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About The daily Astorian. (Astoria, Or.) 1961-current | View Entire Issue (Sept. 23, 2015)
Razor clam season still closed Astoria volleyball team loses intense match PAGE 2A SPORTS • 4A 143rd YEAR, No. 61 WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 23, 2015 ONE DOLLAR Is Hood to Coast worth it? Some businesses don’t hang out ‘Hood to Coast’ welcome mat By R.J. MARX The Daily Astorian Joshua Bessex/The Daily Astorian Jordan Lathan grinds on a ramp at the Armory Skatepark Monday. The skate park, located in the basement of the Astoria Armory, is Asto- ria’s first indoor skateboarding park. UNDER THE SKATING RINK Astoria Armory Skatepark helps skateboarders stay dry, À y high By EDWARD STRATTON The Daily Astorian MORE INFO A glow emanated from an open garage door on Duane Street below the skating rink of the Astoria Armory Monday night, as a small group of youths queued outside. Inside, onlookers watched skate- boarders traverse a series of three mini half pipes running the width of the garage. A lone guitarist from San Francisco played a surf rock in- strumental in one corner of the room, and organizers of the skate park sold drinks, snacks and sloppy J oes in the other. On the landings above each pipe, a queue of skaters waited patiently to descend into their runs. Each took a turn, alternately building momen- tum and riding up the pipes to À ip, spin, slide or otherwise contort their boards and bodies before hopefully landing smoothly and building mo- mentum for the next jump. In shoot-’til-you-miss etiquette, once a skater bailed from their board and cleared the way, the next one took off. Such has been the inconspicuous start at the Armory Skatepark, a lit- tle more than a month old. The park The Armory Skatepark, located at 1636 Exchange St. in the Astoria Armory and accessible from Duane Street, is open from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday and Thursday, and 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. Friday through Sun- day. It costs $3 for three hours of skateboarding. Joshua Bessex/The Daily Astorian Gabe Sutton does a trick off a ramp at the Armory Skatepark Monday. held a special party Monday to cele- brate an expansion of the park local skateboarders created. A better basement “We grew up skating other peo- ple’s ideas now we ¿ nally get to give other people a chance to skate our ideas,” said Tyler Little, a projec- tionist at the Columbian Theater. He is part of the group of local skateboarders who designed and built the modest park in a week and a half for the kickoff party last month. Little said Brad Smithart, a friend and owner of the Arc Arcade, had let skaters set up an invitation-only ramp in his basement, available whenever it rained or was too late to skate the uncovered bowls at Tapiola Park. SEASIDE — Beloved event or costly nuisance? Those were the polar extremes epitomized in local reaction to Hood to Coast. The Seaside City Council held a workshop Monday in response to a call from 7 Seaside businesses requesting a rescheduling of the annu- al 98-mile relay event running from Mount Hood to Seaside. The race was launched in 982 by founder Bob Foote, who continues to preside over the organization with his daughter, Felicia Hubber, serving as president. The event ¿ rst came to Sea- side in 989. See HOOD TO COAST, Page 10A It’s all about being prepared Filipino envoys visit Cannon Beach to share disaster tips By DANI PALMER EO Media Group Cannon Beach residents and busi- ness owners are expected to play a big part in the city’s emergency re- sponse plan. That community ap- proach attracted nine delegates from the Philippines to Cannon Beach Thursday to learn about prepared- ness and response. “It means that we’re out there. We’re noticed as an aware commu- nity,” Cannon Beach Mayor Sam Steidel said. “That’s important.” But with Smithart preparing for laser tag below the arcade, the skaters had to ¿ nd a place for their ramp. On Aug. , the same day they took the ramp apart, the skateboard- ers connected through Coldwa- ter Surf & Skate owners Julie and Russ House with the Friends of the Armory Board, which leased them a small offshoot of the building’s spacious basement and gave them a month to prove their concept. The ramps, multiple layers of thin plywood topped with Masonite ¿ berboard, are a crash course in ge- ometry, designed speci¿ cally, skater Kai Dakers said, to give 6 feet of transition from horizontal to vertical travel, with humps next to each pipe The delegates, with backgrounds in law enforcement, emergency management and government, asked questions and offered suggestions for improvement. See ARMORY, Page 10A See TIPS, Page 3A Seeking better response Playbook outlines ¿ rst days after the quake By HILLARY BORRUD Capital Bureau SALEM — Oregon is send- ing updated checklists for the aftermath of a catastrophic earthquake and tsunami to state and local emergency response agencies across the state. The document, called the Cascadia Playbook, details hoZ state of¿ cials should respond in the ¿ rst days following a magnitude 9.0 Cascadia Subduction Zone earthquake and tsunami off the West Coast. Actions list- ed in the plan range from the steps necessary to initiate a federal disaster declaration, to collecting bodies and trans- porting supplies to survivors in areas where roads were destroyed or clogged with debris. The playbook provides a single checklist for state of¿ - cials based on numerous fed- eral, state and local emergency response plans, which will also be carried out during the earth- quake and tsunami. “During an emergency or disaster, you have a lot of dif- ferent things coming from a lot of different directions and it’s easy to be overcome by the scope,” said Andrew Phelps, di- rector of the Oregon Of¿ ce of Emergency Management and Oregon Military Department. “So this really helps the poli- cy makers or decision makers at state government to remain focused on what they need to.” Gov. Kate Brown and oth- er state of¿ cials held an event to publicize the latest version of the playbook last week , and Grogan said the state is sending the document to public agen- cies across Oregon. A hundred pages The Cascadia Subduction Zone runs off the West Coast, from Vancouver, British Co- lumbia, down to northern Cal- ifornia. Researchers at Oregon State University have found the Paci¿ c 1orthwest is overdue for a catastrophic earthquake and tsunami. ,n 0, those researchers published a study that found there were 9 earth- quakes from 8.7 to 9.2 along the zone over the last 0,000 years. During the same time frame, there were 22 earthquakes that might have been closer to mag- nitude 8.0. The state began working on the playbook in 20, and published the ¿ rst version in 20, said Cory Grogan, a pub- lic information of¿ cer for the Oregon Of¿ ce of Emergency Management. The latest ver- sion is the product of work- shops with a range of emergen- cy responders which concluded this spring, and the state plans to continue re¿ ning the plan in future years. The 00-page document contains 27 pages of emergency contact numbers for employees at state and local governments, plus utility companies and other private organizations. The state will issue updated versions on an annual basis. Although Oregon devel- oped the playbook for a Cas- cadia Subduction Zone earth- quake, the state could also use it to guide responses to other disasters such as smaller inland crustal fault earthquakes or oil spills, Grogan said. Magnitude 9.0 For planning purposes, the Oregon Military Department and Of¿ ce of Emergency Man- agement based the Cascadia Playbook on a magnitude 9.0 earthquake that could cause up to ¿ ve minutes of severe ground shaking, a tsunami, landslides and soil liquefaction. The earthquake and ensuing See PLAYBOOK, Page 10A