Free Republic

Three young sisters have been found dead in Washington state after a tense weekend of searching. The sisters – Paityn Decker, 9, Evelyn Decker, 8, and Olivia Decker, 5 – failed to return from a “planned visitation” with their father on Friday, sparking a police canvass involving local detectives, federal officers and a Homeland Security helicopter in Chelan County, Washington. Authorities found their bodies near their father’s car on Monday at 3:45 p.m. around the Rock Island State Park campground in western Washington. The girls’ father, 32-year-old Travis Decker, remains missing and is wanted on suspicion of first-degree murder and...

Geologists may be close to cracking one of the biggest seismological mysteries in the Pacific Northwest: the origin of a powerful earthquake that rattled seven states and provinces when Ulysses S. Grant was president. Preliminary evidence points to a newly discovered fault near the town of Entiat in Chelan County, Wash. The find adds to a growing body of evidence that Central and Eastern Washington are more quake-prone than previously thought, and will help refine seismic risks in an area that's home to 1.5 million people, more than a dozen hydropower dams and the Hanford nuclear reservation, said Craig Weaver,...