PORT ANGELES — In the hushed silence of a movie theater lobby, the names of the dozens of people who have died on North Olympic Peninsula roads resonated like a roll call through the gathered crowd.
The victims were mothers, fathers, children, grandparents, friends, siblings.
Some had been gone four years. Others, just months — or weeks.
With each name read aloud, a white ornament was placed on a tree, filling the branches with a visual gauge of how many lives have been lost on Clallam and Jefferson county roads since January 2000.
“Every one of these people was very important to someone else,” said Sandi Hofer, who read the names and whose father, Klaus Steinhorst, was among them.
“I strongly desire to do whatever I can to prevent these tragedies from happening to other people’s families.”
Safety corridor kickoff
On Wednesday, numerous people with the same desire — law enforcement officers, highway engineers, emergency responders, and business and community members — gathered in the Deer Park Cinemas lobby to mark the kickoff of the U.S. Highway 101 Safety Corridor.
The project, several months in the making, aims to boost education, enforcement and engineering when it comes to a 32-mile stretch of Highway 101 from the state Highway 112 junction, west of Port Angeles, to the eastern Clallam-Jefferson county line.
“Our goal is to save lives and reduce injuries,” said Clallam County Sheriff Joe Martin, the safety corridor project’s chairman.
“Ultimately, the success of this project will depend on those who use Highway 101,” he said.
“Together, we can make it happen.”
