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About The daily Astorian. (Astoria, Or.) 1961-current | View Entire Issue (March 24, 2016)
DailyAstorian.com // THURSDAY, MARCH 24, 2016 143RD YEAR, NO. 186 ONE DOLLAR Private plane crashes into Columbia River Two people are con¿ rmed missing The Daily Astorian Authorities are searching for a pri- vate plane from Vancouver, Wash- ington, that crashed into the Colum- bia 5iver off Pier 39 in Astoria late Wednesday afternoon. A 69-year-old ClarN County man, John McKibbin — a former ClarN County commissioner and an amateur pilot — was on board with a woman, Clatsop County Sheriff Tom %ergin said. The pair had planned to scatter the ashes of the woman’s husband over the river, The Columbian reported. %ergin did not release the woman’s identity. McKibbin was last seen about 3:30 p.m. Wednesday, when he and the woman tooN off from Pearson Field in Vancouver, headed for the mouth of the Columbia 5iver, The Columbian reported. “A very pro¿ cient pilot, but it looNs liNe we might have had an unfortunate circumstance,´ %ergin said. (yewitnesses reported that the plane — a 1941 North American military trainer with a polished aluminum body, a red nose and tail, and a 40-foot wing- span — went into the river at roughly 4 p.m. Wednesday. The U.S. Coast Guard performed a ¿ rst-light search Thursday morning, and the Clatsop County Sheriff’s Of¿ ce will send a crew out to search the area around noon. The agencies scanned the area for approximately three hours on Wednes- day. Though rescue teams did not ¿ nd the aircraft, “we did ¿ nd lots of oil dots yesterday coming up from the surface,´ %ergin said. Authorities search the Columbia River after reports of a small plane crash on Wednesday. More photos online at dailyastorian.com THE DEAD GO DIGIT L New online database will help people navigate Ocean View Cemetery, ¿ nd burial info Joshua Bessex/The Daily Astorian Port gets warning for docN decay Vehicle weight limit, repairs ordered at pier By EDWARD STRATTON The Daily Astorian The state Department of Transportation has advised the Port of Astoria that a decay- ing and strXctXrally de¿ cient eastern docN at Pier might have to close Xnless signi¿ cant repairs are made by July. The state has recommended a 3-ton weight limit for vehicles as a minimum rating to Neep the docN in service during the repair worN. The roadway on the east side of Pier 2, considered a public bridge by the state, is where several ¿ sh processors that employ hundreds of worNers in the busy season load seafood on refrigerated trucNs. ³:e¶re coming into shrimp and haNe sea- son, and ¿ sh needs to be ofÀ oaded,´ said Jim Knight, the Port’s e xecutive d irector . &RQ¿ UPLQJ IHDUV Joshua Bessex/The Daily Astorian Recreation Coordinator Terra Patterson is working to digitize the Ocean View Cemetery’s burial records, which are housed at the Astoria Recreational Center. By ERICK BENGEL The Daily Astorian A new digital database of the people buried at Ocean View Cemetery will allow visitors to more easily ¿ nd a loved one’s gravesite and detailed information about the burials themselves. Astoria’s ParNs and 5ecreation Department, which manages and maintains the historic cemetery in Warren- ton, plans to roll out the electronic research tool by sum- mer, said Terra Patterson, the recreation coordinator over- seeing the project. “At this point, it’s trouble-shooting,´ Patterson said. 0arN 6cott, a geographer from Ocean ParN, Washing- ton, who was contracted to build the database, has designed a Geographic Information System map to help users navigate the sprawling, 50-acre cemetery, where more than 20,000 people are laid to rest. Joshua Bessex/The Daily Astorian See DIGITAL, Page 10A Books of burial permits are stacked on a cabinet containing index cards used for quickly finding people buried at Ocean View Cemetery. Knight said the Port suspected Pier 2 had issues and wanted to prioritize maintenance, which is why the Port called the state bridge team to conduct a review . 6tate i nspectors spent days in sNiffs and dinghies underneath the p ier , checNing the underpinnings . They identi¿ ed a long seg- ment of the eastern docN in critical need of repair because of decay and a lacN of struc- tural support. The area is just northwest of a new segment of docN the Port funded with a state infrastructure grant. “We recommend the bridge be posted at 3 tons for all vehicles,´ 6tate %ridge (ngineer %ruce Johnson informed the Port in a letter this month. “This is the minimum rating for a bridge to remain in service.´ The Port has already erected barriers to Neep vehicles off the critical portion of the docN . Johnson said the 3-ton posting signs should be placed by April 1. The state inspectors identi¿ ed six urgent and 42 critical piling bents — the transverse frameworN that holds up the pier — need- ing repair by July 1. Johnson’s letter recom- mended the Port close the docN on the east- ern side of the pier entirely if the repairs are not done by July . See PORT, Page 10A Cremation on the rise, preferred to traditional burials Costs, mobility and scattering ashes Ney in huge increases By ERICK BENGEL The Daily Astorian More families are choosing to cre- mate their loved ones’ remains rather than go with a traditional full burial. The national cremation rate nearly doubled from 24.8 percent in 1999 to 46.7 percent in 2014, according to the Cremation Association of North Amer- ica. And Oregon, whose cremation rate reached 73.9 percent two years ago, has the third highest rate behind Nevada and Washington. At Ocean View Cemetery in Warren- ton, the cremation rates rose from about 45 percent of burials in 2010 to about 62 percent in 2015, according to data pro- vided by the Astoria ParNs and 5ecreation Department, which oversees the cemetery. “The trend has de¿ nitely gone towards cremations,´ Terra Patterson, a parNs department staff member, said. Why the rise? “The reason why cremation is more popular than casNet burial these days is because of the signi¿ cant difference in costs,´ said JaNe %oulet, funeral director at +ughes-5ansom Mortu- ary. “There’s a lot more costs involved regarding a full-casNet burial.´ CasNets alone can cost thousands of dollars, whereas an urn can be pur- chased for anywhere from a few hun- dred dollars to less than $50. %rian Dutton, owner and operator of Ocean View Funeral & Cremation Ser- vices in Astoria, said, “More and more, I’m seeing people saying, ‘For us, it is ¿ nances.’ “The cost of burying — if you looN just at the cemetery expense alone — peo- ple sometimes are very surprised to ¿ nd out that the cemetery expense is some- times much more than the funeral home and casNet,´ he said. “It’s over $3,000 to do a burial at Ocean View Cemetery, and that doesn’t include a headstone.´ Ocean View Cemetery allows up to four urns to be buried in a single plot, Patterson said. “When you go out to Ocean View Cemetery and looN at all those mon- uments and stuff, it’s surprising how many of them have ashes buried under them, not casNets and vaults and that sort of thing,´ Dutton said. CKDQJLQJ DWWLWXGHV 5uss Warr, who owns Asto- ria Granite WorNs — a business that maNes monuments for gravestones — has watched the downward spiral of the monument business over the last two decades, as more people opt to cremate and forgo the burial routine altogether. “My industry has changed dramati- cally over the years, and that’s one rea- son that we also do granite countertops now that we didn’t do 20 years ago,´ Warr said. %ut Warr sees the shift toward cre- mation as the result of a shift in social attitudes toward death care, including the fact that people liNe that cremation allows for greater mobility. See CREMATION, Page 10A
