Barney Lerten

A Redmond man was arrested on DUII, assault and other charges Sunday night after his pickup truck crashed head-on into a minivan on Business 97 (Third Street), seriously injuring the driver and injuring three others, Bend police said.

There were some sparks and tense moments for a garbage truck driver Monday morning in northeast Bend when he clipped and took down a power line that fell onto the truck, but a fire official said he did the right thing by staying in the truck and calling for help.

U.S. Forest Service law enforcement officers have a person in custody in connection with four human-caused fires discovered by a resident and tackled at small sizes Sunday near Horse Butte, about nine miles southeast of Bend, officials said Monday.

The Deschutes County Jail recently reported an outbreak of a half-dozen COVID-19 cases involving three staff members and three of the staff’s family members, but with safety protocols in place, no inmates have contracted the virus in jail since the pandemic began, an official said.

Bend city councilors got an update Wednesday evening on an array of efforts to tackle the problem of homelessness in the community and gave staff the go-ahead to examine two locations identified for possible managed campsites.

A small fire broke out Saturday afternoon near the Bend Parkway on the south end of town and burned about a quarter-acre before crews stopped it.

The U.S. Census Bureau released its first round of data from the April 1, 2020 census on Thursday, kicking off a delayed, compressed effort to redraw the boundaries of congressional and legislative districts across the country – but also shedding light on growth seen on the High Desert in the 2010s.

A dozen Deschutes County Sheriff’s Search and Rescue volunteers helped an injured mountain bike rider near Virginia Meissner Sno-Park on Tuesday afternoon, deputies said.

A fire late Friday night that destroyed the crematorium facility at Deschutes Memorial Chapel and Gardens was traced to a failed electrical panel, an fire investigator said Saturday.

Officials said firefighters made great progress on all wildfires in Central Oregon Friday, including the two on the Sisters Ranger District near Lake Billy Chinook and a new fire on the south end of the Deschutes National Forest called Hole in the Ground.

Two drivers were killed Tuesday morning in a head-on collision of a pickup towing a trailer and a semi-truck on U.S. Highway 97 in the Cow Canyon area north of Madras, closing the highway for five hours, authorities said.

The Oregon Department of Environmental Quality issued an air quality advisory Wednesday for Southern, Central and Northeastern Oregon due to smoke from fires in Oregon and Northern California.

A new burst of thunderstorms Monday afternoon brought towering clouds, rain, golf ball-sized hail and lightning that sparked nearly a dozen new blazes around the region and kicked up a fire north of Madras.

An electrical fire caused about $350,000 in damage and losses at a downtown Bend office building late Saturday night, but an official said the sprinkler system prevented more damage.

A southeast Bend resident’s motion detector and surveillance video caught a porch thief in action and led to the arrest of a Bend man on theft, drugged driving and other charges, police reported Sunday.

Thunderstorms hit Central Oregon with numerous lightning strikes late Thursday afternoon and evening, sparking nearly 20 fires that crews rushed to contain, mostly at small size -- one west of Bend thanks to a fortunate air tanker pass -- as well as a northern Bend power outage affecting 12,500 Paci…

St. Charles Bend is now “operating above capacity” as “an emergency hospital” -- and as a result, all elective surgeries and procedures that require an overnight stay are being delayed until Wednesday, August 4 at the earliest, a spokeswoman said Tuesday afternoon.

A 65-year-old Bend man was killed Saturday morning when his motorcycle crashed on Highway 20W near Suttle Lake in Jefferson County, Oregon State Police reported.

Officials on the massive Bootleg Fire in southern Oregon, approaching 400,000 acres in size, confirmed Wednesday that the fire was determined to be lightning-caused, as more than 2,200 firefighters brought it to nearly one-third containment.

A new wildfire that broke out late Sunday about a mile south of Boyd Cave and nine miles south of Bend has burned an estimated 64 acres, but crews working through the night got an early containment line around it, officials said Monday.