Wish the best for Casey Malmquist
Our thoughts and prayers are with the Malmquist family as Casey Malmquist continues to recover from extensive burns he sustained in a house explosion July 8 near Williston, N.D.
Malmquist, a longtime Whitefish builder who has been building work-force homes for oil-field families in the Williston area the past few years, is recovering at Regions Hospital in St. Paul, Minn. Malmquist Construction Office Manager Janene Adams said earlier this week that Malmquist is doing well.
“There have been a lot of positive things from the hospital,” she said. “Every day there are positive things.”
The Flathead Building Association has been supportive of Malmquist, encouraging its members to send cards and notes of encouragement to him.
“Give the folks you care about an extra hug this weekend,” the Flathead Building Association memo advised. That’s good advice anytime, but especially when one among us is facing a challenging recovery.
Safety first on the river
A log jam on the Flathead River has gobbled up several rafts and other flotation devices, stranding nearly 20 people who had to be rescued over the last couple weeks. After all that, one might ask, why doesn’t the county do something to get rid of the log jam?
Bad idea. The county has gone after log jams that were causing problems at bridges in the past, but in this case, the log jam just north of the Montana 35 bridge is gigantic and removing it would more than likely create another log jam somewhere downstream — at great expense.
The big issue here is that the county doesn’t need to get into the business of policing a river system for log jams when those kinds of hazards are all over the place.
What’s needed is for floaters to properly equip themselves and be diligent and cautious on a river system with constantly changing features. People safely and successfully float local rivers all the time. It can be done!
Let the weekend begin!
It’s one of the busiest weekends of the year in the Flathead, with Kalispell taking center stage with the annual Hockaday Arts in the Park festival and the Glacier Rally in the Rockies drawing thousands of visitors.
If that’s not enough, Discovery Developmental Center is holding its annual fundraising regatta on Saturday in Somers, Bigfork is holding its Relay for Life overnight tonight and the Polson Cherry Festival also continues all weekend.
Look for all the details in the weekend update on Page A3 of today’s paper, with even more activities highlighted in Thursday’s edition of This Week in the Flathead.
Editorials represent the majority opinion of the Daily Inter Lake’s editorial board.