Oregon Beach News, Monday 12/19 – U.S. Marines Walking Across The Country Finish Journey In Newport, Woman Arrested For Stealing Over 100 Packages And Mail In Curry County And Del Norte County

The latest news stories across the state of Oregon from the digital home of the Oregon coastal cities, OregonBeachMagazine.com

Monday, December 19, 2022 

Oregon Beach Weather

U.S. Marines Walking Across The Country Finish Journey In Newport

A cross-country journey for three retired U.S. marines came to an end after half a year of walking as they were greeted in Newport.

Back in June, Sergeant Major Coleman Kinzer and Sergeant Major Justin Lehew set out to walk more than 3,300 miles along Highway 20 from Boston, Massachusetts to Newport, Oregon. They were joined in August by Staff Sergeant Raymond Shinohara. They finished their journey on Saturday, December 17 in Newport.

The three marines have been walking to raise money for History Flight, a charity that works to bring back the remains of U.S. servicemembers from abroad, and as a show of support for veterans missing or killed in action.

The retired Marines say that the trip represents the long journey home that so many people who have served the United States have been trying to make since they were lost fighting for the country, dating all the way back to World War II. The three Marines were in good spirits and said Marines can do anything they set their minds to.

Newport city officials welcomed the travelers at the Vietnam Memorial at Don and Ann Davis Park. People lined the street west of the American Legion post. A spaghetti dinner was also served at the National Guard armory and all funds were donated to History Flight.

Woman Arrested For Stealing Over 100 Packages And Mail In Curry County And Del Norte County

A woman is facing criminal charges related to stealing more than 100 pieces of mail and packages in Curry County and Del Norte County.

Curry County Sheriff John Ward reported that on December 9, at approximately 7:41a.m., a resident off Olsen Lane in Harbor reported to sheriff’s office dispatch that she observed a woman in a black Honda Accord who was opening mailboxes and taking mail from numerous boxes on Sunset Strip.

A deputy responded from Highway 101 near the intersection of West Benham Lane. As the deputy traveled down West Benham Lane, he observed a smaller black car that appeared to match the description provided by the witness turn off Wenbourne Lane onto West Benham and then travel towards the port.

As the deputy caught up to the car, he observed it to turn onto Boat Basin Road and could see it was a Honda as described by the witness. There appeared to be only one occupant. The suspect vehicle entered Beach Front R.V. Park and about halfway down, the vehicle pulled into a parking spot and contact was made by the deputy.

While exiting and approaching the vehicle, the deputy could see the driver through the rear window moving around leaning over the passenger seat. It appeared the suspect was attempting to conceal items. When the deputy reached the driver’s window, he could see a large amount of mail on the passenger seat and floorboard.

The deputy ordered the female and sole occupant out of the vehicle. After complying, the female was placed in handcuffs. The female suspect identified herself as 31-year-old Tasheena Cole. During the interview with Cole, she admitted to stealing the mail.

Cole was arrested and taken to the Curry County Jail. Cole’s vehicle was seized and towed to a secured location to be held while a search warrant was applied for. At approximately 2:13 p.m., members of the Curry County Sheriff’s Office executed a search warrant on Cole’s vehicle. Well over 100 pieces of mail and packages were recovered from the Harbor area of Curry County and Smith River in Del Norte County. The investigation continues and the victims will be contacted by the sheriff’s office in the near future.

Since this arrest, the Curry County Sheriff’s Office continues to receive numerous complaints of mail being stolen in the county.

Clatsop County Extends Vacation Rental Moratorium

In a divided 3-2 vote on Wednesday night, the county Board of Commissioners extended the moratorium until June 22. — A moratorium on new vacation rental licenses in Clatsop County will continue for another six months.

It is the fourth extension since the moratorium was put in place in the summer of 2021 to give the county time to figure out how to regulate vacation rentals in unincorporated areas.

The county has been regulating vacation rentals since 2018. But except Arch Cape, where vacation rentals have been allowed under an ordinance since the early 2000s, the development code did not mention them.

Leading up to the moratorium, the county was conducting listening sessions to address strife and complaints about vacation rentals’ impact on quality of life, mostly from residents in the wealthy enclave of Cove Beach.

After a lengthy public process, county commissioners in April adopted new rules around permits and occupancy. In June, the commission approved an ordinance recognizing vacation rentals of up to 30 days as an outright use in 16 unincorporated zones in the development code.

During a public hearing Wednesday, County Manager Don Bohn said county staff was recommending an extension of the moratorium in order to have more time to analyze the potential consequences and contingency plans depending on the outcome of the May election.

He said staff would like to provide proper context and information to commissioners before they decide to lift the moratorium.

“If we maintain the moratorium, there are things that we still have to discuss with the board moving forward as a contingency,” Bohn said. “If the board decided that they wanted to at some point end the moratorium, then there are implications for that, too. And we haven’t presented those to your board.”

Commissioner Pamela Wev favored continuing the same approach until the May election, arguing that lifting the moratorium could create a lot of confusion and overburden staff.

“And we’re facing an election, which I think is going to be a very divisive — one more divisive election in our community,” she said. “There are a lot of things in this discussion that I think are just incredibly divisive. And I think that if we want to protect middle-class interests in this county, what we need to do is to not allow short-term rentals because it would open up a much larger supply of housing for people who can’t afford two homes.”

Commissioner Lianne Thompson was not convinced doing away with vacation rentals would make more affordable housing. “It doesn’t pencil out for me because I don’t see that the cost of housing anywhere will allow that,” she said.

ODOT Report Shows Fatal Pedestrian Crashes on the Rise

The Oregon Department of Transportation counted 518 deaths on Oregon roads through November, a 5.5% drop from the 548 killed during the same period in 2021.

But of those killed in traffic so far this year, 111 were pedestrians, surpassing the 90 killed through the entirety of 2021. Another 13 were cyclists.

In Portland, too, fatal pedestrian crashes are trending higher. A person struck and killed Wednesday evening was the 29th pedestrian to die on Portland streets this year, equal to the total number in the city throughout 2021. And Portland saw three cyclists killed in traffic so far this year, according to the website BikePortland.com, after a 2021 that saw no cyclist fatalities.

The statewide numbers this year include a spate of crashes that killed pedestrians walking on or attempting to cross rural highways, a man who was struck when his wheelchair slipped off the sidewalk in North Portland, and a man who was struck by two different cars as he walked along Southeast Foster Road.

Katherine Benanti, an ODOT spokesperson, said the agency is troubled by the trends both in Oregon and nationally.

“In recent years, we’ve worked to more quickly direct spending and make improvements in areas where it’s most needed. We’re determined to do more,” Benanti wrote in an email.

Cooper Brown, ODOT’s assistant director of operations, said the agency is still trying to understand what has caused the increase in crashes in the past couple of years. ODOT data analysts collect and study those numbers, but he said it takes a while to get the full picture.

Brown said one potential factor behind a spike in fatal crashes earlier in the pandemic is that people were driving faster while there were fewer cars on the roads. “But in terms of pedestrian fatalities, I don’t think we can definitively say,” he said.

For pedestrian and bike safety advocates, the decline in overall fatalities provides little comfort.

Zachary Lauritzen, the recently appointed director of the Portland advocacy group Oregon Walks, said the state transportation agency should be looking beyond year-to-year comparisons.

“It’s easy for ODOT to say we’re looking better, but they’re looking at a terrible year for their benchmark,” he said, noting 2021 broke the state’s record for traffic fatalities. “They should be looking at overall trends.”

Lauritzen said ODOT has made fixes in some problem areas, such as adding more sidewalks or crossing beacons to mitigate dangers. But he said the number of pedestrian fatalities is symptomatic of a much larger, systemic problem.

That’s especially true in east Portland, where the city sees a higher concentration of fatal pedestrian crashes — and where many of the city’s lower-income residents and largest communities of color live.

He’s aware that many people don’t have that option. Elderly people, young kids and people with disabilities who depend on public transit are at higher risk of traffic injury and death in his neighborhood.

Lauritzen said Oregon Walks has been considering projects to help people change the way they think about transportation.

One, he said, is to help people identify destinations within a 10 to 15-minute walking radius of a person’s home, an area the group calls the person’s “walkshed.” He said the organization hopes to help people figure out what services are available in their area, reducing car trips.

“In some parts of Portland, that walkshed is incredibly rich, especially in inner Portland,” he said. “As soon as you start talking about more suburban and rural areas, people get in cars because it’s not safe to walk and it’s too far.”

He said the city is starting to make efforts to slow drivers and create similar walkable or transit-friendly neighborhoods in other parts of the city by adding streetlights, building or improving sidewalks and promoting residential development.

Lauritzen said Oregon Walks has also partnered with ODOT and Metro to build “walking school buses,” where adults accompany kids as they walk to school, and stop to pick up other kids along the route. The adults can help the group of students navigate challenging roads or crossings.

The program launched in the Parkrose School District, which serves an area in Northeast Portland with poor pedestrian infrastructure.

Niemi said it’s still traumatic to drive past the site on Powell Boulevard where her son Eli was struck and nearly killed. But it’s driven her to fight for safer streets.

Less than two months after the car struck Eli, 50-year-old Sarah Pliner was killed just a few blocks away, run over by a turning semi-truck while riding a bicycle at Southeast 26th Avenue and Powell.

Niemi said she went and visited the site where Pliner was killed and has attended protests and public forums since then to push ODOT to improve safety on the road.

On the morning of a public forum to be held about the fatal crash, Niemi said she noticed that ODOT had put in new 20 mile-per-hour school zone signs at the intersection where Pliner had been killed weeks before.

“Which tells me they can move fast if they want to, and change can happen,” she said. “If they think this will make it safer, why haven’t we been doing this all along?”

On Friday 12/16 in Grants Pass, the preliminary investigation indicates two pedestrians, Deverne Jacobsen (91) and Gwen Jacobsen (85) of Grants Pass were crossing Hwy 99 to attend a Christmas Party when they were stuck by a Toyota Tacoma traveling northbound on Hwy 99. Both pedestrians died as a result of injuries from the collision. The driver of the truck did not stop and fled the scene. The vehicle operator, Skylar Fucci (25) of Grants Pass, was contacted at approximately 9:15 P.M. and cooperated with the investigators.  

Fucci was arrested lodged in the Josephine County Jail for two counts of Felony Hit and Run.  The investigation is on-going and additional charges may be applied at a later time.

Leaking Semi-Truck Leaves Miles Of Red Dye On I-205 And I-84 From Happy Valley To Troutdale

A semi-truck driver left miles of soluble red dye on Interstate 205 and Interstate 84, from Happy Valley to Troutdale through Portland, on Saturday after the liquid cargo sprung a leak on the road, the Multnomah County Sheriff’s Office said.

The driver, 40-year-old Junior Jean, told deputies that he stopped to check the leak but his company, which the sheriff’s office did not identify in its press release, told him to keep driving to his destination in Troutdale.

Jean said the dye is used for coloring mulch and would wash off with water, the sheriff’s office said. Officers cited Jean for operating a vehicle with a leaking load, third-degree criminal mischief and reckless driving.

Multnomah County Sheriff’s deputies responded to reports of the leaking truck trailer near Northwest Marine Drive and Eastwind Drive around 7:30 p.m.

Jean allegedly drove north on Interstate 205 from Southeast Sunnyside Road, then took Interstate 84 east and exited at Northeast Marine Drive, the sheriff’s office said. The Oregon Department of Transportation and Oregon State Police also responded.

The sheriff’s office said motorists who drove on splattered roads between 6 p.m. and 7:30 p.m. Saturday should check their cars for stains. The dye should wash off, but if it doesn’t, vehicle owners can contact the Multnomah County Sheriff’s Office at webmaster@msco.us and provide their full name, phone number, vehicle make and model and a picture of the damage.

Survey Finds More Than A Million Acres Of Dead Fir Trees In Oregon

The Pacific Northwest Region Aerial Survey is cataloging tree decline. Photo: Daniel DePinte/USFS

Climate change, droughts, invasive insects and other factors have had an impact on Oregon’s vast forests for years, but recent research reveals a proliferating issue.

Environmental journalism nonprofit Columbia Insight first reported on the data collection effort from the Oregon Department of Forestry and the U.S. Forest Service, which found that 1.1 million acres of fir trees in Oregon had died off in 2022 alone.

“This survey is actually one of the longest running in the nation of its kind,” Christine Buhl, Forest Entomologist at ODF says “It’s a forest health survey that we fly over the entire state of Oregon that’s forested to collect data on insects, diseases, abiotic stressors that are damaging or killing trees.”

According to Buhl, forest health is almost always impacted by several, complex factors, rather than one singular cause.

“The primary thing we think of damaging these trees is climate change that is causing ongoing hot drought,” she said. “And it’s not only that it’s really hot and really dry, but either long duration droughts — they’re happening frequently — and the timing of them is very important as well. Early in the season when trees are waking up and need a lot of moisture, it’s really dry out there.”

The entomologist listed other primary causes such as root diseases that break down trees’ root systems, and the invasive Balsam Woolly Adelgid insect that continues to stress trees. After the trees are already hindered by these primary agents, secondary agents like the fir engraver beetle can cause the trees to die-off.

These factors have been reported by entomologists for a long time, but ODF hasn’t seen fir tree mortality of this magnitude since the agency was founded in 1911.

“In our history of collecting data, I believe that we have not detected 1 million acres of true fir mortality ever,” Buhl said. “However, we have had peaks in mortality across the landscape in Oregon of combined tree species from multiple agents that have been comparable to some of our worst wildfire seasons.”

USFS and ODF’s latest Forest Health Highlights in Oregon✎ EditSign review did say that the heat dome of 2021 was novel, and could have lasting effects on the state’s forests. It may be too late to reverse those effects, but Buhl says strategies like thinning defective trees or planting tree species in their preferred habitat could help.

“On the other hand, there’s not a lot we can do on the larger scale with climate change. We’re reaching the point where there’s not really much we can do to turn back and we just need to try and slow the progress of climate change,” Buhl said.

Oregon Department of Emergency Management Warning

Enjoy the holidays safely with fire prevention:

🕯️ Keep candles 12 inches away from other objects.

🕯️ Use a sturdy candle holder that won’t tip over.

🕯️ Don’t leave burning candles unattended. Blow them out before leaving or going to bed.

🕯️ Consider using flameless, battery-operated candles.

Medical Examiner Says Body Of Woman Found In Portland Unidentified – Seeks Public Help

The Multnomah County Medical Examiner’s Office is asking for the public’s help identifying the body of a woman who died Nov. 28 in Portland.

The Medical Examiner describes the woman as white, between the ages of 20 and 40 years old. They say she also was about 5′4″ tall, weighing 139 pounds. She had medium to long brown hair with brown eyes.

The woman also had pierced ears, with scars on both forearms and the following tattoos:

  • Right wrist: Faith Hope Love
  • Left wrist: Amirah
  • Right Shoulder: Black and red butterfly

Anyone with information about the woman is asked to call the Multnomah County Medical Examiner’s Office at (503) 988-0055 and reference case number #MU-221128-812.

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