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THE DAILY ASTORIAN • THURSDAY, OCTOBER 5, 2017
Underground: ‘It’s going to be millions of dollars’
Continued from Page 1A
Underground
If you could slice a street
in half and view the bones of
a chairwall, the name would
immediately become clear .
In a cross-section view, the
structure looks like a chair
that begins directly below
sidewalk curbs. Sand fi lls the
empty space between oppos-
ing chairwalls.
For each chairwall sec-
tion, a wall drops down under-
ground — the back of the
chair. Another section extends
out. This is the seat of the
chair. Then another wall drops
from the end of this seat. The
legs of the chair.
Climb into the tunnels with
Public Works Superinten-
dent Ken Nelson and he will
emphasize the danger. These
are small, enclosed spaces .
The air could turn dangerous
quickly. At any time, anyone
could fl ush anything into the
sewer system. If the ground
started to shake, it’s the last
place he would want to be.
When he goes underground, he
keeps a small gas detector on
hand and is in constant com-
munication with another Pub-
lic Works employee outside.
On a recent afternoon, Nel-
son took Astoria city coun-
cilors Cindy Price and Bruce
Jones down into a section
of tunnel near City Hall,
between two chairwall seg-
ments. Gravel crunched under-
Colin Murphey/The Daily Astorian
Public Works Superintendent Ken Nelson, second from left, leads a tour for city officials
of a short tunnel system under the streets of Astoria on Monday.
foot as they ducked under a
low, looping wire. Their hard
hats knocked gently against
the top of the tunnel. Their
fl ashlights illuminated a crum-
pled can of organic grape soda.
At a work session last
month, councilors learned
that the city is in the middle of
talks with the Oregon Depart-
ment of Transportation for reg-
ular inspection services that
will eventually inform a strat-
egy for shared responsibility of
chairwall maintenance.
Public Works staff hope the
structures will be included on
the National Bridge Inventory ,
which could make them eligi-
ble for outside funding sources
— an important point since the
cost of repairing and, inevita-
bly, replacing the chairwalls
will be well beyond what the
city can afford.
“(There’s) not even a ball-
park,” City Engineer Jeff
Harrington said of the costs
of future replacement work.
“It’s going to be millions of
dollars.”
Historic legacy
Before the chairwalls and
tunnels were built, the streets
and buildings downtown were
raised above a tidal fl at and the
tides by wooden beams and
driven timber pilings. Most of
the buildings were timber as
well.
On Dec. 7, 1922, a massive
fi re swept through the city.
Thanks to Astoria’s wooden
underbelly, the fi re was able
to spread quickly, almost out
of sight until it soared into
the buildings above. Build-
ings were blown up with dyna-
mite in an attempt to check the
fl ames .
“This is not Seattle,” said
local historian and preserva-
tionist John Goodenberger,
referencing that city’s famous
underground network of pas-
sageways and basements that
contain storefronts and side-
walks, remnants from when
Seattle rebuilt after its own
disastrous fi re in 1889.
“Yes, we did raise the
downtown, but it’s not like
you’re going and seeing for-
mer storefronts and rooms,”
Goodenberger said. “You’re
seeing a structural system.”
Homeless people have
since used these tunnels as
hideouts and bedrooms. Even
further back, the daughter of
A.G. Spexarth, a prominent
Astoria businessman in the
late 1800s and early 1900s,
remembered a trip she took
with her father through the
underground. Spexarth dipped
under the sidewalk to adjust a
client’s sewing machine, she
wrote. Father and daughter
walked past cramped, under-
ground rooms where Chinese
families lived. The stale air
smelled of incense, dried fi sh
and sewage.
Woven in with other myths
about the tunnels — giant spi-
ders, giant rats, a forbidden and
hidden shadow city — is the
belief that people used them
to shanghai sailors. Though
shanghaiing was certainly an
Astoria legacy, local histori ans
say there is no reason to think
the tunnels were ever used for
this purpose.
Today, the city’s under-
ground mostly consists of nar-
row, confi ned areas, pipelines,
spiderwebs and litter. There’s
some rude graffi ti, a quick
sprawl of words etched in
quick sweeps of a spray paint
can. Entrances are sealed off
behind fences, gates and walls.
Goodenberger says it’s
helpful to think about the era
when the chairwalls and tun-
nels were built.
“After the fi re, people were,
rightly, afraid of another fi re,”
he said.
The structures, built amid
setbacks and squabbles,
allowed pipelines to be stowed
safely underground in a sort
of vault and established a new
foundation.
“All these ethnic groups
were colliding,” Gooden-
berger said. “And we had to
come together and rebuild
downtown under the greatest
of odds.”
Audit: New data system will centralize investigations of abuse, neglect
Continued from Page 1A
case manager performance
than on the welfare of people
receiving services, auditors
said.
“There is no aspect of the
quality assurance process
or consumer monitoring or
assessment reports that looks at
consumers’ well-being,” audi-
tors wrote.
Auditors also recom-
mended that the state’s Home
Care Commission work with
the union representing home-
care workers — the Service
Employees International Union
— to establish basic training
requirements.
Home-care workers are
given an orientation, and the
commission offers voluntary
training, but home-care work-
ers are not required to undergo
any formal training.
And auditors found that
case managers had “exces-
sive” workloads that include
duties that some other states
don’t have their case manag-
ers handle. For example, some
case managers are required to
do time-consuming annual ver-
ifi cations of whether patients
qualify for the CEP program
and other government benefi ts
like food stamps.
The Department of Human
Services says it is starting to
reassign eligibility determina-
tion to other staff as part of a
pilot program to redesign case
manager duties.
Auditors also noted that in
recent years, the agency has
not fi lled all of the case man-
ager positions funded by the
Legislature.
Department of Human Ser-
vices Director Fariborz Pak-
seresht wrote in a response to
auditors that the agency was
working to improve training for
case managers, comply with
federal requirements regarding
contact between case manag-
ers and clients, and enhance the
agency’s data collection and
analysis.
The Aging and People with
Disabilities division of the
department is also implement-
ing a new data system to cen-
tralize investigations of abuse
and neglect. It is expected to
get fully under way in January.
The f ederal Older Amer-
icans A ct requires the state
to investigate complaints at
licensed care facilities through
its long-term care ombudsman,
but Oregon law doesn’t include
in-home care complaints within
the duties of the ombudsman.
The Legislature would have
to change the law and provide
funding for the ombudsman to
serve in-home care patients,
auditors said.
The Capital Bureau is a col-
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Group and Pamplin Media
Group.
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