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THE DAILY ASTORIAN • MONDAY, MAY 8, 2017
Higher Level: ‘This is a case of reckless assault’
Continued from Page 1A
Employment Act. Magley’s
attorney claims West and Oei
were making and “dabbing”
butane hash oil, which touched
off the explosion.
Oei and West, via video
teleconference from the Clat-
sop County Jail, were each
charged with one count of sec-
ond-degree assault, a Class B
felony worth up to 10 years in
prison, a fine of up to $250,000
or both. Second-degree assault
carries a mandatory minimum
of at least 70 months imprison-
ment under the state’s Measure
11 law for major crimes.
The pair were also charged
with one count of third-degree
assault, a Class C felony worth
up to five years in prison, a fine
of up to $125,000 or both; and
four counts of recklessly endan-
gering another person, Class A
misdemeanors each worth up
to one year in jail, a fine of up
to $6,250 or both. The reckless
endangering charges, accord-
ing to Marquis, relate to the
risk that fire and other emer-
gency personnel were exposed
to when they responded to the
explosion.
“This is not a drug case,”
Marquis said during the
arraignment. “This is a case of
reckless assault.”
West and Oei’s attorney,
Macon Benoit, requested con-
ditional release. Marquis said
the two men were arrested Fri-
day morning and posed flight
risks because of the nature of
their business. He requested
$250,000 bail.
Oei said he still lives in
Astoria and works part time
canning at Buoy Beer Co.
“Our company’s not running
any more,” Oei said of Higher
Level Concentrates. “The
building has been condemned.”
Circuit Court Judge Steven
Reed denied the release request
and set West and Oei’s bail
at $250,000 apiece. The two
men are scheduled for an early
resolution conference later
this month.
Marquis, in a statement,
said Higher Level Concentrates
was authorized by the Oregon
Health Authority without an
inspection. The district attorney
said he believes his indictment
is the first state prosecution of a
licensed butane hash oil facility
involved in an explosion.
The state Occupational
Safety and Health Adminis-
tration has fined Higher Level
Concentrates $5,300 for work-
place safety violations.
Magley is also suing Sweet
Relief, a marijuana store, for
premises liability; property
owner Delphia and several of
his companies for premises lia-
bility and violations of employ-
ment law; and two companies
owned by local cigarette and
marijuana store financier John
Harper for employer liability
law, products liability and gen-
eral negligence.
Delphia is attempting to
have the civil case moved from
Multnomah to Clatsop County.
Warrenton: Both
men plan to run for
re-election if picked
to serve as mayor
Continued from Page 1A
Ptarmigan Ptrails
Ed Kessler, principal owner of Ptarmigan Ptrails, the company hired by Oregon State Parks to scout new hiking trail
routes around the slide area at Ecola State Park, stands on an enormous spruce tree that succumbed to the slide.
Landslides: ‘It looks like a bomb went off’
Continued from Page 1A
“Anything that we do
there,” said Park Manager Ben
Cox, “well, nothing that we
do there is going to hold back
Mother Nature.”
Long-term solutions
The 1975 master plan pro-
posed changing road access to
the park, noting the existing
Ecola Park Road’s sharp turns,
steep grades, narrow width
and vulnerability to landslide
damage.
Planners at the time pro-
posed two different access
routes: One that used the cur-
rent road but branched off to
intersect with an undeveloped
access road, Radar Road, that
enters the park from its east-
ern end near Tillamook Head.
The other option abandoned
the original road and suggested
direct access from U.S. High-
way 101 via Radar Road.
“Both access alterna-
tives would require acquisi-
tion of private property,” the
plan noted. Today, planners
would also have to consider
the dozens of homes that clus-
ter in the hills below the park’s
boundaries.
Park management has yet to
outline a plan or come up with
a new suite of possible solu-
tions but they say any long-
term proposals would require
extensive scoping, meetings
and conversations.
The park is looking at the
areas where the land is, and
historically has been, stable.
“Maybe these are areas
where we’d like to relocate or
plan a road,” said Cliff Serres,
manager of the parks depart-
ment’s engineering section.
“We’re exploring options
that include an alternate route
into the park,” Cox said.
Residents farther down
Ecola Park Road are con-
cerned about the road’s integ-
rity as its condition worsened
since last year. Alternative
routes are virtually nonex-
istent, or require four-wheel
drive. One resident, Les Wier-
son, recently presented a peti-
tion to the City Council, urg-
ing councilors to take a more
active role in maintaining the
stretch of road between city
limits and the park’s entrance.
Meanwhile, Ecola State
Park reopened after contrac-
tors tore out cracked and slid-
ing asphalt along a portion of
the road near the pay booth
and replaced it with gravel.
Later this year, contractors
plan to replace a culvert under
a section of road right before
the Indian Beach parking lot.
Rangers are preparing for
summer crowds — an esti-
mated 313,808 people visit the
park each year — and the sea-
Colin Murphey/The Daily Astorian
Parts of Ecola State Park were closed to vehicle traffic
last week as crews worked to repair damage to roads and
trails caused by landslides.
sonal increase in vehicle traf-
fic, cars that will idle in long
lines on the newly graveled
road, bottlenecking at the pay
booth.
The recent repairs should
get them through the summer.
“We’re crossing our fin-
gers,” Cox said.
Historic problems
Park rangers find them-
selves saying variations of
“Hopefully this will get us
through the summer” and
“Hopefully this will get us
through the winter” often. And
for a while there it felt like
they were constantly, jokingly,
asking each other, “What’s the
disaster of the day?”
After all, portions of this
popular park have been slid-
ing into the ocean for as long
as anyone can remember.
“Nothing’s new here under
the sun,” said Serres. “These
are the same issues we’ve been
dealing with at the park since
we became stewards of the
park.”
A viewpoint that once
wrapped around the side of a
cliff at Ecola Point crumbled
into the ocean several years
ago. Every few years, park
managers have to make repairs
to Ecola Park Road as well as
the road that dips off toward
Indian Beach.
In 1961, a landslide at
Ecola Point damaged 125
acres of the 1,023-acre park.
“I’d go up and visit it peri-
odically,” said Wierson. “You
could stand where the pay
booth is now and you couldn’t
see (the slide) move, but you
could hear the trees snap.”
The scars of this massive
movement of earth and trees
and undergrowth were visible
for a long time.
The 1975 plan identified
three major landslides in Ecola
State Park. Ecola Park Road
bisects one of these slides. As
recorded in 1975 and continu-
ing through today, the slide
continues to damage the road.
Slides have impacted the
park’s ability to get water and
electricity to its ranger and
visitor facilities, snapping
underground wires and pipes.
Today, power lines are strung
along poles in the slide area
right before the pay booth, and
water comes in through a flexi-
ble, above-ground pipeline.
The Ecola slides are slow
moving. While they are dra-
matic in scope, they rarely
present major threats to the
health and safety of visitors.
They do, however, threaten
accessibility to the park.
Recent landslide
The most recent land-
slide that washed out the trail
between Ecola Point and
Indian Beach last year is less a
slide and more of a bulge, says
Ed Kessler with Ptarmigan
Ptrails, the company hired by
the parks department to iden-
tify new trail routes around the
slide.
Softer material is sliding
out of a half-mile-wide crown,
Kessler said, creating a bottle-
neck between bedrock. Water
that rangers can hear trick-
ling through the woods has no
obvious above-ground source,
until they see it shooting out
from underneath the landslide
debris.
“There’s pressure from
trapped groundwater and
there’s pressure from the loos-
ened soil material,” Kessler
said. Up above the landslide,
there’s a pond of trapped water
that stretches for almost an
acre.
The slide area is shaped
a bit like the letter “U,” “like
the cirque or bowl of an alpine
mountain,” Kessler said. The
arms of the “U” are the cliffs
on either side, relatively solid
points marching down toward
the ocean. The curved base
of the “U” is the ridgeline, a
sort of crown of higher, solid
ground that arcs between Ecola
Point’s parking lot and Indian
Beach. The trees that grow up
there are older and taller than
those below; they have with-
stood numerous slides over
the decades. The empty space
between the arms and the base
of the “U” is where the ground
has thundered away, sliding
and bulging into the ocean.
Deep fissures opened up in
these hillsides, 20 feet deep in
some places and 10 to 15 feet
wide.
Farther down, where the
trail used to be, is a river of
brown mud and clay. The slide
uprooted trees, sent some slid-
ing down toward the water
and slammed into others near
the cliff edge, causing them
to slant backward toward the
ridge. It rolled undergrowth
into muddy tangles and washed
a small bridge dozens of feet
down from its original place-
ment on a trail segment that no
longer exists. There’s an ocean
view that wasn’t there before.
the mayoral position and start
moving forward to fill the
vacant (commission) seat.”
Until either Newton or
Balensifer’s seat is officially
vacated, the commission
cannot appoint a new com-
missioner to bring the total
number back up to five.
There is a possibility of
a tie if the two candidates
vote for themselves and the
remaining two commission-
ers, Pam Ackley and Tom
Dyer, each vote for a differ-
ent candidate. If the result is
a 2-2 split, a commissioner
could make a motion and
change his or her “no” vote
at the next meeting, accord-
ing to Warrenton City Man-
ager Linda Engbretson. If
the commissioners remain
divided, Balensifer will serve
as acting mayor for the rest of
Kujala’s term, which expires
at the end of 2018.
“It’s entirely up to them,”
Engbretson said. She added,
“They indicated they’d be
ready to make the appoint-
ment at the (Tuesday)
meeting.”
At its last meeting in
April, the City Commission
held a public hearing to allow
residents to ask Balensifer
and Newton questions and to
comment on who they think
should be mayor for the next
year and a half. Many of the
people present indicated that
they supported Balensifer.
Newton is the son of a
former Warrenton mayor,
Les Newton, but his elec-
tion to the commission in
2014 marked his first time
holding public office. He
owned NAPA Auto Parts in
Warrenton and also served
on the city’s urban renewal
committee.
Balensifer grew up in
Warrenton and was first
elected to the commission in
2012. The commission has
chosen him to serve as the
vice chairman for the com-
mission every year since,
acting as mayor if Kujala
was unavailable. He had
previously been appointed
to the Warrenton Plan-
ning Commission and has
been involved in state and
local politics since he was a
teenager.
Both men have prom-
ised to run for re-election if
selected to serve as mayor
for the remainder of Kuja-
la’s term.
The Warrenton City Com-
mission meets at 6 p.m. on
Tuesday. There will be a time
for public comment before
the commission discusses
the two items on its business
agenda: the mayoral appoint-
ment and a resolution estab-
lishing an interest rate and
penalty fee for installment
payment assessments.
Harding: ‘We are
operating from passion
first and money second’
New trail
It is the nature of this land-
scape to change, says Park
Ranger Bo Ensign.
As he looked over the slide
area at the end of April, he had
a hard time remembering what
this particular portion of the
trail had even looked like.
“Even what had been
here is different from what it
was before,” he said. Now:
“It just looks like a bomb went
off.”
Though park management
has yet to finalize a plan, they
will likely abandon this entire
middle section, opting to
bypass the slide zone entirely
and reroute up to the ridge-
line. They may decide to pro-
vide a few in-and-out trails
down to familiar viewpoints
to preserve some of the char-
acteristics of the original trail.
The reroute is expected to cost
between $20,000 and $50,000.
The route proposed by
Ptarmigan Ptrails would travel
from high point to high point
— from the surviving end of
the trail at Ecola Point, up to
the solid ridgeline above the
slide, and then back down to
meet the piece of untouched
trail that comes up from Indian
Beach. Cox and the rangers
say they are excited to show
hikers something new.
Ensign says the new trail
route takes hikers through a
different type of forest, older
stands of trees, fascinating lit-
tle pockets of habitat.
Kessler describes a rich
landscape above the slide:
Open spaces filled with mature
spruce trees, a spot where, with
your feet on one of the few
unmoving places in the park,
“you are literally up in the sky
seeing down to the ocean.”
Continued from Page 1A
an organic coffee shop into
casual French cuisine in mid-
April and is managed by
Harding, her husband and the
Becklund family.
Part of the inspiration
came from her French heri-
tage, and a lot from the build-
ing itself.
“One day I walked by this
building, and it wasn’t for
sale, but I just loved it,” she
said. “I saw the owner in the
building, and something just
told me to turn around and
ask about it. I knew it was
meant to be a restaurant”
From there, design and
details started to all fall into
place, she said.
“I love the idea of French
food because you start with
such excellent ingredients.
It’s the essence of simple
food done well,” she said.
All of the food is made
in house, including hand-
made pasta, butter and fresh-
caught fish, she said.
“The only thing we buy
are the baguettes,” she said
While the restaurant
has only been open for less
than month, Harding said
she sees keeping up with the
growing demand as the next
chapter in her vision for the
restaurant.
Candlelight and funky
French cookware aside, what
really drives the ambiance of
the place is the crew’s pas-
sion, she said.
“Running a restaurant is
long hours. Nobody does
this unless they love it,” she
said. “We are operating from
passion first and money
second.”
— Brenna Visser
Brenna Visser/The Daily Astorian
Harding Trading Co. in Cannon Beach.