A touch of Grace in the Flathead
There are stories with happy endings, and there are stories with extraordinary outcomes. The birth of Grace Joy Ort on Dec. 18 fits nicely into that extraordinary category, thanks to a brilliant team effort by the staff at Kalispell Regional Healthcare and a few guardian angels along the way.
When Emmy Ort suffered a rare pregnancy-related heart attack while standing in line at the Kalispell Post Office, an EMT standing next to her administered care until the ambulance arrived, and from there all the pieces fell in place to save the mother and child. The medical condition in which the lining of the mother’s artery splits, is often fatal and so rare that most doctors go a lifetime without seeing such a case.
It’s times like this when the caliber of the medical team at Kalispell Regional must be acknowledged. The hospital draws some of the best physicians and other medical professionals in the country, and we’re fortunate to have such extraordinary expertise in our midst.
Re CFAC: Clean it up
State Sen. Dee Brown, R-Columbia Falls, wants the Columbia Falls Aluminum Co. property declared a Superfund site.
Perhaps this is an idea whose time has come.
In making her request that county commissioners take the lead on such a designation, Brown voiced out loud what many people have been thinking: For all intents and purposes, CFAC as a viable industrial entity is defunct.
“I don’t think we’ll ever see the CFAC I knew,” she said — and we tend to agree with that contention and the assessment that Glencore, the multinational commodities trader that owns the plant, has in essence been stringing the community along since the facility closed in 2009.
Any Superfund cleanup would take years to develop and more years to put into effect. But the payoff might be substantial if the 125-acre plant site could be made ready for other manufacturing.
Out with old, in with new
In closing, we’d like to say thank you to our readers for the many kind words you shared with us about the redesign we unveiled earlier this week.
No, it wasn’t unanimous. No change is ever welcomed by everyone, but we were happy that many of you agreed with us that the time had come for a new look.
By the way, some changes in the design of the paper will continue to be seen in the weeks to come. Next up: Starting on Saturday, you will see local news on Page A3 every day and front-page stories continuing on the back page of the section. We hope both these changes will make the newspaper easier to use.
As always, if you have input or suggestions, send an email to editor Frank Miele at edit@dailyinterlake.com or call him at 758-4447.