Ken Graham: FROM THE PUBLISHER

Emergency services have been on the minds of Touchet Valley residents a lot this summer, what with four major building fires in Dayton and the Blue Creek Fire in Walla Walla County.

None of the causes of these fires has been determined for sure, but they’ve kept a lot of firefighters and other emergency personnel up a lot of nights in the last few weeks.

So it’s fitting that this week, Dayton and Waitsburg residents got to see many of these emergency management people during daylight hours and learn about what they do, during the annual National Night Out events.

I’m writing this a few hours before this year’s events happened, so I can’t describe them to you. But just before we sent this issue of The Times off to the press on Tuesday evening, our Waitsburg and Dayton reporters, Dena Wood and Dian Ver Valen, were to file what I’m sure were excellent photos and short descriptions of the local NNOs.

This is Dayton’s eighth NNO. It’s been a huge success each year, attracting at least 1,000 visitors to the Dayton City Park each year. What’s particularly exciting about that is that the attendees are almost all local residents.

This year is Waitsburg’s first NNO, so I don’t know how many people attended (obviously). But I’m sure there were a lot, and that they were also mostly local residents.

Dayton and Waitsburg are famous for their annual events, like All Wheels Weekend and Celebration Days, just to name two. But these events are organized to attract visitors to town. Attracting visitors is very important, of course, and Waitsburg and Dayton are good at it, but it’s great that we can now have our own event too.

The first NNO was held in 1981. It was created by the National Association of Town Watch, which is a non-profit crime-prevention organization that works with communities and local law enforcement.

The group’s website describes NNO as; “An annual community-building campaign that promotes police-community partnerships and neighborhood camaraderie.”

I hope most of our local readers got to enjoy a local “night out,” and if you didn’t, be sure to put it on the calendar for next year.