DailyAstorian.com // TUESDAY, JANUARY 24, 2017
144TH YEAR, NO. 148
ONE DOLLAR
File Photo
The Jewell School Board has opposed
a marijuana facility near Jewell School.
Pot facility
gets cold
shoulder
in Jewell
Danny Miller/The Daily Astorian
Clatsop County Emergency Management Coordinator Bijan Fayyaz speaks to students during his presentation about terrorism
on Friday at Astoria High School. The presentation is part of the Community Emergency Response Team class curriculum.
A lesson in disaster
Emergency preparation
at area high schools
By EDWARD STRATTON
The Daily Astorian
ijan Fayyaz, Clatsop County’s emer-
gency
management
coordinator,
remembers as a child going three
weeks without power in his hometown of Fort
Lauderdale, Florida, during Hurricane Frances
in 2004. For Hurricane Katrina in 2005, it was
a week-and-a-half. His father, a civil engineer
with the city, was tasked with coordinating
emergency efforts, sometimes providing him
an inside view of how response works.
The experiences, he said, gave him an
understanding of what it’s like to live through
emergencies, with resources often being pulled
from less populated areas like Fort Lauderdale
and focused on larger nearby cities like Miami.
It’s a situation he said Clatsop County could
face, being in close proximity to Portland.
In an expansion of what used to be an after-
school club, Fayyaz is taking all high school
seniors in Astoria, juniors in Seaside and soph-
omores in Warrenton through a nine-week
course in disaster response.
By the end of the year, the course will result
in more than 250 local high schoolers certified
to join a Community Emergency Response
Team. And Fayyaz said the county plans to
make the disaster training a permanent part of
local curriculum.
B
Lifesaving courses
An economics major at Florida State Uni-
versity, Fayyaz completed the school’s Emer-
gency Management Homeland Security pro-
gram, and eventually attended the Emergency
Management Institute, learning to train others
in emergency response.
He visits each of his high school classes
once a week, taking over from the teacher for
Building would be
near Jewell School
By EDWARD STRATTON
The Daily Astorian
JEWELL — The Jewell School Board
came face-to-face for the first time Monday
with the owner of a proposed marijuana pro-
cessing facility they have opposed.
Marc Plew, from Happy Valley, pur-
chased a small lot at the corner of Oregon
highways 103 and 202, slightly more than
1,000 feet north of Jewell School. Shortly
after, he applied for a permit to build a mar-
ijuana processing facility, dispensary and
residence.
During a presentation Monday about
the school district’s appeal process, Jewell
Superintendent Alice Hunsaker said the dis-
trict found out about the proposed facility
from one of four property owners within 250
of the site who were notified about Plew’s
application. Outside the radius, the school
district was not notified.
“As the leader of the school district, I had
significant concerns,” she said.
See JEWELL, Page 4A
Danny Miller/The Daily Astorian
Jared Lucore is lifted by classmates as they demonstrate a blanket carry during one
of their Community Emergency Response Team classes.
the day. Over nine weeks, he takes students
through the structure of response teams, disas-
ter psychology, search and rescue, first aid, tri-
age, firefighting and other disaster response
skills. At the end of the course, students are
tested in a disaster simulation, their grades
dependent on how efficiently they assess a sit-
uation and treat victims.
Earlier this month, Fayyaz was teaching
students in Chad Clouse’s junior health class at
Seaside High School how to efficiently search
a disaster-stricken area and extract survivors.
“It’s prioritizing how to save the most lives,
the greatest number of people, in the shortest
amount of time,” he said.
After a little cajoling, Fayyaz convinced
juniors David Schwinof, Megan Brown and
Cole Herrington to come up in front of class
and demonstrate how to carry each other.
“I wouldn’t imagine picking up people I
don’t know,” Brown said of the experience,
after hauling her classmate Herrington by the
feet.
But Brown, like her classmates, said she
understands the need to have a corps of youth-
ful volunteers with such skills, ready at all
times in case disaster strikes.
“It’s nice to have some responsibility,”
Schwinof said, adding Fayyaz’s classes have
rekindled a childhood interest of being a first
responder.
Clouse said Fayyaz’s course was an easy
fit, covering many of the same topics he did,
such as first aid, while going more in-depth on
See LESSON, Page 4A
‘It’s prioritizing how to save the most lives, the greatest
number of people, in the shortest amount of time.’
Bijan Fayyaz
Clatsop County emergency management coordinator
Trump Bump
Environmental
groups cash in
on uncertainty
over president
By JOHN O’CONNELL
EO Media Group
The money began rolling
in to the environmental groups
immediately after Donald
Trump won the presidential
election last November.
Though they wouldn’t
divulge specific amounts,
environmental activists say
building their war chests has
MORE INSIDE
‘Right to farm’ a target in
Oregon on Page 3A
Trump advances Keystone,
Dakota pipelines on Page 3A
never been so easy, as a grow-
ing support base looks to them
to take on Trump and his Cab-
inet picks they say are linked
to “extractive” industries.
Pictures of oil pipelines
and industrial smokestacks
spewing dark clouds accom-
pany social media warn-
ings alleging that the new
Republican president and
See BUMP, Page 4A
Charles Krupa/Associated Press
Environmental groups say they’ve experi-
enced a sharp increase in contributions since
Donald Trump was elected president.
Ted Shorack/The Daily Astorian
Douglas fir logs harvested near Jewell
are brought up to a landing in the Clat-
sop State Forest. The Jewell School
District will stay in a $1.4 billion lawsuit
against the state over timber harvests.
Jewell
stays in
timber suit
School board decides
to take no action
By EDWARD STRATTON
The Daily Astorian
JEWELL — The Jewell School District,
one of two timber-funded school districts in
the state, will stay in a $1.4 billion lawsuit
over timber harvests.
Without explanation, the school board
decided on Monday to take no action regard-
ing the Linn County lawsuit, by default stay-
ing involved.
Asked after the meeting about the inac-
tion, Brian Meier, the school board chair-
man, said the board avoids taking political
stances.
The breach of contract lawsuit claims the
state has failed to maximize timber reve-
nue on forestland deeded by 15 counties and
about 130 taxing districts statewide.
Clatsop County, which contains the larg-
est share of forestland targeted in the law-
suit, voted to opt out, but many individual
taxing districts in the county have to make
their own decisions.
The Port of Astoria Commission voted
last week to stay in the lawsuit. The Clatsop
Community College Board decides tonight.
Superintendent Sheila Roley said the Sea-
side School District plans to take no action
before the Jan. 25 deadline, which means the
district will remain a plaintiff.