Lewis County Sirens.com

Updated at 1:09 p.m.

By Sharyn  L. Decker
Lewis County Sirens news reporter

Authorities are urging caution as wet roads from melting snow have led to icy conditions around Lewis County.

Responders were called to two injury collisions late last night and another two big rig wrecks since.

“The roads are very icy,” Lewis County Fire District 6 Chief Tim Kinder said this morning. “Drive very careful today, especially on hill tops and back roads.”

His crew went out about 5:45 a.m. to the 600 block of Logan Hill Road in Chehalis where a fully loaded log truck slid into a ditch, Kinder said. The driver was uninjured.

Temperatures fell to near freezing across much of the region and drivers should expect pockets of icy conditions including black ice, the National Weather Service reported this morning.

It should warm up to above freezing by around 10 o’clock this morning, the forecasters say.

Washington State Patrol Sgt. Jason Ashley said this morning county roads were slick but state routes were bare an wet. It was different last night however.

Troopers were called about 11:40 p.m. yesterday to U.S. Highway 12 at Interstate 5 where a semi truck with two trailers slid into a ditch. The driver, a 42-year-old Bellingham woman, was reportedly uninjured.

At about 11 p.m., a 23-year-old Toledo woman was hurt when the vehicle in which she was a passenger ran into a guard along state Route 505 near Henriott Road in Toledo, according to the Washington State Patrol.

The driver of the Datsun pickup, Michael A. Frank, 42, of Toledo was said to be uninjured when the truck lost control on the ice and came to rest down an embankment, according to the state patrol.

Savannah J. Williams, 23, was transported to St. John Medical Center in Longview with a broken “tibia” and “fibula” the investigating trooper reported. The truck was totaled.

Two individuals were taken to Morton General Hospital after another single-vehicle collision on U.S. Highway 12 near Morton just before 11:30 p.m.

The car was eastbound when it struck a guard rail, according to the state patrol.

A 3-year-old boy in the car was unhurt but the driver, a 41-year-old Puyallup man had an injured wrist and a 34-year-old passenger from Graham had a possible injury to her thigh, the state patrol reported.

Driving too fast on icy roads was blamed for all three wrecks.

Winlock High School class ring from 1963, after 50 years on the bank of stream.

By Sharyn  L. Decker
Lewis County Sirens news reporter

Chehalis attorney Dana Williams hasn’t lived in Winlock since 1963, the year he graduated from high school and joined the military.

But he left something behind in the south Lewis County town a half a century ago he never thought he’d see again.

The year was 1962. He’d already bought and was wearing his high school class ring, but it vanished during a Saturday night dance for teenagers at the community building.

Williams was surprised when he got a call last week from local historian and museum operator Roy Richards.

“Roy said, ‘did you lose your class ring?’ ” Williams recounted at the courthouse on Friday. “I said, as a matter of fact, I did.”

The ring had disappeared near Olequa Creek and that’s exactly where it had turned up a few days earlier.

Forty-five year-old Janice Rouska was visiting a friend, who lives in a house next to the community building when she went out back and walked down some rail-road-tie steps to the creek.

She was just taking in the scenery since the water was running high and the snow had fallen, Rouska said.

“I cleared some leaves so I could see the steps and there was a toe ring,” Rouska said, describing a small band the color of a penny.

“Then I moved some more leaves, and there was the class ring,” she said.

Her friend wanted to keep it, she said, but she said no, it belongs to someone.

Rouska visited a local business where an acquaintance examined it, and they could see the year 1963 embedded in the design, she said. She took a trip to the library to see if they had any old high school year books and was directed to Richards.

He runs the Renegade Rooster, a small museum at his Rhoades Road home. It’s all things Winlock.

Among his collection is a roster with the names of every student who graduated from Winlock High School since 1911.

The ring had the initials D.W., Richards said. Only three names like that turned up: Doug Wilson, Diane Werden and Dana Williams, he said.

Richards called Wilson and learned his class ring was sitting in his drawer.

Richards and Rouska learned that Werden had lost her class ring, but it had a white background, not blue like the one found about three feet from the creek.

And so Richards phoned Williams.

All are stunned the tiny piece of jewelry survived five decades apparently in almost the exact spot.

“It’s amazing,” Rouska said. “Considering how much water and dirt had to have been over it all those 50 years.”

The creek itself hasn’t changed much, except for the usual seasonal transformations, according to Richards. In the winter it’s very deep and fast moving and in the summer, one can walk across it, he said.

Williams picked up the ring on Thursday at the Winlock home where Rouska lives.

She’d run it under the faucet and taken a toothbrush to it.

“It’s in beautiful condition, although the silver is little tarnished,” Williams said before he took it out of a drawer at his Chehalis office and placed it on his pinky finger.

It cost about three month’s of the his teenage wages, he said.

The lawyer couldn’t say enough about the efforts Rouska made to track him down, but he was vague about the circumstances under which he became separated from his class ring.

“Let’s just say I was tossing something during a winter eve in 1962, and the ring slipped off behind the old community building,” he said.

By Sharyn  L. Decker
Lewis County Sirens news reporter

CHEHALIS – Just as many folks are recovering from deep snow and its aftermath, a windstorm is coming tonight, according to the National Weather Service.

The foul weather could snap tree branches and cause further power outages, according to a wind advisory issued this afternoon.

The weather service says southerly winds of 20 to 30 mph with gusts up to 45 mph will develop after midnight and continue tomorrow morning.

The advisory is in effect for most of Western Washington, including the Southwest Interior.

Locally, authorities are expecting gusts as high as 50 mph.

Lewis County Emergency Management spokesperson Chief Civil Deputy Stacy Brown says the winds could cause more trees, utility poles and power lines to fall, with landslide possibilities.

In the Boistfort Valley, the fire chief has informed the community to expect to lose electricity, but was hopeful the increasing temperatures would melt some ice minimizing the risk of ice-heavy trees toppling.

And it will be wet, Lewis County Fire District 13 Chief Gregg Peterson notes in his message.

“The rain may be as much as two inches as this initial front passes,” Peterson writes.

A flood watch remains in place through tomorrow afternoon. An avalanche warning continues for the Cascade and Olympic Mountains.

The Boistfort community is prepared to open their grange if they end up with multiple people in distress, according to Peterson.

The Red Cross has opened several shelters, and the closest locally are at the Moose Lodge in Yelm and the McLane Black Lake Fire Station on Delphi Road in Olympia.

The Red Cross reminds the public of the dangers of carbon monoxide poisoning during power outages:
• Never heat or cook inside on a charcoal or gas grill.
• Never use a generator or portable propane heater indoors, in garages or in car ports.

•••

Check the forecast and warnings for your area, here and here

Both the above links – “Weather forecasts” and “River levels” are always available on the right hand sidebar of Lewis County Sirens.com