2A
|
WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 30, 2020
Climber
Continued from Page 1A
possible."
When she met Carr, she joked how it
was either climbing the rock wall or sky-
diving for her 85th birthday.
"I'm going to be honest, you picked
the harder one," he told her. "One is going
to take a year of constant training. The
other is just somebody pushing you out
of a plane and you pray."
Carr calls rock climbing a full-body
sport. It was scheduled to make its
Olympic debut at the 2020 Tokyo
Games, which were postponed because
of the pandemic.
"So many people try the wall and real-
ize how hard it is and stop," Carr said.
Linda Smith, Johnson's daughter, can
attest to that.
"I tried it for about two seconds, and it
was a little more than I wanted," Smith
said. "But my mom's a lot cooler than I
am."
Climbing uses your core, arms and
legs. It takes balance, agility and
strength, abilities that can diminish
with age. When Johnson started, she
didn't have the grip strength to open a jar
at home, let alone grab the handholds on
the wall.
Still, because climbing is easier on the
joints than other exercises and activ-
ities, it can be a good option for older
adults. And it's relatively safe when
done with a harness and rope system
like the one at the Kroc Center.
Overcoming the COVID-19 hurdle
Johnson made it only a couple of
steps up during her first lesson last No-
vember. Carr reminded her it would be
marathon, not a sprint.
She needed a break around Christ-
mastime, when she was busy making
dozens of gingerbread cookies for family
and friends.
"I got one of them, and it was deli-
cious by the way," Carr said. "She was so
into the Christmas spirit, so into baking,
she wore herself out."
Johnson was then sidelined later in
the winter with bronchitis.
But the quarantine proved to be her
biggest obstacle, shutting down the Kroc
Center in March.
No one was more excited when the
center reopened in late June, and she
was able to return to the activity she had
grown to love. Carr worried the lengthy
layoff would be difficult for her to over-
come.
"I wasn't sure we could make the
|
APPEAL TRIBUNE
deadline," he said. "But Johnson just
clearly doubled her efforts."
She continued to build strength at
home on her own, doing the stretching
and other exercises Carr recommended.
"It’s been amazing, and I don't care
what her age is," Paul Carter, sports and
fitness coordinator at the Kroc Center,
said. "Seeing the joy she's getting out of
this is what is inspirational."
Before each of Johnson's lessons,
Carr sanitized the wall to protect her
from potentially being exposed to CO-
VID-19. In late August, she received an
email reporting one employee and one
guest had tested positive.
Johnson always wore a mask, which
concealed her infectious smile and
caused more frustration than the wall
ever did.
"It's a real bugger," she said, her white
hair pulled back in a ponytail. "I can't
breathe as easy, and it keeps scooting up
and interfering with my vision while I’m
trying to see where my foot goes."
'If I can do it, anybody can'
Johnson made strides with each les-
son. Carr focused on endurance and
confidence as the birthday deadline
loomed.
At one point, he brought in a ladder so
she could more easily access the lower
part of the wall and conserve her
strength for the upper section. A small
crowd gathered that day, cheering when
she reached the top for the first time.
A couple of weeks later, she made it
unassisted — with the Statesman Jour-
nal there to document her progress.
"If I can do it," Johnson said trium-
phantly, "anybody can."
Climbing has changed her life, espe-
cially in terms of upper body strength.
She's standing up straighter, the kypho-
sis less noticeable, and she can open any
jar.
"I'm getting twice as much done at
home now," she said. "Instead of nap-
ping, I rest a minute and go out and start
again."
She plans to continue climbing and
hopes her experience might inspire oth-
ers her age to stay active.
"I don't want to just sit and look out
my window. I want to live," Johnson
said. "I want other people to know that
you can do these things. You don't have
to just sit in the chair."
"Forward This" taps into the heart of
the Mid-Valley — its people, history, and
issues. Contact Capi Lynn at
clynn@StatesmanJournal.com or 503-
399-6710, or follow her on Twitter
@CapiLynn and Facebook @CapiL-
ynnSJ.
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Water
Water quality impacts further
downstream in Salem and Stayton
Continued from Page 1A
Salem has experienced problems
with water from the North Santiam Riv-
er before.
Salem draws its water from the
North Santiam River east of Stayton at
Geren Island.
In 2018, toxic algae blooms in Detroit
Lake made the drinking water unsafe
for some people in Salem due to cyano-
toxins. Some blamed the blooms on
runoff from wildfires in the forests in
2017.
To combat the potential for cyano-
toxins reaching Salem's drinking water
again, Salem is building a $46 million
ozone treatment facility. But that isn't
expected to be in operation until the
spring of 2021.
In the meantime, however, Salem's
open-air water retention ponds, much
like Stayton's, had to filter out ash from
the water for a week.
Salem has put out multiple updates
assuring people its water is safe to drink
in the aftermath of the wildfires. The
city has filtration systems, and it can
switch to stored water if runoff proves
problematic.
“Water systems served by surface
water, like Salem, and with significant
burn areas in their watersheds may ex-
perience increased runoff from erosion
in the burned area, increased sediment
and turbidity, increases in organic car-
bon and nutrients like nitrogen and
phosphorus, possibly leading to algal or
cyanobacterial growth, all of which can
create challenges for treatment,” Modie
said.
Detroit’s likely will cost more as the
building that houses it was heavily
damaged by the fire.
Detroit Mayor Jim Trett has had pre-
liminary discussions with FEMA au-
thorities about assistance the agency
may be able to provide the city, but it
could be a while until that comes.
“They said they may have some
money to use to start rebuilding the
plant,” he said.
When fire crews returned to Detroit
after the main fire, they had to bring
their own water or pump it out of the
lake to mop up fires.
Most of Detroit’s water distribution
pipes, which were moved with the city
in 1952, were replaced a year ago.
Getting water to flow through those
pipes again is one step, but making it
safe to drink again will be important,
too.
Marion County Public Works Direc-
tor Brian Nicholas said he anticipates a
mobile water delivery service once peo-
ple can return to the town as a short-
term solution, but a pumping system
will need to be established soon, which
FEMA has done in fire-ravaged cities in
California in recent years.
“I do anticipate it will be something
that starts out rudimentary and grows
over time,” Nicholas said.
While the impacts from the wildfire
are felt on the water in Detroit, the im-
pacts from the wildfires could be felt by
more than 100,000 people who get their
drinking water from the North Santiam
River for the next decade.
“When the flames go out and the
smoke goes away, for most people, they
kind of stop thinking about fire,” said
Kevin Bladon, an assistant professor in
OSU’s College of Forestry.
“This is when all the problems start
-- when the flames go out and when the
first rain event of the year start moving
that ash and the sediment into our
streams, that really can have some pro-
found impacts on our ecosystems.”
The water ran dry in Gates
When he returned to Gates at about 3
p.m. Sept. 8 under skies that made the
city appear as if it was midnight, public
works superintendent Greg Benthin
found the city’s water system had gone
dry.
Firefighters used the municipal wa-
ter to fight the Beachie Creek fire to save
what buildings they could.
The buildings that were destroyed
were leaking so much of the remaining
water, Benthin had to go house to house
to turn off water.
But he didn’t have to go to the lengths
they will in Detroit.
“Our water plant’s in great shape,”
Benthin said. “We had to run on genera-
tors for several days.”
Despite having an advanced mem-
brane water filtration system, it’s still
unsure if the water is safe to drink.
“Both Gates and Lyons-Mehama are
sampling for (volatile organic com-
pounds) this week,” Oregon Health Au-
thority spokesperson Jonathan Modie
wrote in an email.
“Experience from (California) wild-
fires has shown that VOCs, particularly
benzene, can be found in water systems
that both lost pressure and lost struc-
tures due to fire, causing plastic pipes to
melt or off-gas contaminants.”
When customers in the Lyons-Me-
hama Water District were allowed to re-
turn Sept. 15, they were put under boil
notices and told to conserve water.
The primary water storage tank in
the Lyons-Mehama district on the Me-
hama side of the North Santiam is made
of wood and dates back to the 1950s, but
it emerged largely unharmed from the
fire. The district has unsuccessfully
been searching for funding to replace it
for years.
Future impacts on the water
supply
One of the main pushes to recover
from wildfires in the past decade has
been revegetating the banks of rivers
and streams as soon as possible after
the fires are extinguished.
Those plants help the water that
eventually flows into streams like Rain-
bow Creek and Mud Puppy Creek, from
which Idanha draws its water.
“I think it’s all going to depend on
what we see later this fall and winter,”
Bladon said. “If we stay really dry and
we’re able to get some establishment of
vegetation on those hillslopes, we
might be able to mitigate some of those
impacts.
“If we get a really wet fall and wet
winter, a lot of that is going to be mobili-
zed into that river.”
The water bodies of Canada around
2016’s Fort McMurray Wildfire are still
feeling the impacts of the fire that
burned nearly 1.5 million acres.
In the four years since, significant in-
creases in ash, potassium, nitrogen,
calcium and heavy metals including
lead have been seen every time a sig-
nificant rain has occurred, according to
a 2020 study, and it has been difficult to
manage bacteria in the Fort McMurray
water reservoir.
Though its drinking water has re-
mained safe to drink, the cost of treat-
ing the water has risen by 50%.
The impacts on water quality from
wildfires can last a decade, according to
Oregon Department of Environmental
Quality spokesperson Jennifer Flynt.
“Depending on the fire location and
severity of impact to the treatment and
distribution system, over the long term
post-fire impacts can be detrimental to
drinking water supplies and treatment
systems,” Flynt wrote.
Flynt said there is also potential for
toxic chemicals to appear in water bod-
ies such as cyanide and mercury, which
can be found in fire retardants.
“We’re certainly not through this
yet,” Benthin said.
Bill Poehler covers Marion County
for the Statesman Journal. Contact
him
at
bpoehler@statesmanjournal.com
or
Twitter.com/bpoehler
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