This story originally aired on May 26, 2018. Naomi Wachira was born and raised in Kenya, studied broadcasting in Chicago, then theology in Seattle. While she always had an impressive singing voice -- she sang in choirs since she was five -- becoming a professional musician wasn’t truly on the radar until 2013, after her father, a pastor in Kenya, passed away. “He followed his calling, he followed his life passion which was helping people and believing in people. And I think for me it made me

This story originally aired on May 26, 2018. On January 31, 2000, Claire Barnett lost 10 people she loved dearly on Alaska Airlines Flight 261. Two of the people on board were her daughters, 8-year-old Coriander Clemetson and 6-year-old Blake Clemetson. The girls were coming back from Mexico with their father, their stepmother, their 6-year-old stepbrother and their new 6-month-old baby brother. The MD-83 crashed into the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Southern California after a faulty screw

This story originally aired on May 26, 2018. Ana Mari Cauce says her relationship with her big brother was pretty typical when they were growing up. "Every scar on his body was probably given to him by me," Cauce says, "He had a scar over his mouth where I kicked hime in the mouth -- not on puprose! He was in the front seat, I was in the back seat. He did some kind of name-calling and so I went to kick the back of teh seat, he turned around I caught his tooth." Cauce has served as President of

Mary Beth Tinker was a shy kid. “I got good grades, I was kind of a teacher’s pet, my dad was a preacher – I mean, come on,” she told KNKX Public Radio. “So I wasn’t one to be a rabble rouser at all. But I felt very strongly.”

While the east side of the Cascades is no stranger to wildfires, communities in Western Washington are preparing for the possibility of bigger and more frequent fires. In two interviews with KNKX Public Radio, officials with the state Department of Natural Resources and the U.S. Forest Service share their insights into the unique challenges of preventing and fighting wildfires in Western Washington.

Naaman Midyette has fought many fires in the past two decades. But fighting those fast-moving blazes that engulf wildlands is different. “It’s scary just knowing the power a free-burning wildfire can have,” he said.

Soo Ing-Moody became mayor of Twisp in 2010, before wildfires were the new normal. But she wasn’t new to the impacts they have on communities.

As soon as Daniel Lyon jumped out of the wrecked fire engine in Twisp, he was burning alive. “It was the loudest, brightest thing you’d ever seen,” he said of the wall of flames. “It sounded like a freight train all around you.” Lyon crawled up the ravine to the dirt road and took off running, toward the wildfire safety zone. That, he says, was the easy part.

The men and women who fight wildland fires have to be prepared for everything. Many of the people who sign up as recruits have never been in a wildfire in their lives. Others have experience as hot shots or smokejumpers. And that got us thinking: where did the idea come from to jump out of a plane and into a fire? The answer: Central Washington.

We begin in the last large-animal farm within the city of Seattle, atop a chestnut mare named Star, as host Gabriel Spitzer gets a ride and a history lesson. Then we hear how a couple of sophisticated urban poodles became the talk of the town in rural central Washington. We hear a conversation between two birding enthusiasts about finding a place for themselves as black women from big cities among nature-lovers. We learn why if you pay close attention to the signs that dot the urban landscape,