10 years ago this week – 2012
Darrell Sutton was driving home from his job at KFC just after 9 p.m. Sunday night when he noticed smoke coming from the Bergerson Building next to the Astoria-Warrenton Area Chamber of Commerce.
Sutton stopped his car and called for help. What happened next likely saved the building on W. Marine Drive from facing extensive damage.
Sutton went into the neighboring Lamplighter Motel to alert the staff and to grab a fire extinguisher to keep the flames from spreading. A Lamplighter staff member used a garden hose until the Astoria Fire Department arrived. Olney, Knappa and Lewis and Clark fire departments also responded to the fire.
ELSIE – The passage of time only makes objects more interesting to photographers.
On a crisp morning in October, the Jewell School photography class traveled to one of the oldest working homesteads in the area to take pictures of buildings and equipment that have seen over a century of use.
“I think it is cool sharing the property with others, because it has been used for many things and so many of those different things are still here,” said Jewell freshman Mitchell Hale, whose grandfather, Mirl Hale, owns the 1870 Reierson homestead that the class visited.
WARRENTON — Citizen groups have filed a lawsuit in the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to challenge the safety of proposed liquefied natural gas tankers on the Columbia River.
Columbia Riverkeeper, Columbia Pacific Commonsense and Wahkiakum Friends of the River are asking the U.S. Coast Guard to take a hard look at threats to communities, such as explosions and “cascading failures” of liquefied natural gas and its impacts to the environment.
The lawsuit challenges the Coast Guard’s green light for the proposed Oregon LNG terminal and associated tanker traffic.
When the big one hits, county residents shouldn’t depend on any agency for what to do.
In his campaign to inform the North Coast about hazards from a Cascadia Subduction Zone earthquake and the resultant tsunami, Pat Corcoran from Oregon State University says it’s up to individual citizens to be prepared.
“There are lots of things we can do to increase our resilience to the next big one,” said Corcoran, a coastal hazards outreach specialist along the state coastline for Oregon Sea Grant. “We’re not going to get prepared enough if we depend on official organizations.
“Every 250 years something happens,” he said. “That frequency of occurrence is pretty strong.”
The last Cascadia Subduction Zone event was on Jan. 26, 1700, and Corcoran said the North Coast is far enough into the recurrence cycle to warrant serious preparation.
50 years ago – 1972
BROWNSMEAD — Flood water continued to pour through a broken tide gate in a dike separating Blind Slough from low-lying farmland today as the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers encountered more difficulty with repair operations.
However, reports of a break in the dike proved inaccurate. “There is no dike break out there,” the Clatsop County Sheriff’s Office reported. “The only problem is the broken tide gate. There never was a dike break.”
High tides complicated the problem last week and resulted in flooding over an estimated 200 acres of low-lying farmland. Water also flowed over two roads in the area, but they still were passable.
In larger communities, charity patients may be denied medical care, but in Astoria, doctors, dentists and optometrists do accept patients who cannot afford to pay. In addition, Columbia Memorial Hospital and St. Mary’s Hospital admit patients regardless of their ability to pay.
“It’s easier for welfare people to find physicians and dentists who will treat them in Clatsop County than in other parts of Oregon,” confirmed Karen Rodgers, Oregon public welfare division branch manager.
“No doctors in the county refuse patients on welfare,” said Jacqueline Noland, medical clerk for public welfare. “In a small community like Astoria, doctors and dentists are more civic-minded. Also, they generally charge less than big city doctors, who have more patients than they can handle.”
The people at the Clatsop County Data Processing Center, in Astoria City Hall, are a confident lot as the Nov. 7 general election date draws near.
The crew does not absolutely rule out snafus that night when the computer tabulates all the vote punch cards and other data fed into its electronic brain.
“As far as we can determine the problem we had during the May primary will not recur,” said Mike Josephson, who is an employee of the County Assessor’s office and spends a portion of his time at Astoria City Hall.
At the past May 23 primary, almost everyone in the county expected a miracle from the electronics equipment and those who operated the sophisticated machines.
Voters thought they would have the bulky ballot results. The candidates who won close races locally either postponed their acceptance remarks or simply went to bed when midnight rolled around and the results had not been tabulated.
L.B. Day, who as director of the Department of Environmental Quality is depicted by some as a bad guy, was honored at a testimonial dinner in Astoria on Thursday by the Clatsop Environmental Council.
Some 150 persons, including county, city and Port of Astoria officials who have tangled with Day in the past, attended the dinner.
Day delivered a brief speech saying that Oregon reached the pinnacle of its environmental success in 1972, but cautioned that it is a mistake to think the job is done.
It was a night for environmentalists all around as those who attended munched on crackers and “environmentalist salmon dip,” made from “the parts of the fish that usually are thrown away.”
75 years ago — 1947
Thousands of Astoria people took advantage of a bright, warm Sunday afternoon to inspect Tongue Point Naval Station and the new naval housing project as this community’s two-day Navy Day observance got underway.
It was an open house at Tongue Point. In the housing project, and aboard the destroyer Hamner at Pier 2 of the Port terminals all afternoon, and will be again Monday afternoon from 1 to 5 p.m. as the Navy Day observance winds up.
An estimated 1,543 people toured the naval station during the afternoon and equal numbers visited the Hamner and the housing project, traveling in 524 cars.
Heavy westerly swells, raking across the Columbia River Bar on Tuesday, held the pilot schooner in the river for hours and may hold up departure of naval vessels due here from Portland.
Seas were breaking far within the river. Ferry service was not bothered by the swells, which tapered off by the time they reached Megler, Washington.
No vessels were reported off the bar. Unless the pilot schooner is able to cross out, the naval vessels are expected to anchor off Astoria.
One of the three decommissioned U.S. Coast Guard sub-chasers being towed from the Columbia River to Seattle is anchored halfway between Grays Harbor and Willapa Bay about 7 1/2 miles offshore.
This report was received by the Coast Guard shortly before the cutter Papaw departed from Tongue Point, presumably to take the ship in tow. It has broken loose three times since leaving San Francisco two weeks ago.
The 650-foot Astoria tuna boat Radio, owned by CN, was being towed into the river from the lightship Thursday at noon by the Coast Guard’s motor lifeboat Triumph.
A naval tug, towing a landing ship tank up the coast Wednesday, found the Radio disabled off Tillamook Bay and took it in tow to the lightship, the Coast Guard reported Thursday.
The Sebastian-Stuart Fish Co. reported that Capt. Don Baldwin, of Astoria, master of the dragger, which is equipped with a bait tank and tuna gear, left Eureka, California, a week ago on a tuna fishing trip to the north.
Entering the Columbia River early Friday to duck a rising storm, the 36-foot Portland troller Hurricane ran into serious trouble near Buoy 12.
Its forecastle window was smashed in by a breaker crashing down on the deck. Twenty-five hundred gallons of water, so estimated the skipper, W.G. Close, of Portland, swept in through the shattered window.
The boat, a converted, plywood-constructed landing craft of the small type, sank low by the bow. Pumps failed and the fishing vessel, which was rigged for tuna, was difficult to handle.
Close radioed for help, but managed to maneuver the Hurricane near Buoy 14, which is well within the river. Several other seas crashed on the deck. The U.S. Coast Guard said that the boat got a little too close to rough water.
