OPINION
6A
THE DAILY ASTORIAN • TUESDAY, JUNE 21, 2016
Founded in 1873
STEPHEN A. FORRESTER, Editor & Publisher
LAURA SELLERS, Managing Editor
BETTY SMITH, Advertising Manager
CARL EARL, Systems Manager
JOHN D. BRUIJN, Production Manager
DEBRA BLOOM, Business Manager
HEATHER RAMSDELL, Circulation Manager
Why the silence?
County commissioners must set
expectations for mental health agency
f you have lived in Clatsop County for the past two decades,
you have seen more than one mental health treatment crisis.
This month’s resignations at Clatsop Behavioral Healthcare
R.J. Marx/The Daily Astorain
are the most recent installment.
Bob Quick and Troy Easton the afternoon before the first leg of their journey.
It is true that Clatsop said anything for the public
County’s dark history with record.
mental health is not much dif-
As the county moves to
ferent from what you would the next chapter with Clatsop
ind in many rural counties Behavioral Healthcare, it is
across America. Treating essential that the commission
mental health has none of the speak clearly to CBH’s lead-
prominence that we accord ers and to the rest of us. What
TRACK THE JOURNEY
certain diseases or even our should be the benchmark for
bobquicksjourney.com
institutional responses to success at CBH? How do
physical trauma.
you measure success in treat-
Quick: “We’re going to Haystack,
Your crowning to Jack!”
What is lacking in our ing mental health in the com-
Quick agreed, and began prepa-
county is transparency from munity? What do commis-
moment is
B y
ration for the trip, which would con-
the Clatsop County Board sioners want CBH to do?
R.J.
clude 3,400 miles away.
right now.
He got a “tune-up” from medical
of Commissioners. While
None of our commission-
M aRx
on
a
transcontinental
ride
with
personnel,
including another stent,
interim County Manager ers are licensed to practice
16 heart stents and a deibrillator. implanted through the groin up the
Rich Mays and new County medicine or diagnose men-
Easton and his wife, Marla, owners of femoral artery. “The key was getting
Easton Health and Safety Solutions in him ready internally, externally, mind
Manager Cameron Moore tal illness. But we elect them
Ogden, sponsored the ride from San for the next ride,” Easton said.
have been forthright in to be our top policymaking
hat a way to make a Diego, California, to St. Augustine,
The Eastons used the same tests
friend — in the back of an Florida.
on Quick they use for performance
addressing the most recent group. A large part of their
The 91-day journey went through testing of ire and police personnel.
trauma at CBH, none of job is to set expectations. ambulance as you’re suffering Southern
California’s Imperial Val-
This ride expands the original
cardiac failure.
the commissioners have That voice is missing.
ley, where temperatures reached goals of the 2013 trip. Along with
I
Cannon Beach is launchpad
for Bob Quick’s journey
SOUTHERN
EXPOSURE
W
Weyco gift is a step
away from disaster
O
ne of the most horriic
aspects of the 2008
Sichuan earthquake in China
was the number of schools
that collapsed, resulting in
7,000 wrecked classrooms.
Up to 10,000 children died
and another 15,000 were
injured.
The instinct to protect chil-
dren is universal, but money
all too often gets in the way of
reasonable safety measures.
In China, there were wide-
spread allegations of govern-
ment and contractor corrup-
tion that resulted in schools
that didn’t even meet basic
seismic codes. The 2008
quake was extremely power-
ful, testing the survivability
of any building. But build-
ing locations, designs and
construction deiciencies all
placed children at increased
risk.
The Seaside School
District has been admira-
bly proactive in seeking a
safer site and stronger facili-
ties for south Clatsop County
kids and educators. It tried
and failed in 2013 to win
voter approval for a $128.8
million bond issue to build
a safer school campus. That
facility also would have
served as a community disas-
ter center in the aftermath of
a massive 9-plus Cascadia
Subduction Zone earthquake
and tsunami. Such an event
is certain, sometime between
today and several hundred
years from now.
Landscaper Bob Quick of Roy,
Utah — just west of Ogden — led an
unhealthy lifestyle. He paid the price
in 2004.
“I could tell he was dying as soon
as I saw him, for sure,” paramedic
Troy Easton said. “Complete cardiac
failure, ashen, blood pressure, 80 over
nothing, he was real anxious, you
know you’re dying. He said, ‘Please
do everything you can to save my
life.’”
Easton, irst on the scene, said
Quick had no pulse and was not
breathing when they “let him have it,”
shocking him with 360 joules from a
deibrillator.
For 3 1/2 minutes, Quick’s life
hung in the balance.
As Quick, now 55, entered the
“white light,” he recounted last week
in Cannon Beach, “I said, ‘I’ll do
whatever I can to change,’ and I woke
up three days later.”
“I’m not sure whether I had a
choice to save him or not, but he
wouldn’t have had a very good life-
style,” Easton said. “Not very many
people come back.”
Quick’s survival was a result of
Easton’s quick action and subsequent
medical treatment — stents, bypass
surgery, and multiple cardiac proce-
dures, according to Easton. Quick
suffered so much damage — the
lower third of his heart was dead —
he required a pacemaker deibrillator
for survival.
Now, thanks to an 80-acre
gift from Weyerhaeuser Co.,
the district will again have
a chance to convince tax-
payers to fund a new school
campus above the tsunami
inundation zone. It will be
worth seeking state and fed-
eral aid to take this needed
step in a seashore recreation
area of national signiicance.
Irrespective of whether out-
siders are able to help, local
voters need to take a deep
breath and approve the new
campus.
The need to act is, per-
haps, even more compel-
ling on the Long Beach
(Wash.) Peninsula. Its two
elementary schools are both
well below the 80- to 100- San Diego to St. Augustine
feet elevation now consid-
Less than a decade later, in 2013,
Quick
had built himself into shape
ered safe, while none of its and proposed
a unique thank you
schools is likely to survive for the emergency responders who
the 5 to 10 minutes of vio- came to his assistance. He con-
ceived a plan to bicycle from coast
lent shaking predicted in a to coast, the irst man to embark
Cascadia quake. All school
buildings along the coast
need to be reassessed for
seismic survivability.
Part of the conversation
Addressing
deicien-
he Daily Astorian is well aware
that they are directed before every
cies will be expensive. In a
executive session that they are not to
best-case scenario, we may report on items discussed in execu-
have generations-worth of tive session. The deputy managing
time. But Paciic Northwest editor did not even attend the Warren-
ton City Commission meeting or the
coastal communities must executive session on June 14; how-
plan right now to avoid ever he wrote an article titled “War-
mayor gets involved in dam
China’s most regretta- renton
talks” (June 16).
ble mistakes. Schools must
When asked to comment about the
executive
session, as an elected ofi-
to be built to survive the
cial, I was directed by the Warrenton
earthquake and resulting city attorney that I was not allowed to
conirm or deny anything regarding
tsunamis.
of the executive session.
Shame on us if we leave the In subject
regard to my public opposi-
our kids in deathtraps.
tion to the Eighth Street dam project
114 degrees on the ride. Quick and
his son, Conrad, rode at night when
necessary,
“It was an appreciation ride and
thank you to public safety for their
response,” Easton said. “Bob’s job
was to go shake hands and kiss
babies.”
“Say hello to your hometown
heroes, because that’s what they are,”
Quick said. “The ones that never hear
a thank you.”
When they landed back in Salt
Lake City, they were greeted by ire-
ighters and emergency personnel
lined on the runway in a V-formation.
Onward to Cannon Beach
Quick, along with the Eastons and
their two daughters, arrived June 7 in
Cannon Beach via RV to launch the
irst leg of Quick’s second transcon-
tinental journey, a 3,400-mile trek
from Cannon Beach to Fire Island,
New York.
This time, Troy Easton will pedal
alongside Quick.
“Being the irst paramedic to
save him, I said, ‘I’ll go with you,’”
Easton, 48, said. “I’ve got to watch
him. He’s a go-getter, he’s done
amazing things but I’ve got to reel
him back. It won’t be much of an
journey if we kill him.”
Quick had never been to Oregon,
and originally suggested San Fran-
cisco as their launch point.
Easton vetoed that. “Bob wanted
to take me through Nevada,” he said.
“We were going to go from San Fran-
cisco to Nevada from Reno to Salt
Lake — 512 miles of sheer hell. Why
would you do that? You could cook
an egg on the hood of your car.”
Easton’s daughters had recently
vacationed in Cannon Beach, and
loved the city and its scenic beauty.
He successfully pitched the idea
thank yous to emergency services,
Quick and his team hope to raise
awareness of physical itness and
health, and they are raising funds to
provide iPads to schools that serve
autistic children.
Quick’s grandson, Bruce, 6, is
autistic.
On the road
Quick and Easton, who took off
June 1, were headed for Salem and
then to Bend.
The northern route promises
cooler weather and scenic beauty,
along with the opportunity to par-
ticipate in a three-day event planned
for St. Jude Medical in Minneapolis.
They’ll then take 250 miles of trail
from St. Paul to Milwaukee.
With food, tents, sleeping bags
and stoves, “We’ve got everything we
need,” Easton said.
They plan to travel about 50 miles
a day. To prevent diarrhea or cramps,
they eat glutamates and protein —
to maintain their energy, they’ll
need about 8,700 calories per day.
“We’ve been training hard the last lit-
tle while,” Easton said. “But once that
heart rate goes up over your thresh-
old and that lactic acid is rocking and
you’ve still got 7 miles up that hill
still, that’s so heartbreaking when
you’re riding a 140-pound bike. I’m
used to a 17-pound bike.”
This should be a wakeup call for
all of us — you don’t have to suffer
a heart attack to participate in life,
the “full catastrophe.” Your crowning
moment is right now.
The journey offers inspiration
to “seize the day” — before the day
seizes you.
R.J. Marx is The Daily Astori-
an’s South County reporter and edi-
tor of the Seaside Signal and Cannon
Beach Gazette.
Open forum
T
on the Skipanon River near my home
and business, I have contacted the Ore-
gon Government Ethics Commission
on three separate occasions to ask if I
should recuse myself from voting.
On each occasion they told me
the economic impact of the pro-
posed project is not clearly deined
(either positively or negatively), and
I did not have to recuse myself from
the discussion or vote because it is a
“potential” not an “actual” conlict.
However, I chose to recuse myself
from votes on the memorandum of
understanding out of an abundance of
caution, and I will continue to recuse
myself on votes concerning the
Eighth Street lood control structure.
I have no intention of remov-
ing myself from the conversation.
This project might affect my home,
my parents’ home and my business.
While I choose not to vote out of a
high ethical standard, I most certainly
want to be part of the conversation.
I have encouraged my family to be
involved, and would give the same
advice to any other citizen whose
property could be affected by a gov-
ernmental action.
Votes are not taken during exec-
utive session, and I did not call this
executive session that the deputy man-
aging editor wrote about. That session
was called by my city attorney, and he
did not object to my participation, and
there was no anticipated vote to come
out of this executive session.
MARK KUJALA
Warrenton