Columbia County

KXL's John Eric Smith reports.

St. Helens in Columbia County expects some Washington drivers to bypass Portland by traveling through Longview and then taking Highway 30 south.

Crystal King with the city of St. Helens says past I-5 closures have increased traffic through town.

When there is any kind of closure on I-5, that people tend to use Highway 30 as an alternate route.

Portland police continuing to investigate yesterday's hazmat incident at Benson High and they say the teen involved is expected to

survive.

One small town in Columbia County says this week's I-5 closure could create extra traffic for their community and maybe that's not the worst thing in the world.

And the Mariners even up the series against the Texas Rangers.

survive.

One small town in Columbia County says this week's I-5 closure could create extra traffic for their community and maybe that's not the worst thing in the world.

And the Mariners even up the series against the Texas Rangers.

More from Judah Duby.

Portland's five-week southbound I-5 closure starts on Friday night.

It's almost here.

And the Columbia County City of St. Helens expects some drivers to bypass the shutdown by driving through their town.

KXL's John Eric Smith has more on that.

And it's, and it goes, all the way to the city of Vernonia.

And Vernonia is actually in our neighboring county of Columbia County.

And it is a beautiful, also accessible trail because it's fully paved.

And it goes right through our state park, L.L. Stubbs Stewart State Park.

Do you know what? It's not.

It's a judge in Columbia County who was not appointed by a Democrat governor, which makes him a rare item to begin with, because most of the judges in Oregon have been appointed by Democrat governors.

He was actually elected by the voters of Columbia County, believe it or not.

They say truth is the strangest of fiction, and this sounds like one of those articles that would be found in The Onion, kind of spoofing the system, but unfortunately it's real.

Unfortunately, that is absolutely true.

All right, Bigfoot Society, we've got the privilege of talking to Ellie today.

Ellie is a Columbia County, Oregon native and, uh, got connected to me over on the TikTok platform, which there's a lot of really interesting conversations that happen over there.

I believe one of the Rainier, Oregon, uh, episodes had come across Ellie's feed, and, uh, so we started chatting after that.

And, uh, Ellie's had some interesting things happen in that area.

Finally.

Somebody's talking about the weird stuff that happens out here." You don't hear about Rainier very often.

But, um, even Columbia County as a whole, I don't hear that many things, and you don't see anybody investigating it or talking about it, so.

Yeah, absolutely.