Lewis County Sirens.com

By Sharyn  L. Decker
Lewis County Sirens news reporter

CHEHALIS – The man charged with having pounds of methamphetamine, cocaine and heroin when he was captured following a high-speed chase in Chehalis a year ago pleaded guilty today in a compromise deal because the main witness against him is Robbie Russell.

Robert John Maddaus Jr.

Robert John Maddaus Jr., 41, was in Lewis County Superior Court this afternoon with his attorney Ken Johnson.

Senior Deputy Prosecutor Brad Meagher told the judge he reduced the charges to possession of each of three drugs.

“The intent element here, I was going to use Robbie Russell for that, and that just isn’t going to happen,” Meagher said.

After the two men were apprehended by Lewis County sheriff’s deputies in November 2009, detectives found in the car a backpack containing two and a half pounds of methamphetamine, nearly a half pound of cocaine and almost one-third pound of heroin, according to charging documents.

Maddaus – who is a Rochester resident, according to court documents – was initially charged with possession of each of the three drugs with intent to deliver, as well as unlawful possession of a firearm.

Robert Shawn Russell

The red Corvette belonged to Russell and it was Russell who was driving, according to Johnson. An argument could have been made at trial the drugs belonged to Russell, Johnson said.

Russell had been contacted by law enforcement and made arrangements to turn Maddaus over to them, Johnson said.

The attorney called the circumstances of that night “very peculiar”. Despite Russell’s agreement, he sped away when deputies tried to pull him over, he said.

“Back then, Russell was working with us,” Meagher said after today’s court hearing. But after that, he committed a bunch of crimes, he said.

Earlier this month, Russell was sent to prison with a six-year sentence.

“It’s not like we can count on Robbie Russell coming back and cooperating, things have changed,” Meagher said.

Judge James Lawler sentenced Maddaus today to one year and a day for each of the three counts. They will be served concurrently.

Lawler then signed an order transporting Maddaus back to Thurston County, where he is set for trial next week for first-degree murder in the case of a man found handcuffed and shot to death on an Olympia street in November of last year.

Some of the fire departments begin wrapping hoses and putting gear away as the downtown firefight wound down yesterday

By Sharyn  L. Decker
Lewis County Sirens news reporter

TOLEDO – Members of eight fire departments battled the blaze yesterday morning that threatened an entire city block in downtown Toledo, and in the end two buildings were destroyed and a handful of adjacent businesses suffered light smoke damage.

The upper levels of the former Masonic building that holds Cowlitz River Antiques was gutted and the attic to the adjacent Used Book Store to the north was burned. The ground floor of both sustained water damage.

“Not good,” Toledo Mayor Jerry Pratt said yesterday as he watched firefighters winding down the operation. “That whole upstairs is full of Toledo history.”

The proprietors of the two businesses were instrumental in creating the Toledo Historical Society some six years ago and they keep its records, collections of photographs and artifacts inside.

Marie and Robert Oberg own the larger building and she had a logging museum fixed up upstairs, former city council member Steve McNew said as he and his wife spent part of their Christmas morning observing the aftermath.

Anita Emel who operates the bookstore surveyed the scene earlier in the day and then left, according to the mayor.

“I talked to Anita this morning, she’s pretty distraught,” Pratt said. “In fact I held her while she cried for a little while.”

Emel and Oberg helped found the society in the spring of 2004, in part because the area which saw one of the earliest white settlements in Lewis County had no museum.

While crews couldn’t fight the fire from inside because of the risk of the roofs collapsing, after it was under control firefighters made a quick trip inside the bookstore and retrieved some important papers and photos belonging to the historical society, according to Lewis County Fire District 2 Chief Grant Wiltbank.

“Anita stood at the window and said ‘we need those boxes right there’,” Wiltbank said. “It was just in and out.”

Wiltbank said the fire appears to have started on the second floor and spread to the attics of both buildings. The cause is under investigation.

The two storefronts along with Timberland Bank face Second Street – which was renamed Ramsey Street on that block a few years back – just off of the main route through town, Cowlitz Street which is state Route 505.

The bank was spared, but a row of businesses on Cowlitz Street sustained some smoke damage, according to the fire chief.

The backside of the two buildings – where the worst of the fire was – sits just across a narrow alley from Toledo Hardware.

“Our big concern was the fire jumping and taking out the hardware store and the pharmacy,” Wiltbank said.

The call came at 4:30 a.m. and drew what Wiltbank estimated was at least 30 firefighters.

Responders came from Toledo, Winlock, Vader, Napavine, Centralia, Castle Rock, Toutle and Kelso-Longview – the equivalent of a three-alarm fire, according to the chief.

Wiltbank, a volunteer chief was on his way home from his job at the fire department in Gig Harbor. Assistant Chief Mike Dorothy was the incident commander. Mayor Pratt said he arrived after getting a phone call at 5 a.m.

“When I came down the hill, the street was blocked and the flames were shooting close to 40 feet high,” Pratt said.

The fire hoses weren’t making a lot of headway until the ladder truck from Centralia’s Riverside Fire Authority joined them, according to Pratt.

“Thank God for the Centralia fire department, they probably saved the block,” he said. “When they opened up with that thing, it really knocked it down.”

Anita Emel's Used Book Store

Marie and Robert Oberg's Cowlitz River Antiques

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Read yesterday morning’s breaking news of the fire as it burned and see more photos here

Firefighters this morning at the fire in Salkum. / Courtesy photo by Bob Jackson of Onalaska

By Sharyn  L. Decker
Lewis County Sirens news reporter

Four residents suffering from smoke inhalation and a responding firefighter who injured his leg were hospitalized after a fire broke out this morning in a Salkum home.

Some 25 firefighters from Salkum, Onalaska, Mossyrock and Lewis County Fire District 5 based in Napavine answered the 7:30 a.m. call to the residence in between U.S. Highway 12 and state Route 508.

“Don’t know what caused it, but it was a total loss, a double-wide trailer,” District 8 Assistant Chief Don Taylor said this afternoon.

Responders got the blaze under control about 11:30 a.m. and the scene was finally cleared about 2 p.m., he said.

A couple and two older teenage relatives who live there had a pair of out-of-town guests overnight, Taylor said.

He said one of the house guests was sleeping on the living room floor when she was awakened by what she thought was the sound of bacon cooking.

“She looked up and saw nobody was cooking and she could see flickering on the walls,” he said. “She opened a door – I don’t know if it was a back door or an inside door – and a ball of fire drove her back.”

Taylor said the older gentleman who lives there had severe smoke inhalation and a hand injury he thought he got trying to help the others out of the home.

A District 8 firefighter injured his leg when he fell through the floor during mop up, Taylor said.

The residence on 100 block of Maple Crest Drive is off a one-lane road with a narrower driveway so arriving fire trucks had to be stacked up along the road making fighting the fire more challenging, according to Taylor.

A car was destroyed by the fire, but a garage was spared, he said.

Taylor didn’t know all the details of how the occupants got out but said somebody had thrown a brick through a bedroom window and they were barefoot and in their night clothes at the back of the house when firefighters arrived.

“We had to bring them past the fire to get them to the ambulances,” he said. Two were carried and the others escorted, he said.

The fire department contacted the Red Cross to assist the fire victims with a place to stay.

The cause is under investigation.
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Read this morning’s news item on the fire here

Firefighters this morning at the fire in Salkum. / Courtesy photo by Bob Jackson of Onalaska

Cowlitz River Antiques, far left, and the Used Book Store, center, sustained massive damage in this morning's fire in Toledo. Timberland Bank, right, was saved.

By Sharyn  L. Decker
Lewis County Sirens news reporter

This was updated at 9:15 a.m.

A three-alarm fire is burning in downtown Toledo in two buildings south of Timberland Bank.

Firefighters are battling the blaze defensively at this point, Lewis County Fire District 2 Chief Grant Wiltbank said about 8:15 a.m.

It started sometime after 4 o’clock this morning, the chief said.

“It’s on the block where the bank is at and it appears to have started in the second or third floors of the adjacent properties to the south,” he said. “I’m not there.

Wiltbank spoke by telephone on his way from his job at the fire department in Gig Harbor.

Fire keeps breaking out on the upper floors, and there’s so much smoke they can’t see for a half block, he said.

Multiple agencies responded including a ladder truck from Centralia’s Riverside Fire Authority and from Castle Rock, he said.

Wiltbank said the bank appears to be safe and as he understand it, there is some smoke damage in a beauty shop, a chiropractor’s office and a lawyer’s office.

It’s near the intersection of Kellogg Way and Second Street.

“It’s a big fire, the biggest we’ve had in Toledo probably since I’ve been there,” Wiltbank said.

Crews can’t go into the buildings because of the imminent risk of roof collapse, he said.

State Route 505 is blocked off, according to Diane Wallace, secretary to Fire District 2.

“I’m watching from my office and there is a lot of very thick black smoke,” Wallace said just before 9 a.m. “The town is pretty much covered in smoke.”

Wallace has been with the district almost 30 years and said she couldn’t recall a fire of this size downtown ever. The building holds a book store and an antique store, she said.

Paramedic Kirk Johnston spent a couple of hours earlier at the Toledo fire station providing “rehab” for fire crews.

No injuries have been reported.

“Flames were coming out of the roof of the building,” Johnston said. “I could see flames as I was coming down the hill into Toledo.”

More to come

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Note: If anyone got photographs this morning, they’d like to share, please email them to sharyn.decker@lewiscountysirens.com

Foam from the fire hoses lays on the street today in front of the antique store, which houses the Logging Museum upstairs. / Courtesy photo by Carrie Kann of Toledo

The back side of the antique store building - which used to be the Masonic Building - is where most of the fire damage shows. On the left, across the narrow alley is Toledo Hardware. / Courtesy photo by Carrie Kann of Toledo