WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 19, 2018 ܂ SILVERTONAPPEAL.COM
PART OF THE USA TODAY NETWORK
Is Stayton DMV office faster?
Bill Poehler
Salem Statesman Journal
USA TODAY NETWORK
The Driver and Motor Vehicle Services office in
Stayton COURTESY OF OREGON DMV
When Gary Tiffin needed to visit a DMV office, he
had a choice.
The South Salem office is closer to home in Turner,
but he went to the Stayton office.
Tiffin’s view is based on four or five trips to the Stay-
ton DMV office and is the same as many people have –
it’s faster to go to Stayton.
“I take my number and I’ve got five people begging
me to come to their station,” said Tiffin, the Mayor of
Turner.
Indeed, on a recent Wednesday, the wait time at the
two Salem offices peaked at 30 minutes (South Salem)
and 27 minutes (North Salem), and the wait at Wood-
burn peaked at 24 minutes.
The wait time at Stayton: six minutes.
The belief that the wait time is shorter in Stayton is
a popular one. ODOT spokesman Lou Torres said
when he took his children for their driving tests from
his home outside Silverton, he went to the Stayton
DMV because he heard it was faster.
The reality, according to DMV’s statistics, is that on
average the Stayton office is only a few minutes faster
than either of the two offices in Salem. Through June
30, the average wait time at the North Salem office was
12.3 minutes, South Salem was 10.5, Woodburn was
10.7, Stayton was 9.3, and Dallas was 9.2
See DMV, Page 3A
Army vet whose food
truck burned rebuilds
COURTESY OF OREGON STATE UNIVERSITY
Should
Oregon kill
more cougars?
Squatchy’s BBQ owner Jason Lorraine stands at the counter of his new brick and mortar restaurant location
in Stayton. Just over a year since his original Squatchy’s BBQ trailer burned, he is opening at a new location
thanks to the generosity of those who contributed through a Go Fund Me campaign set-up for Jason and
his wife Julie after the fire. KELLY JORDAN/STATESMAN JOURNAL
Emily Teel
Salem Statesman Journal
USA TODAY NETWORK
Three Salem-area restaurants suffered fires this
summer, but one was particularly devastating. It re-
duced Squatchy’s BBQ, a food trailer opened by a U.S.
Army veteran less than a year earlier, to a hunk of
twisted metal.
Nothing was salvageable.
But an outpouring of generosity from hundreds of
people, near and far, have helped Jason and Julie Lor-
raine rebuild from the ashes.
On a Sunday morning in mid-July, Jason Lorraine
was towing the barbecue trailer, hitched to his truck,
from their Molalla home to a food truck rally in Stay-
ton.
He noticed smoke coming from the trailer while
driving through Silverton and pulled over.
“I originally thought I could put it out with the fire
extinguisher, but the minute I got out of the truck I
realized, that’s not gonna work.”
The trailer body, along with the attached grill,
smoker and all of the affiliated equipment — refriger-
ators, slow cookers and signs — quickly became en-
gulfed in flames.
Lorraine was able to unhitch his truck, but not be-
fore it sustained serious heat damage, scorching the
body and melting the brake and tail lights.
“I grabbed whatever I could think to grab ... our
phones, our cash,” said Lorraine, but then, “I just had
to stand there and watch it burn.”
The Silverton Fire Department subdued the blaze,
but the trailer — and the Lorraines’ livelihood — was
gone.
This BBQ we’ll defend
See ARMY VET, Page 2A
Oktoberfest welcomes visitors
Macy Yanez, 3, of Salem, dances and watches the Glockenspiel play during
Oktoberfest in Mt. Angel on Sep. 14. ANNA REED/STATESMAN JOURNAL
Online at SilvertonAppeal.com
Vol. 137, No. 39
News updates: ܂ Breaking news ܂ Get updates from
the Silverton area
Photos: ܂ Photo galleries
Serving the Silverton
Area Since 1880
A Unique Edition of
the Statesman Journal
The familiar smell of
bratwurst and sausage,
the sounds of German
music and festivalgoers
dressed in lederhosen
filled Mt. Angel once
again for the 52nd An-
nual Oktoberfest.
The four-day festival
began in 1966 as a cele-
bration of the fall har-
vest, attracting around
39,000 people that year.
Over the decades, the
celebration has grown to
accommodate more than
300,000 visitors annu-
ally. For more photos, go
to StatesmanJour-
nal.com/photos.
50 cents
©2018
Printed on recycled paper
Zach Urness
Salem Statesman Journal
USA TODAY NETWORK
What happens now?
In the wake of Oregon’s first fatal attack by a cou-
gar — and the second deadly attack in the Northwest
this year — the question of how best to manage the
state’s big cat population has reached the forefront.
Even before a cougar attacked and killed 55-year-
old hiker Diana Bober in Mount Hood National Forest
last week, mountain lions were already in the public
eye.
Their increasing numbers — an estimated 6,600
statewide — have pushed the predators closer to Ore-
gon’s population centers, officials said. That’s led to a
series of high-profile incidents in The Dalles, Ash-
land, Silverton and Dallas.
Complaints about cougars have tripled in the Wil-
lamette Valley since 2011. And the number of cougars
killed due to human or livestock conflicts reached 169
animals in 2016, according to state records.
Hunters say they’ve seen the problem coming for
years, ever since a ballot initiative in 1994 outlawed
the use of hounds to hunt cougars.
They say it eliminated the most effective tool for
managing cougar numbers and allowed the popula-
tion to skyrocket.
“This is a statistical problem now,” said Jim Aken-
son, a longtime cougar biologist now working for the
Oregon Hunters Association. “The more cougars you
have on the landscape, the greater the chance of a
negative encounter. If their numbers continue to
grow, you do worry about this happening again.”
Akenson said reinstating hound hunting would
not only bring cougar numbers down to healthier lev-
els — around 3,500 animals statewide, he said — it
would also reestablish a greater fear of humans in an-
imals increasingly brazen about showing up in pop-
ulated areas, he said.
Akenson said he’d take a county-by-county ap-
proach, looking to cap cougar numbers based on local
conditions.
Environmental groups strongly disagree. They
point out how rare fatal attacks by cougars are and
say hunting causes more problems than it fixes.
“This is an absolute tragedy — a person has died —
but we have to remember that this is very, very rare,”
said Dr. John W. Laundré, a professor at Western Ore-
gon University and a board member of the environ-
mental group Predator Defense.
This is Oregon’s first confirmed fatal attack over a
long history, he noted.
Three people have been killed in California and
Colorado in cougar attacks, while two have died in
Washington, including earlier this year, when a cou-
gar attacked two mountain bikers near North Bend,
killing one of them.
“If you look at it objectively, how few incidents oc-
cur really speaks to how well cougars live with us,”
Laundré said. “Deer kill far more people than cougars
by being on the highway and getting hit by a car.
Should we wipe out every deer seen near a road?”
In terms of management, hunting is actually
See COUGARS, Page 3A