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 .
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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.
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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