Oregon Coast
Invite in full swing
Spill on the sand
in Cannon Beach
SPORTS • 7A
PAGE 2A
143rd YEAR, No. 16
WEDNESDAY, JULY 22, 2015
ONE DOLLAR
Local
family
to take
on inn
Kancharlas
step in to operate
Riverwalk Inn
By EDWARD STRATTON
The Daily Astorian
Joshua Bessex/The Daily Astorian
Lydia Sorenson holds up her undersea-themed pattern at Homespun Quilts in Astoria. Homespun Quilts is one of several quilt shops in
the area participating in the Row by Row Experience, a form of shop hop where people buy custom-designed patterns from each partici-
pating store with the goal of completing a quilt from eight pattens.
Oregon takes
up the ‘Row by
Row’ quilting
challenge
See INN, Page 10A
Power
on
County crews took
By ERICK BENGEL
The Daily Astorian
W
anna score some fat
quarters?
How about 25 fat
quarters, a whole stack cleaned and
creased and ready to cut?
Think you can handle it?
There’s some local quilt shops and
fabric stores that can hook you up.
Ah, not so fast: First you must
have the Row by Row Experience, an
annual competitive quilting craze that
took off in 2011 and has since gone
viral (yes, quilting can do that, too).
Here’s how it works.
Each participating store has de-
signed a pattern for a row of quilting
blocks based on the year’s theme;
the 2015 theme is water (“Row by
Row H20”). Visit eight of these
stores. At each one, pick up the free
pattern, or buy a kit with the fabric
already prepared. Make a quilt by
stitching together the eight rows in
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and labeled, to any participating
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quilt to arrive, those fat quarters are
yours. (A fat quarter, by the way, is
a wide quarter-yard of fabric; 25 fat
The troubled Astoria Riverwalk
Inn has yet another potential savior.
Taking up a row of seats at Tues-
day’s Port of Astoria meeting were
Kruparao Kancharla, his sons, family
friends and his accountant.
As of last week, Kancharla and
family are the new operators of the
i nn, albeit without a lease.
“I think it’s important to review
the circumstances,” Port of Astoria
Executive Director Jim Knight said,
adding the parties met in executive
session Friday to discuss transferring
the operation of the hotel to the Kan-
charlas and negotiating a new lease.
The Port recently ended the lease
of Brad Smithart’s Hospitality Mas-
ters, which had fallen behind by more
than $250,000 in payments to the
Port, around $100,000 to the city and
about $16,000 to the county. Smithart
has leased the hotel from the Port
since March 2012, falling behind pre-
viously and later receiving breaks on
his rent and revenue-sharing.
care of July 4th reboot
By KATHERINE LACAZE
EO Media Group
Joshua Bessex/The Daily Astorian
A whale-themed pattern, designed by Eda Lindstrom, is shown on display at Custom Threads in Astoria.
quarters — 6 and 1/4 yards of fab-
ric — can equal $75 worth of fabric
and more.)
Row by Row kicked off July
1, and participants can collect row
patterns through Sept. 8. They have
until Oct. 31 to bring their quilt to a
shop that hasn’t seen a winner yet.
“Last year, I didn’t know what
it was, and when I realized what it
was, I signed up right away,” said
Eda Lindstrom, owner of Custom
Threads in Astoria. For her store’s
design, she chose a Columbia Riv-
er scene with breaching orcas.
A few blocks away, at Lydia So-
renson’s store, Homespun Quilts,
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On average, the stores see be-
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enthusiasts per day. They have
sold hundreds of kits. And, at both
stores, those prized fat quarters
are still sitting there, waiting to be
claimed.
“It’s a great marketing scheme,”
Sorenson said, smiling.
Fighting for scraps
The queen quilter behind the
Row by Row Experience is Janet
Lutz, owner of Calico Gals in Syr-
acuse, N.Y.
Lutz, noticing how online sales
had hurt traditional quilt shops,
founded Row by Row four years
ago to boost the sales of brick-and-
mortar shops during the summer
months. (Quilting, after all, tends
to be a “winter sport,” she said.)
See QUILTING, Page 10A
County’s high C-section rate sparks questions
Is litigation driving a
bump in the surgical
birth procedure?
By KATHERINE LACAZE
EO Media Group
First of two parts
Giving birth by cesarean section
can be a lifesaving operation. But with
most of the nation hovering at about
twice the number of recommended
C-section births, questions arise as
to why. Katherine Lacaze looks at the
numbers and explores some of the fac-
tors driving C-section births up.
About a third of Clatsop County ba-
bies were delivered through cesarean
sections this year through March. That is
roughly twice the amount recommended
by the World Health Organization.
From 2008 to 2014, of the more
than 3,200 births countywide, about
29.3 percent were deliveries via cesar-
eans. Vaginal births — including vag-
inal births after C-sections and home
births — accounted for the other 70
percent, according to data from the Or-
egon Health Authority.
During those years, Columbia Me-
morial Hospital’s C-section rate ranged
from a high of 34 percent in 2011 to a
low of 27.59 percent in 2010. At Provi-
dence Seaside Hospital ,the rate ranged
from a high of 30.46 percent in 2008 to
a low of 23 percent in 2013.
However, the average cesarean
birth rate across Oregon and the Unit-
ed States during the past few years
also has hovered well above the WHO
recommendation of 10 to 15 percent.
In 2014, the state’s overall C-section
rate, according to data from OHA,
was 27.42 percent, with the number
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county. In the nation, the rate was 32.7
percent in 2013, according to the most
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for Disease Control and Prevention.
These numbers have people and
organizations, including the American
See C-SECTIONS, Page 4A
SEASIDE — It was a local crew of
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the day July 4th after a power outage
disrupted celebrations in Seaside and
affected more than 8,000 customers .
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ported a specialty crew from Port-
land was responsible for installing
a new transformer to restore power.
Later, after some local residents
questioned the response, spokesman
Ry Schwark said Clatsop County Pa-
FL¿F3RZHUHPSOR\HHVQRW3RUWODQG
crews, played the most important
role in bringing the lights back on.
$PRQJ &ODWVRS &RXQW\ 3DFL¿F
Power employees commended for
their response were Foreman Doug
Peterson, Phil Kaplan and Larry
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spond when the outage occurred.
They completed all the repair work,
Schwark said. The Clatsop opera-
tions crew had power restored before
the Portland crew arrived.
“This is what we knew at the time
and told you,” Schwark said, apologiz-
ing for the misinformation. “The Port-
land crew did some other work there,
but it wasn’t related to the repairs.”
See POWER, Page 4A
coast
weekend
THURSDAY
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