A Greenbank couple suffered a horrendous ordeal Sunday when a gondola they were riding on broke part way up a 75-foot cliff.
The incident happened around 2:30 p.m. at Bob and Sheila Chidsey’s North Bluff Road home. The couple was returning from a beach walk and were in the gondola that connects their high-bank home to the shoreline when the unthinkable happened.
The Island County prosecutor’s review of Langley Mayor Larry Kwarsick will be a criminal investigation and will include the use of a special inquiry judge.
Langley Mayor Larry Kwarsick modified previously finalized development documents for a family member’s home shortly after he was hired as the city’s planning director in 2011, according to a statement released Friday by the Langley City Council.
The news release said the council was not a court of law and can’t make any legal determinations, and instead has recommended the issue be investigated by the Island County Prosecutor’s Office.
The number of pertussis cases throughout Washington State have reached epidemic levels, but so far Whidbey Island appears to have been spared, Island County health officials reported.
The Langley City Council is expected to break its silence this week concerning the alleged scandal involving Mayor Larry Kwarsick.
To better prepare for the worst, governments in Island County are considering the creation of an Emergency Management Council.
An email nightmare that lasted nearly a week and affected up to 7,000 customers has finally come to an end, according to Whidbey Telecom officials.
On Friday, the South Whidbey-based telephone, internet and email provider announced that people may still be receiving a few old emails but that the new system is operating as designed and that customers should have full access to their accounts.
Whidbey Telecom’s email service is once again down, according to the latest updates on the company’s website.
Beginning at 11:35 a.m., the service provider announced they had to take its system offline for 30 minutes to perform critical maintenance. The update said it would be temporary but that it would result in customers not being able to access their email accounts.
Now in its fifth day of email problems, Whidbey Telecom is reporting that its new system is up and running though customers should expect service to remain sluggish due to a backlog of emails.
Repeated attempts to reach company officials for comment on the problems in time for this story were unsuccessful but a news release distributed to The Record late Wednesday afternoon included both an explanation and an apology.
The days of scratching your head over which beaches on Whidbey Island are public and which are private may be numbered.
After an exhaustive inventory effort, Island County parks officials are in the process of revising its list of county parks land. While there is still a lot of work left to do, more than 20 little known public properties have been added to the list of Whidbey Island properties alone, and many are public beach accesses.
Both the sunshine and a healthy crowd turned out for the ninth annual Welcome to the Whales Day Parade and Festival in Langley on Saturday.
The 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. event featured educational displays, slide shows and activities along with costume-making, music, the ever popular parade and a presentation by an out-of-state whale specialist.
A dead gray whale that was found floating in Saratoga Passage Sunday was necropsied on a beach on Whidbey Island Naval Air Station Monday.
According to Susan Berta, co-founder of the Orca Network, the whale was spotted by citizens in the early morning hours just north of Camano Island State Park. The whale remained in the same position for most of the day and was towed that evening to a beach off Polnell Point by Deception Pass Tours in Oak Harbor.
The fate of lone Republican Island County Commissioner Kelly Emerson’s advisory ballot proposals was decided in a fiery debate with her Democratic colleagues in Coupeville Wednesday.
