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WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 11, 2019 ❚ SILVERTONAPPEAL.COM PART OF THE USA TODAY NETWORK Transaction safety on community’s wish list Virginia Barreda Salem Statesman Journal USA TODAY NETWORK After connecting with a car seller on a popular sec- ondhand marketplace app last month, Alex Hurley ar- ranged a meeting. When he got there, Hurley was robbed at gunpoint. A few days later, Marion Couty Sheriff ’s deputies arrested Josiah Cervantes, 30, in connection with the robbery — as well as a robbery that happened a day before. The problem of online transactions leading to rob- beries became significant enough a few years ago that many local law enforcement agencies began establish- ing safe trade stations — locations where people con- ducting legal online transactions can meet and make the exchange. In a 2018 community survey con- ducted by the City of Salem, a safe trade station for online purchases was rated the second-highest amenity that resi- dents wanted on the new police depart- ment campus. Cervantes A safe trade station won’t be part of the new police station, but the public can consider “the lobby of the police station and/or the plaza in front of the police station to be a safe trade location,” accord- ing to Lt. Michael Bennett with the police department. Although even that isn’t a guarantee of safety. “I would shy away from creating a sense of safety just because someone is meeting at a police facility,” said Deputy Chief George Burke with the Salem Police Department. “Most police stations are locations where police come and go but are not staffed onsite as a re- source.” Still, those transactions are going to occur as long as Craigslist, Letgo and OfferUp are popular. “The most important thing to be aware of,” Burke said, “is how to limit the opportunity.” Buy-gone-wrong Hurley said he had a bad feeling about meeting with Cervantes from the start. “I was getting weird vibes from it,” said Hurley, 24. “I don’t know why. But my girlfriend and I...we really needed the car and $800 for a 2000 Honda seemed like a great deal.” See SAFE, Page 3B Woodturning club to host empty bowls event in 2020 Abby Luschei Salem Statesman Journal USA TODAY NETWORK Damage to a house in on Sixth Street, between Main and Church streets that touched down in Aumsville on Tuesday, Dec. 14, 2010. STATESMAN JOURNAL FILE Aumsville prepares for future disasters Bill Poehler Salem Statesman Journal USA TODAY NETWORK Reminders of the most significant natural disaster ever to hit Aumsville linger nearly a decade later. When someone drives through the city of 4,165, echos of the tornado that ripped a swath of the city on Dec. 14, 2010 are easy to find: Tornado Fitness on Main Street now occupies the space where a building was toppled; dozens of homes and buildings were remod- eled out of necessity. Aumsville — like many communities — was unpre- pared for such an event. In the past two years, Aumsville has formed a board and developed plans to receive and alert the public about hazardous weather and how to deal with the aftermath. The city recently became the first in Marion County to earn the StormReady Certification from the National Weather Service. “It’s kind of just a whole hub of everybody looking at information and sharing it quickly with everybody when we see an emergency or a potential emergency coming up,” said Aumsville Chief of Police Richard Schmitz, the emergency management coordinator for the city. As part of the plan, Aumsville established a 24- hour monitoring system for severe weather forecasts, developed ways to alert the public of such events and established an emergency operations center. Those were things it lacked in 2010. “This is something that in all honesty, Aumsville was deficient, and we are now meeting the standards in my mind,” Aumsville Mayor Derek Clevenger said. “Yes, we’re the first ones in Marion County to have this rating, and that’s cool, but that should be the standard from what they’re talking about with every city in the county.” What happened in Aumsville? Late on the already gray and cloudy Tuesday morn- ing of Dec. 14, 2010, the sky around Aumsville – a bed- room community surrounded by farms 10 miles east of Salem – turned nearly pitch black. At 11:46 a.m., National Weather Service radar de- tected a small weather cell north of Stayton and at 11:53 a.m. issued a Severe Thunderstorm Warning. At 11:59 a.m., an EF2 tornado with wind speeds over 110 miles per hour ripped its way through Aumsville and along a five-mile path to the northeast approxi- mately 150 yards wide. The devastation it wreaked was unlike anything the city was prepared for. The tornado damaged 50 structures, including de- stroying TG Nichol Plumbing on Main Street and mak- ing 10 homes uninhabitable, uprooting 30 large trees and causing two minor injuries. See STORMS, Page 2A Marion Co. kills hemp processing facility Tracy Loew Salem Statesman Journal USA TODAY NETWORK Marion County has rejected an application for a $15.5 million hemp drying and oil-processing facility proposed for a 37-acre farm in Turner. Jupiter Pharma, an Illinois company registered in Delaware, had asked the county for a conditional-use permit to build the factory on property zoned for ex- clusive farm use. In a ruling signed last week, a hearings officer cited multiple problems with the application, including in- adequate traffic safety plans, no identified source of water or natural gas, a lack of drainage plans, and no information about noise generation. In the end though, the hearings officer rejected the application because Jupiter Pharma didn’t yet own the property, so technically could not request the ex- emption. Jupiter Pharma already had decided not to move forward with the site, at 8710 Parrish Gap Road, Mi- chael Winter, the company’s CEO, said Friday. “We’re in the process of effecting our business plan elsewhere,” Winter said. He declined to elaborate. Winter previously had said the company has con- tracts with Marion County farmers to cultivate hemp, and has contracts to deliver CBD oil. The complex consisted of 50,000-square-foot and 30,000-square-foot hemp storage buildings; a 26,520-square-foot drying pad; a 22,508 square-foot extraction building; a 15,000-square-foot hemp-dry- ing building; a 12,000-square-foot processing facility; a 6,000-square-foot administrative building; and a 4,800-square-foot motor pool building. In addition to processing its own hemp, the compa- ny planned to offer drying services to other Oregon hemp growers. It was a typical Saturday morning in November — chilly, 45 degrees and grey skies — as about a dozen people stood on the lawn of a North Salem home. Most sported plaid jackets and boots with coffee cups or cigarettes in hand as they waited for the ac- tion to begin. A 35-foot, dying cherry tree was about to come down. Members of Willamette Valley Woodturners, a nonprofit club of woodturning enthusiasts estab- lished in 1997, were there to collect viable wood for their community engagement project, an Empty Bowls fundraiser. Club president Jeff Zens said they are not a tree removal service but will accept tree donations of ap- propriate size and species; like the property they were at, which had the one dying tree and others caught in power pole wires that needed to be re- moved. Empty Bowls is an international effort to fight hunger. One of the club's core values is preserving and promoting the art of woodturning, as well as community outreach. Their event is nearly a year away — on Oct. 11, 2020, at the Willamette Heritage Center — but they will need all that time to prepare. Zens said they hope to create at least 150 bowls of varying sizes and decoration. Farmers Ending Hunger, Salem Harvest and Mar- ion Polk Food Share — all nonprofits aimed at eradi- cating hunger in Oregon — will be the beneficiaries of the fundraiser. Fighting hunger in Oregon Farmers Ending Hunger, based in Salem, was founded by Fred Ziari in 2005 after he learned Oregon was ranked one of the worst states in the country for food insecurity. It's estimated more than 500,000 people can't regularly access healthy food in Oregon as of 2017, including approximately 45,000 people in Marion and Polk counties. Ziari enlisted the help of farmers to combat the is- sue by donating a portion of their harvest. He and Jim Youde, the founder of Extended Harvest, com- bined efforts when they realized both nonprofits had similar structures — getting food to food banks through agricultural donations. They take donations from farmers, ranchers and growers and turn it into food products distributed to the Oregon Food Bank. The nonprofit also has an Adopt-an-Acre program. (Story continues below.) The first donation was 173,000 pounds of frozen peas in 2006. Today, Farmers Ending Hunger do- nates around 3.5 million pounds of product annually. "We have large producers giving large quantities of product," said John Burt, the sole staff employee of Farmers Ending Hunger, who came on as executive director in 2007. See EMPTY BOWLS, Page 3A See HEMP, Page 2A Online at SilvertonAppeal.com Vol. 138, No. 51 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 QEAJAB-07403y ©2019 50 cents Printed on recycled paper The Willamette Valley Woodturners, a local nonprofit club of woodturning enthusiasts, make bowls for an Empty Bowls fundraiser next year for hunger relief. MADELEINE COOK/STATESMAN JOURNAL