Terri Langley takes a deep breath and then hoists a huge box loaded with groceries over the threshold of the Mount Si Helping Hands Food Bank. With another effort, she pushes the box onto the sidewalk, then goes back inside for more. It’s the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, and Langley is looking forward to making a holiday meal for her family of four.
Langley has been coming here for six months, since she moved to the area. She has been unable to find work, but is grateful to have found the food bank. “This is a beautiful place that helps keep us all fed,” she says.
A few minutes later, a young couple comes out, arms loaded with provisions. They both say the food bank has really helped them out. The young man was born in North Bend. Next is an older couple, a mother with her pre-school-aged daughter, and two men clearly shopping for a large family. They are not only of all ages, but also from a variety of ethnicities and circumstances.
In an average week, the North Bend-based food bank serves about 310 families, says manager Krista Holmberg. In the weeks leading up to the holidays, the number has been closer to 400.

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North Bend’s fire station is no place to be in an emergency, maybe not even on a good day.
Located next to City Hall, the building has leaks, rats, a floor drain directly to the sewer system, loose windows, an overtaxed electrical system and almost no insulation or storage. It sits in a floodplain, and is so unstable that engineers estimate a third of it would collapse in another earthquake the size of the 2001 Nisqually quake.

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Monday’s snowfall, freezing temperatures and icy conditions resulted in school and city office closings, a run on snow shovels and sleds at Ace Hardware in North Bend, lots of single-vehicle accidents throughout the area, and round-the-clock snow-plowing in the city of North Bend.

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The floodwaters that marred Mountain Creek Christmas Tree Farm are long gone. But the land, and the trees, still bear the signs.
Sand and rocks litter the grounds, small trees are dying, and the picturesque creek running through the property has left its bed in places, winding instead through the growing trees, under a fence, and onto a neighboring field.
Farm owner Marilyn Kassian toured one of the hardest-hit section of trees, and sighed, frustrated.
“If my son had time, he’d get rid of all of ’em, because he says it’s not very good-looking,” she said.

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