Late Friday, Jan. 19, John Hawkins, Cal Fire’s Riverside Unit chief and the Riverside County Fire Chief, has been removed as chief. His temporary replacement is Dan Talbot, deputy chief for the county’s eastern operations. “All I have right now is Chief Hawkins is no longer the fire chief and the department has put an…

The Salvation Army is returning to the Idyllwild HELP Center from 10 a.m. to noon Wednesday, Aug 21. The Salvation Army brings food for families. “It’s enough food for a household for one week, whether it’s one person or three or six,” Colleen Meyer, HELP Center client services administrator said in July. Recipients must meet…

Editor’s note: Each year, the Town Crier reports the information below for the three local water districts — Fern Valley, Idyllwild and Pine Cove — and the Idyllwild Fire Protection. The FVWD information appeared in the Feb. 1 issue and the IWD information was in the Feb. 8 issue. IFPD will appear next week. Each…

At its Dec. 10 meeting, the Idyllwild Fire Protection District Commission adopted Resolution 13-17, which eliminated two regular meetings each month. IFPD, as the water districts do, will hold only one regular meeting monthly. It will be 6 p.m., second Tuesday of each month. However, besides its regular January meeting, the commission held a special…

Although the National Weather Service announced last week that it forecasted a 70-percent chance that an El Niño pattern will continue in summer 2015, the U.S. Forest Service Predictive Services unit added that an unfavorable warmer-than-normal water temperatures developed off shore during the winter, which is indicative of a “a Modoki (Japanese for similar, but…