OPINION
6A
THE DAILY ASTORIAN • MONDAY, NOVEMBER 20, 2017
Founded in 1873
HEIDI WRIGHT, Interim Publisher
JIM VAN NOSTRAND, Editor
JEREMY FELDMAN, Circulation Manager
DEBRA BLOOM, Business Manager
JOHN D. BRUIJN, Production Manager
CARL EARL, Systems Manager
OUR VIEW
SOUTHERN EXPOSURE
THE GALE OF 2007
AP Photo/Martin Meissner
A replica of the Statue of Liberty by Danish artist Jens Galschiot
emits smoke in a park outside the 23rd UN Conference of the Par-
ties (COP) climate talks in Bonn, Germany.
Building an
economy that takes
on climate change
o understand why Gov. Kate Brown traveled to this month’s
United Nations climate change conference in Germany,
look back to a meeting of West Coast governors in June.
Brown, Washington Gov. Jay Inslee and California Gov. Jerry
Brown gathered in Sacramento with Fiji’s prime minister, Frank
Bainimarama.
Oregon’s governor returned home from that meeting energized.
Bainimarama had told the governors how their states’ efforts to
combat global warming gave hope to the Fijian people.
Climate change is real in Fiji, which is why Bainimarama was
heartened by the environmental efforts of individual states even
though the U.S. officially has backed away from the Paris cli-
mate accords. The sea level around Bainimarama’s island nation
is rising .2 inch each year, forcing villages to relocate, inundat-
ing ancestral burial grounds and increasing the salinity of water for
agriculture.
Bainimarama is president of this year’s climate change confer-
ence in Bonn, called COP 23, which ended Friday.
Despite the skepticism of the
Trump administration, a U.S.
Oregon
government report released this
month says that global warm-
officials
ing trends will continue, it is
echo that
“extremely likely” that human
assessment,
activities are the dominant cause,
and the resulting tidal flooding
saying the
already has affected dozens of
Pacific
U.S. cities.
Oregon officials echo that
Ocean along
assessment, saying the Pacific
the state’s
Ocean along the state’s 363-mile
363-mile
coastline will rise one to four feet
by 2100. The federal report also
coastline will
links climate change to this sum-
rise one to
mer’s devastating wildfires in the
West.
four feet by
The three West Coast gov-
2100.
ernors spoke at COP 23. Jerry
Brown said most people have
other things on their minds, so it’s critical to help them under-
stand the urgency of confronting global warming. Inslee character-
ized the West Coast as a blueprint for “how you build a thriving,
innovative economy that combats climate change and embraces a
zero-emission future.”
Continuing that theme, Kate Brown said that a small state
such as Oregon can have a global impact by being a petri dish for
innovation.
We hope that she returned from COP 23 energized to confront
climate change in concrete ways that help the state’s economy —
especially in rural Oregon — as well as the environment.
T
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By R.J. MARX
The Daily Astorian
M
y natural disaster moment
was in 1999 when
Hurricane Floyd rode
up the Northeast
coast. It came in
on a Wednesday
afternoon — our
newspaper’s dead-
line was Thursday
— and dumped 19
inches of rain on
our small town in New York.
As the rain was bucketing down,
our office, on a hill, overlooked a
stone-and-masonry lot. The street
— turned into a fast-flowing basin —
was already too deep for a concrete
truck to get through. The police
scanner — we still had power then
— scratched out stories of stranded
motorists, downed wires and closed
roads. I ended up spending the night
in the office, sleeping on the floor,
using a cardboard box as a pillow.
And yes, the paper did make its
deadline.
Nancy McCarthy’s moment came
10 years ago. McCarthy, my prede-
cessor as editor at the Gazette and
now a city councilor, had moved to
Cannon Beach full-time earlier that
year. December 2007 was her first
winter.
“I told myself if I could survive
the first winter in Cannon Beach, I’d
continue to live here. So, the ‘Great
Coastal Gale’ became my test,” she
told me this week.
“The ‘Great Coastal Gale’ was a
euphemism for the hurricane we actu-
ally had,” McCarthy recalled.
The wind reached 120 mph in
some areas of the North Coast.
“We didn’t have power for about
six days,” McCarthy said. “I remem-
ber hearing that 72 transformers had
collapsed all up and down the coast.”
Thousands of trees fell along the
highway.
The wind and rainstorm blew into
town for three days, from Dec. 2 to
Dec. 4.
McCarthy recalled that there was
no means of communication with the
outside world for several days, until
a ham radio operator from Seaside
could get to Cannon Beach.
“City officials thought they could
use their satellite radio, but that
didn’t work, and the cell towers were
down, and, of course, the landlines
weren’t available,” she said. “The
city couldn’t even communicate with
county officials for a few days. That
lack of ability to communicate came
as quite a surprise to city officials.”
‘Worst storm’
“It’s the worst storm we have on
recent record that has hit our service
area on the North Coast in terms of
duration and distance,” Mark Samp-
son of Pacific Power said in the
Gazette at the time.
More than 470 crews from all
over Oregon and from as far away as
Walla Walla, Washington, and Utah,
worked to restore power from Tilla-
mook to Astoria. Winds in Cannon
Beach “only” reached 80 mph, sig-
nificantly lower than the top gusts of
147 at Radar Ridge, west of Naselle,
Washington.
What caused the most damage to
trees, power poles and buildings were
the sustained winds that started Sun-
day and didn’t end until Tuesday.
When a roof truss came crashing
through the roof of the home of the
family of Craig Shepherd — hanging
perilously over 18-year-old Ian Shep-
herd — firefighters braved the high
winds to clear debris.
Peter Shepherd, 16, and Julia, 13,
scrambled down the home’s narrow
High waters ran through Cannon Beach streets in 2007.
The Shepherd home was
slammed by winds in 2007, trap-
ping family members.
staircase, filled with so much debris
they had to jump from the stairs to the
living room. They waited in a back
hall under a door frame as the wind
blew out windows throughout the
house.
To get to the scene, firefighters
had to cut through and remove three
trees from Elkwood Mountain Road,
where the Shepherds lived. Nearby
trees snapped constantly while crews
sawed through huge logs. “I felt like a
sitting duck,” firefighter Matt Gardner
said at the time.
After the winds settled and clear-
ing of debris, McCarthy wrote on the
editorial page. “Through the darkness,
all of the stars shine here in Cannon
Beach.”
More than
470 crews
from all over
Oregon and
from as far
away as
Walla Walla,
Washington,
and Utah,
worked to
restore power.
She recounted example after
example of human kindness.
Mariner Market stayed open and
served coffee to drop-ins, while local
restaurants provided free coffee and
meals, she wrote at the time. The
restaurants operated by Martin Hos-
pitality — Wayfarer, Lumberyard,
Stephanie Inn and Surfsand Resorts
— brought meals to the Commu-
nity Church. Bob Neroni and Lenore
Emory of EVOO cooked a meal for
volunteer firefighters as they made
countless emergency runs.
Rose Mays and Cathy Willyard
knocked on doors at Elk Creek Ter-
race to let residents there know about
the community shelter at the church.
In Tolovana Park, Bradley Linstedt
joined with others to cut away trees
blocking roads.
Restaurants and stores with perish-
Headlines from the Gazette after
the “Great Coastal Gale of 2007.”
able food were giving it away, McCa-
rthy recalled. The owners of the Drift-
wood barbecued on the Driftwood
deck. Everybody checked in with
their neighbors. People brought meals
to the church.
Human stories
Like the valor and bravery we wit-
nessed time and again at Hurricane
Katrina, fighting wildfires, and this
year’s series of natural disasters, it is
these human stories we remember.
“I remember a neighbor of mine
came over with a bottle of wine to see
how I was,” McCarthy said. “We sat
at my kitchen table in the dark, with
only our headlamps on, drinking wine
and talking into the night.”
The “Great Coastal Gale” had
several lasting effects, but the major
result was the wake-up call it sent to
the cities and counties on the North
Coast.
“It reminded us that the tsunami
isn’t the only emergency we should
prepare for,” McCarthy said. “In Can-
non Beach, there was a huge push to
create more preparedness commit-
tees, organize and train shelter volun-
teers, hire an emergency consultant,
develop emergency plans and work
with other cities and especially the
county.”
In New York, in 1999, I remem-
ber similar scenes, including the dra-
matic rescue of a father and son from
a basement filling with water while
power lines remained live. The risks
were as great for first responders as
for those in the rapidly submerging
waters.
The next night, as damage and
debris was surfacing, I remember one
particularly poignant moment. The
rain was pouring and a house had vir-
tually been washed away. But home-
owner Larry Farrell was getting into
his car, holding a trombone case. He
might not have known how he was
going to make it, but he was sched-
uled to play in the pit orchestra for a
Broadway musical.
“I’d love to talk,” he said to a
reporter. “But I’ve got a show to do.”
R.J. Marx is The Daily Astorian’s
South County reporter and editor of
the Seaside Signal and Cannon Beach
Gazette. The Daily Astorian is pre-
paring a 10-year anniversary special
edition commemorating the storm of
2007. Please share your memories of
the 2007 storm with us.