The friend grabbed a fire extinguisher and put it out, while White and his son wrestled, Brown said.

White then allegedly came at the friend, pulling a large knife from the back of his coat.

The two young men finally subdued White and pulled him from the house, according to Brown.

The fire damage was apparently limited to a door jamb.

Brown said the device was found to be gas mixed with styrofoam. She said three more were found in White’s car.

White was booked for first-degree arson, first-degree assault, burglary and possession of an incendiary device, according to Brown.

He has not lived at the house since October, she said.

By Sharyn  L. Decker
Lewis County Sirens news reporter

The Centralia Community Church of God are among those mourning the death of 57-year-old John Michael Summers.

Summers body was recovered Sunday from inside a chemical holding tank at a Portland area industrial site.

John Michael Summers

“He’s Mike to everyone here,” Pastor Mark Fast said this afternoon. “Oh man, what a big-hearted guy.”

Portland Fire and Rescue was called just after 10 o’clock on Sunday morning to rescue a worker who had apparently fallen into a 20-foot deep holding tank on a barge, according to a news release from the fire department. It contained a toxic and corrosive agricultural material, according to the fire department.

Another employee had seen Summers near the hatch, turned away and when he looked back, Summers was gone, the fire department reported.

Rescuers concluded a person would have become unconscious right away because of the lack of oxygen in the tank.

Pastor Fast said he’s come to know Summers, his wife Sandy Summers and adult daughter Gillian Summers as they began attending the Borst Avenue church about a year and a half ago. They had lived in Centralia before moving to Doty, Fast said.

“Over and over again, the word I’ve used to describe Mike most is genuine,” Fast said.

Summers used to have a flooring company and was a successful business person, Fast said. It was his understanding Summers had taken a job with a Seattle shipyard, and was commuting every weekend, Fast said. The pastor said he was surprised to learn Summers was working in Portland.

It was just this past October, when fast invited Summers to speak about his transformation to the congregation, something the church videotaped and shares through its website. He spoke of the joy permeating his life, Fast said.

A memorial service is set for 11 a.m. on Saturday at Church on the Hill in McMinnville, Ore., according to Fast. Much of Summers’ family lives there, the pastor said.

The accident occurred on Swan Island, at Cascade General Shipyard, according to a fire department spokesperson.

Oregon OSHA is investigating, Firefighter and Public Information Officer Paul Corah said.

Courtesy photo by Portland Fire and Rescue

By Sharyn  L. Decker
Lewis County Sirens news reporter

CENTRALIA – The fate of the southwest corner of Tower Avenue and Main Street downtown is in the hands of the next generation.

Linda Hamilton’s historic building that burned last week was insured but it certainly can’t be just simply replaced.

Linda Hamilton

Hamilton said with buildings that old, it’s hard to even get insurance, and what she had was capped.

The Dr. Matz building, the oldest masonry structure in Centralia, had a tax assessed value of almost $313,000.

“The cap, in 2012 replacement doesn’t build much,” Hamilton said today. “That part of it’s kind of sad.”

The Valentines Day fire displaced the tenants of a dozen apartments and five businesses, including Hamilton’s Centralia Perk coffee and antique shop and her upstairs residence.

Crews began demolishing what remained last week.

“The bank will be paid off, and happy,” Hamilton said.

The property will stay in the family; she’s letting her adult sons make the decision about what they want, she said.

“The building was their future, now the building lot is their future,” she said.

Her sons, J.J. and Ryan Hamilton, 29 and 31, are pretty excited, she said. If they want to go all out, and go in debt, that’s up to them, she said.

The insurance had a cap of $10,000 on the amount it would pay for tear the building down. The bid to do it was $90,000, according to Hamilton.

The Centralia Downtown Association is organizing a fundraiser to help her defray the costs of demolition.

Steve Koreis, vice president of the CDA, said Hamilton could have chosen to leave the hull of the building standing, but didn’t.

“It was her decision to make sure the building would be cleared completely,” Koreis said. “So we’re supporting her in that decision.”

Their focus is the best outcome for the downtown corridor, Koreis said.

The  Centralia Downtown Association is affiliated with the state Main Street program, which has a philosophy of promoting economic revitalization while preserving a city’s historic character.

Koreis said Hamilton is planning to make the soon-to-be empty lot available for downtown events and activities.

Hamilton said she’s not certain where her former business tenants will land.

She hasn’t spoken with Tony McNally, who operated his barbershop there, but she knows the owner of Phantom Tattoo is looking to stay in the area, she said.

She knows nothing about Rachel Thompson’s plans with her Curious Betty’s boutique, she said. And the woman who had Jody’s hair salon in the back of Centralia Perk, she has friends helping her out, Hamilton said.

The fundraiser to help pay for the Matz building demolition is set for 6 p.m. on March 1, a week from Thursday at the Aerie  Ballroom on South Tower Avenue.

It will include food, beverages, live entertainment and a silent auction, according to Koreis

The CDA is suggesting donations of $10 and up.

Dr. Matz building

The garage door burns off a home in north Centralia this morning / Courtesy photo by Jamie Kaiser

By Sharyn  L. Decker
Lewis County Sirens news reporter

CENTRALIA – Fire officials are looking into the cause of a blaze that ignited at a Centralia home this morning.

Nobody was hurt, but the interior of the garage off Harrison Avenue just three driveways north of Riverside Fire Authority’s main station was left blackened and charred.

“It went through the hallway and a little bit into the kitchen but we stopped it there,” Assistant Fire Chief Mike Kytta said.

Firefighters were called about 10:30 a.m. to the single-story house on the 1900 block of Harrison Avenue.

Kytta said he understood the resident had just returned home from taking his wife to work.

Across Harrison, neighbor Jamie Kaiser said he heard a loud noise and saw a plume of smoke.

“I dropped what I was doing and ran over there,” Kaiser said. “I tried to call 911, but I kept getting a busy signal.”

Another explosion almost took him off his feet, Kaiser said.

“It blew my hair back,” he said. “A propane canister came flying out into the driveway.”

Kaiser said he was trying to get a neighbor to move his car.

A Volkswagen Beetle inside the garage was ruined, according to Kytta.

The home is in a neighborhood called Golden Estates.

Firefighters examine the garage area of the single-story house in north Centralia.

By Sharyn  L. Decker
Lewis County Sirens news reporter

The medical marijuana plants stolen from a Toledo home earlier this week turned up, but who took them and why is still a mystery that remains to be solved.

Deputies were called about 8:50 p.m. on Wednesday night to the 500 block of Jackson Highway South when Gabe Kelly and his brother-in-law reported they had interrupted a burglary.

Kelly said he saw three or four people inside his house, who fled when they arrived, carrying his plants. The two men gave chase.

“They’re at a dead run, we’re kind of at a half jog, cause we really didn’t want to catch them,” Kelly said yesterday.

The pair stopped when they heard a gunshot, hid behind a woodpile and waited for deputies.

Kelly said the intruders had headed for his landlord’s shop building on neighboring property.

The chimney from the shop was “billowing with marijuana smoke,” Kelly said. And a trail of plant parts lay strewn between the two buildings, he said.

For whatever reason, the sheriff’s office didn’t get a search warrant, although they did bring in a K-9.

The following morning, when a second set of deputies returned to the scene, Kelly’s partially burned plants were found in the wood stove inside the shop.

And the bullet hole found in the shop’s roll-up door – large enough for Kelly to stick his finger through – leaves Kelly very much wanting to get to the bottom of the odd theft.

“Somebody tried to take my life,” Kelly said.

Lewis County Sheriff’s Office Cmdr. Steve Aust said finding the bullet hole changed the investigation.

And why someone would steal a dozen marijuana plants and try to incinerate them next door, he couldn’t say.

“I don’t know,” Aust said yesterday. “I guess when we find those people, we’ll have to ask them.”

The landlord said someone broke into his shop, Aust said. “He’s saying he didn’t burn ’em, he doesn’t know how they got there.”

Kelly, 31, is married with two children, and another on the way. He and his family have rented the house – a former gas station – for the past two or so years, he said, from his mother’s husband.

The couple is in the process of moving out, as relations there soured when Kelly’s’ mother and her husband separated, he said.

Kelly is the designated medical marijuana provider for his mother.

He said he had 12 to 15 plants growing in a padlocked attic room. They ranged from two feet to four feet in height, and were “budding,” he said.

He’s frustrated because the loss means his mom will have to endure unnecessary pain and suffering, he said.

It’s not legal for him to go buy marijuana for her.

“The major loss here is obviously not a financial one,” he said. “But the loss of my mother’s and my, quality, organic, homegrown strains.”

He also is a medical marijuana user, saying it keeps him from having to take pills for pain for an old foot injury.

His mother uses it for pain and to improve her appetite, he said, as she suffers from something called wasting disease.

Kelly said he spent $450 to buy just 10 special seeds to grow his crop.

He said he was growing it with landlord’s blessing and kept it discreet, something his best friend didn’t even know about, he said.

When he returned this afternoon to check on the house, he found a cardboard box with the remains of the plants in his driveway. The sheriff’s office didn’t seize them because he has a valid authorization for medical marijuana.

It’s not really salvageable, he said.

“They destroyed the mature plants, I was able to retrieve some of the young plants from the driveway,” he said.

Cmdr. Aust said he didn’t have all the details yesterday, but deputies didn’t believe they had have enough evidence that night to get a search warrant.

However, the sheriff’s office has some leads they are following up on, he said.
•••

Side notes:

• Kelly said he guessed his plants would have yielded an average of two ounces each.
• There are roughly 28 grams in an ounce.
• Kelly estimated his species would be valued at $15 to $20 per gram.

Ayla Lukascik gets a final picture with her phone.

By Sharyn  L. Decker
Lewis County Sirens news reporter

CENTRALIA – As dusk approached, a fire truck’s engine idled and folks milled around the downtown intersection with the massive shell of the historic Matz building providing a backdrop.

Some were waiting for the word so they might bid on the demolition. Others came to see it one last time.

“My dad used to own the record store that was here, Rainbow Records,” Ayla Lukascik said after capturing some images with her phone.

“He closed it down in, ’88 or something,” she said. “I don’t really remember.”

Lukascik graduated from high school here, and moved to Seattle. But she returned today to visit her father, and the gray two-story structure on the corner of Tower Avenue and Main Street.

Crews are expected tomorrow to begin the process of tearing it down, according to city spokesperson Officer John Panco.

Yesterday’s fire nearly gutted the building, collapsing parts of its roof and floors.

The decision of whether to rebuild or demolish was between the owner and the insurance company, Centralia Building Official LG Nelson said. But what Nelson knew already is it might fall down with the slightest tremor.

“There’s no lateral connections to hold the walls up,” he said. “It’s so unsafe, we’re afraid of trains going by, or a 15 mph wind.”

A fence installed along two of its sides keeps parts of two main streets blocked, as a precaution.

Nelson and others met near the site shortly after 5 p.m. today and he shared that what needs to happen quickly, is at least one lane of Tower Avenue there has to be reopened, he said.

Owner Linda Hamilton was among those on the corner.

Earlier today, contractors removed her signature “Cafe” sign and the patio furniture that graced the sidewalk outside Centralia Perk’s entrance.

It will be stored for now, she said.

The claw foot bathtubs that each of the dozen apartments were furnished with will stay inside, she said. Along with all of their belongings.

Everything, she said.

“We left keys, money, we left with nothing,” Hamilton said.

Fire investigators were never able to go inside to do a complete investigation because the building was deemed unstable.

After the meeting that included city officials, Panco said the official cause of the blaze is “undetermined.”

They did conclude it originated on the main level, he said.

Riverside Fire Authority Assistant Chief Rick Mack this morning said a plausible possibility was a candle burning on a desk inside Curious Betty’s clothing boutique.

The masonry building, erected in 1889, originally housed National Bank and Dr. Matz, a dentist.

It is the oldest building in downtown Centralia, if one doesn’t count a wood structure that still stands at North Tower Avenue and First Street, and possibly a wood frame apartment building on South Tower Avenue near the viaduct, according to Jeff Miller, president of the Centralia Downtown Association.

The Matz building’s final tenants include the residents of 12 apartments, Centralia Perk, an antique store, a tattoo shop, a barber shop, a hair salon and Curious Betty’s.

By Sharyn  L. Decker
Lewis County Sirens news reporter

Authorities were expecting a structural engineer this morning to examine what remains of the burned out two-story building in downtown Centralia and determine if it must be torn down.

Dr. Matz building

Firefighting crews were on the scene at Tower Avenue and Main Street overnight hitting hot spots with water, a spokesperson for the police and fire departments said this morning.

A meeting is scheduled for noon so that officials can make decisions about their next steps, according to Centralia Police Department Officer John Panco.

Fire swept through the historic Dr. Matz building early yesterday, devastating five businesses and leaving the inhabitants of a dozen second-floor apartments homeless.

The box-like gray building is probably best known for owner Linda Hamilton’s Centralia Perk coffee shop.

Riverside Fire Authority Assistant Chief Rick Mack said he and other investigators have not been able to go inside to determine the cause, but an interview yesterday with the couple associated with Curious Betty’s clothing boutique offered some possibilities.

One is a plug-in baseboard type space heater, which would be unusual if it had ignited, Mack said.

The other more likely source was a taper candle which was burning on a desk inside the shop, he said.

The couple had worked a long day and laid down and fallen asleep in the boutique when they awoke to intense heat and heavy smoke, Mack said.

They managed to find their way outside fortunately, he said.

“They are extremely lucky because there are no smoke alarms in that portion of the building,” Mack said. “That they woke up at all is a miracle.”

Investigators may or may not be able to get inside the building to determine the cause of the fire because of the structural integrity of the building, he said.

Fire Chief Jim Walkowski today said crews never made it inside the Matz building.

“There was a collapse of the floor section above Betty’s and we fought it from the outside,” Walkowski said.

Riverside was called at about 2:20 a.m. yesterday and joined by fire departments from Chehalis, Napavine, Rochester and Gibson Valley.

The fire wasn’t contained until 6 a.m., but they continued to pour water on it from ladder trucks throughout the day.

Firefighters did take hoses into an adjacent building, where they battled to keep the flames that tried to spread  south to the other businesses on the block, Walkowski said.

Even that was risky, according to the chief.

“We had a structural collapse as they were fighting fire inside (there),” he said. “It was really close.”

Walkowski said he believed there were smoke alarms in the apartment area but there was no monitored fire alarm system in the building.

The chief said some of those who were displaced were getting assistance from the Red Cross and some were staying with family.

Assistant Chief Mack still has a couple of possible other ignition sources to work on ruling in or out.

The official cause on his report is going to read undetermined, Mack said this morning, until and if he can get inside and hopefully find out for sure what happened.

He said he doesn’t have any reason to disbelieve the couple from Curious Betty’s.

“Like I said, and I’ll say it again,” Mack said. “It was a miracle they got out alive.”

•••

Watch a video from a circling helicopter yesterday by KATU.com out of Portland, here