The latest news stories across the state of Oregon from the digital home of the Oregon coastal cities, OregonBeachMagazine.com
Friday, June 9, 2023
Oregon Beach Weather
Annual Lincoln County Alerts Test Today
This is a test of the emergency communications system for Lincoln County Sheriff’s Office. Below are the email message and voice call message distributed via our Lincoln Alerts system for the test today.
Had this been a real emergency, Lincoln County Emergency Management would use FlashAlert to communicate public messages to our media cooperators.
Lincoln Alerts Annual Test Media Release
Email Message:
The message you are receiving today is part of the countywide test of the Lincoln County emergency notification system, Lincoln Alerts.
We are distributing the annual test messages in the following order to ensure all features of our system are working correctly. You should receive separate messages on your different registered devices and may receive more than one message if you have multiple addresses in your Lincoln Alerts profile.
- Social Media, Media Release (Flash Alert), and the Emergency Alert System (EAS) – public radio message.
- Keywords – for community information updates; this is a separate from your Lincoln Alerts profile.
- Email/Text/Lincoln Alerts Mobile App to Lincoln Alert Profiles/Web registration.
- If you did not receive this message via text to one of your mobile devices then check your Lincoln Alerts Profile to ensure you have the “SMS TEXT #” option with your mobile number included – if this field is not selected you will not receive a text message.
- Cellular/landline voice calls (calls will start after 9:00 am to 1pm based on your addresses in your Lincoln Alerts profile).
- If you confirm the voice call test message on one of your devices, it will not go to the other devices that receive voice calls in your profile. However, if you have more than one address in your profile, you may receive a separate voice call for each address in your profile.
- If your phone number is also contained in another family member’s profile and they confirm the message it may not go to your phone number. We recommend that you do not duplicate phone numbers in other family member profiles – it could prevent you from receiving the notice if they confirm their message.
Lincoln Alerts Profile Wellness Check:
If you did not receive a notice to one of your devices by 1pm, we encourage you to log into your Lincoln Alerts profile to ensure your information is up to date. We have a Lincoln Alerts Wellness Check (Lincoln Alerts Wellness Check – English) (Lincoln Alerts Wellness Check – Spanish) with tips on how to make sure you profile is up to date.
Lincoln Alerts Log In Page to Update/Delete Current Lincoln Alerts Profile or Retrieve Password:
Lincoln Alerts User Guides:
- Lincoln Alerts – User guides are available for our Lincoln Alerts mobile app, how to update or create a new profile.
Lincoln Alerts Notification Page and Other Language Options:
- Bookmark our message portal page in your mobile phone/internet favorites to view future communications/notifications from Lincoln Alerts or to review messages in other languages.
Other Questions
- Call 541-265-0616
Voice Call Message: Good morning, Lincoln County Community Members,
This call is part of the annual countywide test of the Lincoln County Emergency Notification System, Lincoln Alerts. This is only a test; the only action required is to confirm this message.
We would like to remind our community members to check the information they have in their Lincoln Alerts opt-in profile to ensure their address, phone numbers, email, and/or text information is correct. You can find this information on the Lincoln County website by searching for Lincoln Alerts.
If you received multiple phone calls from Lincoln Alerts today it may be because:
- This phone number is in more than one Lincoln Alerts profile, perhaps other family members have this phone number in their profile.
- Or you may have more than one address in your Lincoln Alerts profile – each address may receive a test message.
If you have any questions, you can contact County Emergency Management at 541-265-0616, again that number is 541-265-0616.
The Lincoln County Sheriff’s Office thanks you for your participation in today’s annual test.
Lincoln Alerts website – Lincoln Alerts – Emergency Notifications & Community Information | Lincoln County, OR
ODFW Asks People to Stay Away From Seals On Oregon Beaches
This is the peak of harbor seal birthing season at the Oregon Coast. The Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife is asking you to keep pets leashed and give the seals plenty of room. The mother will leave her pup alone while she gets food and if there are people around when she returns, she might abandon the pup.
This is also the time of year when California sea lions travel south to breed, and you might see them resting on sand or rocks. Elephant seals are molting, which makes them look sick, but they’re not. If you see an injured, stranded or dead animal please call NOAA’s West Coast Marine Mammal Stranding Network at 866-767-6114.
The 59th Annual Cannon Beach Sandcastle Contest This Saturday, June 10, 2023
One of Oregon’s most beloved family-friendly events kicks off summer in Cannon Beach this weekend.
The 59th annual Sandcastle Contest will take place June 10. All are welcome to showcase their sand sculpting skills.
The sculpting contest categories range from families with young children to older, experienced sandcastle builders.
“We can’t wait to welcome everyone to Cannon Beach for this year’s Sandcastle Contest,” said Jim Paino, the executive director of the Cannon Beach Chamber of Commerce. “This event is such an important part of our town’s culture and history, and we’re thrilled to see this tradition continue and evolve every year. We encourage everyone to come out and join us for what is sure to be an unforgettable weekend.”
The yearly contest has become a full-on festival, with live music, food vendors and activities for all ages. A fun run will be held June 11 at 9 a.m.
Those competing in the contest should stop by the Cannon Beach Chamber of Commerce on June 9 between 10 a.m. and 5 p.m. for the Packet n’ Pail pickup.
For more information and details: https://www.cannonbeach.org/events-and-festivals/sandcastle-contest/
OPRD Requesting Public Comment on Proposed Restrictions to Beach Driving At Lincoln City
The Oregon Parks and Recreation Department (OPRD) is requesting public comment on a proposed administrative rule amendment to restrict motor vehicles on two sections of the ocean shore in Lincoln City. The deadline for comments is 5 p.m. July 20, 2023.
Currently, vehicles are allowed on the ocean shore within 150 feet of NW 34th Street and NW 15th Street in Lincoln City, according to OAR 736-024-0025. One proposed change would ban vehicles year-round at NW 34th Street in Lincoln City. The parking lot is already closed to vehicle traffic by city ordinance.
The second proposed change would close vehicle access to the beach from on NW 15th Street May 1 to Sept. 30 or whenever conditions were unsafe. The access is already closed by city ordinance from May 26 to Sept. 5. The proposed change would also expand the area of shore open to vehicles from 150 feet to 300 feet on each side of NW 15th when access is open.
“We’re proposing these changes in cooperation with the city as we both try to improve the quality of the beach experience and keep people and vehicles from mixing on a busy beach,” says OPRD spokesperson Chris Havel. “The tricky part is striking a balance between those concerns and easy, fair access to the tremendous gift that is the Oregon ocean shore.”
Comments may be made online at: https://www.oregon.gov/oprd/PRP/Pages/PRP-rulemaking.aspx At a public hearing either in person or virtually 6 p.m. July 18. For those attending virtually, register at: https://us06web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_IiOD_VWVSsiVsIA6rBGA_A
To attend in person, go to: Lincoln City Community Center, 2150 NE Oar Place, Lincoln City, OR 97367. By email to oprd.publiccomment@oprd.oregon.gov, and in writing to: Oregon Parks and Recreation Department Attn.: Katie Gauthier, 725 Summer St NE, Suite C Salem OR 97301.
More information about this rulemaking including maps and a copy of the rule text is available on the OPRD rulemaking website: https://www.oregon.gov/oprd/PRP/Pages/PRP-rulemaking.aspx Individuals who require special accommodations to attend the meeting should contact Robert Ellison, at least three days in advance of a meeting by calling (971) 304-4689.
Josephine County Missing Person Rally in Grants Pass Today
FRIDAY, JUNE 9, 2023 AT 10 AM – 6 PM Josephine County Circuit Court
https://www.facebook.com/events/197013002742549/?ref=newsfeed
Our intention is to bring renewed awareness to over 30 of the 50 active missing persons cases in Josephine County, Oregon. We will have signs held outside of the courthouse, some will be held by family members of the local missing, others will be held by community volunteers who simply wish to see these cases resolved.
We will have tables of fliers set up for any curious folks who are passing by. There will also be snacks and drinks, though bringing your own provisions is highly encouraged. this is a PEACEFUL demonstration, but peaceful certainly doesn’t have to mean quiet. We need to get loud, and let people know that we will not let our missing be forgotten. We need to demand answers. Too many of these cases hinge on people coming forward with information. Now is the time to let them know they can. https://www.facebook.com/JoCoMPP
UPDATE JUNE 9th-— Hello everybody! A few things that I’d like to update y’all on before the rally. We have 28 signs. Ideally this means that we’d like 28 people consistently holding those signs. I understand that not everybody will be there for the full 8 hours, but a rotating influx of volunteers will be necessary for us to pull this off.
I will have JCSO and GPPD records request forms available for anybody who would like to fill one out on behalf of their missing loved one in order to gain further insight on their case. If you get the records before we do, you can email them to us later on.
PLEASE bring whatever accommodations you need to be comfortable and safe while we’re out there. Sunscreen! If you use it, bring it! Chairs! Legs get tired, some of us (me) have bad knees and stuff. No shame in sitting with your sign!
Folding tables! A few folks have said they’d bring some but we need something to put these flyers on and I’m getting nervous that there won’t be enough!
And now for a pretty cool announcement! Will there be press? YES! While few media outlets that I reached out to actually responded to my messages, I was surprised just a few days ago by a journalist for Southern Oregon’s PBS station when they messaged me asking if they could cover the rally for a segment. They also said that if any friends or family of the missing wanted to speak specifically about their loved ones to promote their cases, they’re happy to speak with you.
let’s show up for our locally missing, make some new friends, and give Josephine County something to talk about! https://www.facebook.com/JoCoMPP
Oregon Democratic lawmakers stood on the steps of the state Capitol Tuesday and implored Republicans, who have been boycotting the Senate, to return and vote on a number of bipartisan bills that are at risk of dying because of a political standoff that has now lasted a month.
Several statehouses around the nation, including Montana and Tennessee, have been ideological battlegrounds this year. Republicans in the Oregon statehouse conducted walkouts in 2019, 2020 and 2021 to deny enough members for voting on measures. But this one is the most serious yet, threatening hundreds of bills and the approval of state budgets for the next two years.
Democrats who held a news conference Tuesday cited a range of bills about urgent issues facing Oregon, including ones aimed at reducing drug overdoses, mitigating wildfire risks and shoring up seismically vulnerable dams, that are in limbo because of the ideological rift.
Yet neither side is budging on a bill on protections for abortion and transgender care, with Democrats saying it isn’t negotiable and minority Republicans insisting it die or be changed. Republicans reject a provision that would allow doctors to provide abortions regardless of age, with doctors not required to notify parents when doing so could endanger the child, such as in cases of incest.
“If Democrat leaders truly prioritized bipartisan budgets and policy proposals Oregonians desperately need, they would work to resolve this impasse in a bipartisan fashion,” Senate Republican Leader Sen. Tim Knopp said. “Instead, Democrat leadership is clinging to an unlawful, extreme agenda.”
The standoff is down to a matter of which side blinks first. If there is no compromise well before the session is constitutionally required to end by June 25, the hundreds of bills that haven’t passed both the House and Senate will die.
Sen. Jeff Golden, a Democrat who represents southern Oregon’s Rogue Valley, said among them are bills to improve response and protections from wildfires like ones that devastated parts of the state in 2020.
“Like the other bills you’ve been hearing about, these are teetering on the edge. We are looking at serious damage — as in life-and-death kind of damage — if we abandon these bills now,” Golden told reporters and supporters under a hot sun, a harbinger of the coming dry season in this drought-stricken state.
Rep. Travis Nelson, a Democrat who is a registered nurse, said also among measures frozen by the Republicans’ longest walkout in state history is a bipartisan opioid harm-reduction package that includes making overdose medication like Naloxone available in restaurants, grocery stores, police departments and schools.
“This is going to save lives and give people a chance to recover, and we must pass this bill,” said Nelson, who wore blue nursing scrubs at the news conference and rally.
Knopp was unmoved by the Democrats’ dire warnings.
“Well, there are always lives at stake as it relates to policy that is being debated here in the state Capitol,” Knopp told reporters after the rally. “However, unfortunately, their ire is misplaced, and the Senate Democrats could have ended this weeks ago.”
Rep. David Gomberg, a Democrat who represents the coast, said a bill he worked on with Democrats and Republicans would provide $70 million in support for small farmers, fishermen, small businesses and create more housing. If another bipartisan measure, aimed at attracting the semiconductor industry, dies, Oregon stands to lose billions of dollars in federal funds to other states, Gomberg said. A related bill passed before the walkout with broad support.
Seismically vulnerable dams would be replaced by another bill that’s at stake. Without it, Oregon could lose out on $60 million in federal matching funds, Gomberg said.
Jan Kaplan, president of the city council of the coastal town of Newport, said dams that create reservoirs for Newport’s drinking water are the most seismically vulnerable in the state.
“Even a modest earthquake could cause the dams to fail and send water rushing through a neighborhood just downhill. People would die,” Kaplan said. “The flood would breach Highway 101, our principal coastal arterial.”
The boycott has prevented the Senate from reaching the two-thirds quorum required to vote on bills, with all but two of the 12 Republicans and the lone Independent staying away.
The walkout happened despite a ballot measure, approved by Oregon voters last November, that disqualifies lawmakers with 10 or more unexcused absences from being reelected in the next term. The measure, now part of the state Constitution, is expected to be challenged in court by Republican senators if the secretary of state’s office prevents them from registering as candidates.
On June 1, Democrats in the Senate voted to fine senators $325 every time their absence denies the chamber the two-thirds quorum it needs to conduct business.
Democratic Gov. Tina Kotek can call a special session this summer for the House and Senate to approve the state’s budgets for the next two years if they’re not all approved by June 25. But most of the bills that die because of the walkout wouldn’t be resurrected until 2025, because next year’s “short session” lasts barely one month.
Sen. Michael Dembrow, a Democrat from Portland, grew emotional as he described the frustrating walkout.
“This is very painful for me,” Dembrow said. “As many of you know, this is my last long session in the Legislature. I’ve been here for 15 years. I’m not running again. I was not looking to end in this way.” (SOURCE)
Wildfire Class Action Suit Against PacifiCorp Goes To Jury
Attorneys for both PacifiCorp and victims of four of Oregon’s catastrophic fires on Labor Day 2020 made their closing argument to jurors Wednesday in the $1.6 billion class action lawsuit that has played out in Multnomah County Circuit Court during the last seven weeks.
Jurors will now determine whether PacifiCorp’s power lines were responsible for all or a substantial part of the damage caused in four of those Labor Day fires, whether the utility was negligent for, among other things, failing to de-energize its power lines before and during the events, and whether the utility subsequently destroyed evidence of its culpability in the fires.
The 2020 Labor Day fires were the most costly in Oregon history, killing at least nine people, demolishing thousands of homes, and burning more than 1 million acres. The case against PacifiCorp revolves around wildfires along the Oregon Coast, in Southern Oregon and in the Santiam Canyon.
Throughout the trial, plaintiffs’ attorneys largely focused on executives and decision makers at PacifiCorp, saying they opted to keep the power on even as line workers for the company fielded calls about damaged electrical equipment. Those same executives, plaintiffs’ attorneys said in their closing, then took no responsibility at the trial, instead saying it was company policy to let front-line workers make de-energization decisions.
In three of the fires at issue in the case — the Echo Mountain Complex, 242 and South Obenchain fires — attorneys for the plaintiffs told jurors that PacifiCorp had failed to offer any alternative explanation on how the fires started if the cause wasn’t electrical equipment.
Several people who lost homes or live in the fire areas testified that they saw PacifiCorp’s equipment spark after being hit by trees and branches that fell in extreme winds on Labor Day. For fires in which both sides agreed trees hit power lines, PacifiCorp lawyers said the branches either couldn’t have sparked the line or they were healthy trees no one could have predicted would fall.
PacifiCorp’s attorneys have variously called the fires unprecedented, the result of climate change and an act of god. The company said it had done all it could in its planning given the scope of the 2020 fires.
Attorneys for the plaintiffs noted that PacifiCorp focused its fire preparation efforts primarily on the 17% of its service territory it considered at highest risk.
Jurors in the trial will begin deliberations Thursday, where they will decide on damages for each of the named 17 plaintiffs in the case. If the jurors also decide PacifiCorp is responsible for damages to members of the class, the case will go to a second phase with a separate court proceeding to calculate those damages.
Oregon To Hold Landowners Responsible For Illegal Pot Grows
Oregon has long been known as a mecca for high-quality marijuana, but that reputation has come with a downside: illegal growers who offer huge amounts of cash to lease or buy land and then leave behind pollution, garbage and a drained water table.
Now, a bill passed by the Oregon Legislature seeks to tackle that by making the landowners themselves responsible for the aftermath. The bill also prohibits the use of rivers or groundwater at the illegal site, as well as criminalizes seizing the identity papers of migrant workers who tend the plants or threatening to report them for deportation.
Under the bill, local governments are authorized to file a claim of lien against property used for illicit marijuana, if the owner doesn’t pay for the cleanup.
The Senate approved the measure before GOP senators began a walkout on May 3 over Democratic measures on abortion, gender-affirming care and gun safety. The House passed the marijuana bill on a 53-3 vote on May 31. The bill will now go to Kotek to sign into law, taking immediate effect.
Josephine County Missing Person Rally Friday 6-9
FRIDAY, JUNE 9, 2023 AT 10 AM – 6 PMJosephine County Circuit Court
https://www.facebook.com/events/197013002742549/?ref=newsfeed
Our intention is to bring renewed awareness to over 30 of the 50 active missing persons cases in Josephine County, Oregon. We will have signs held outside of the courthouse, some will be held by family members of the local missing, others will be held by community volunteers who simply wish to see these cases resolved.
We will have tables of fliers set up for any curious folks who are passing by. There will also be snacks and drinks, though bringing your own provisions is highly encouraged. this is a PEACEFUL demonstration, but peaceful certainly doesn’t have to mean quiet. We need to get loud, and let people know that we will not let our missing be forgotten. We need to demand answers. Too many of these cases hinge on people coming forward with information. Now is the time to let them know they can. https://www.facebook.com/JoCoMPP
***** Oregon has a missing person epidemic and there are 100 women reported missing over the age of 20 since June 2020 — that averages 33 that go missing per month – that have never been found. (There are 516 overall that go back further)
83-year-old Clarence Edward Pitts walked away from his home in Bandon on Tuesday, January 31 at around 1:00 p.m. Pitts is described as:
- 6′ 00″
- 150 lbs
- Gray hair
- Brown eyes
- Last seen wearing an orange beanie, plaid jacket, tan pants and white shoes
- May have a walking cane
- Has dementia and PTSD
Pitts may be in a vehicle that was also found to be missing from the home:
- 1999 Toyota Van
- White
- Oregon license plate: WYN 788
If you see Clarence or have any information pertaining to where he may be, please call the Coos County Sheriff’s Office Dispatch Center at 541-396-2106 or the Bandon Police Department at 541-347-3189.
Contact us: Info@OregonBeachMagazine.com