Local News

TUMWATER, Thurston County — Employees at a Tumwater bank treated a customer from Tenino like a bank robber last week, tripping an alarm that resulted in police officers drawing guns and handcuffing him after he left the branch of Timberland Bank.

“I thought they were going to shoot me,” 59-year-old Thomas Budsberg said of his ordeal on the afternoon of Sept. 16.

Budsberg and a companion were released by police after they realized he had not robbed the bank and was not a bank-robbery suspect, The Olympian reported Thursday.

Timberland Bank CEO Michael Sand said he believes employees did nothing wrong during the encounter. Sand said employees at the bank were on alert for Budsberg because he had come into the bank in August, taken some brochures and left.

This was considered “odd” behavior on Budsberg’s part, Sand said. Sand said the branch on Trosper Road has been robbed before. “We want to protect our people,” he said.

Bank employees subsequently looked through CrimeStoppers photos of recent bank-robbery suspects and believed that Budsberg resembled one of them, Sand said. (more…)

OLYMPIA (AP) — A shift in winds Monday is helping firefighters at a couple of wildfires in southwest Washington.

Department of Natural Resources spokeswoman Karen Ripley says they grew Sunday under dry easterly winds. But winds have shifted to an onshore flow, bringing cooler, more-humid air.

About 100 firefighters with helicopters are trying to control a fire that has burned about 100 acres near the eastern end of Riffe (ryf) Lake in Lewis County. It’s burning debris in a recently logged area.

Another fire has burned about 60 acres of logging debris in the Capitol Forest near Littlerock in Thurston County. Ripley says about 100 firefighters are trying to contain the fire on steep terrain with help from helicopters.

She also says firefighters are mopping up smaller fires near Tenino and La Center.