GREAT COASTAL GALE OF 2007
Page 4 // December 2017
DailyAstorian.com
Cutting through a problem
Downed trees halted
emergency response,
aid during 2007 gale
By JACK HEFFERNAN
The Daily Astorian
he Clatsop County Sheriff’s
Office holds an unofficial title
amongst emergency officials as
the county’s search and rescue
team during a county-wide emergency.
But obstacles on the roads during the
Great Coastal Gale of 2007 often left dep-
uties stumped.
Most rescues involved elderly peo-
ple in rural areas. They even received
requests to deliver fuel for generators
and other supplies.
But as deputies drove out to these
areas, thousands of downed trees and
damaged roads greeted them. Some even
carried chainsaws to clear roads as they
responded to calls.
A state law passed in 1971 mandated
that trees must not be logged within 100
feet of a highway. These forested buffer
T
DAMIAN MULINIX
A tree hangs suspended over Highway 103 on a power line in Ocean Park.
zones created canopies over highways.
Because trees were logged behind
them, the open air made the remaining
shrub vulnerable to wind. Even before
the storm, trees and large limbs would
fall on the highway — taking out power
lines and inhibiting road access. The
shade from the trees also lengthened the
process of snow melt, a factor at high
altitudes during the gale.
“It really made me think about, ‘How
can we have all these trees encroaching
upon the road so much? It’s killing us,’”
said Clatsop County Sheriff Tom Ber-
gin. “That storm really was the catalyst
to getting these trees cleared off the road-
way and getting them moved back.”
In the years following the storm,
Bergin worked with State Sen. Betsy
Johnson, D-Scappoose, and Rep. Deb-
orah Boone, D-Cannon Beach, to pass
legislation allowing for hazardous trees
to be cleared from state highways.
The state legislature passed a bill in
2012 allowing the tree removal, even if
they are located in the buffer zones. After
pushback from groups hoping to con-
serve the trees, Bergin accomplished a
goal rooted in the gale.
“These trees, they’re beautiful,” Ber-
gin said. “We all want trees, but they
have to be backed off the road so when
we have these huge major events, we
don’t lose the power and we don’t lose
people.”
Many potentially dangerous trees
have been removed since then, and many
more will be cut in years to come.
“It took 30, 40 years to get here, so
it’s going to take us a few years to get it
cleaned back out,” Bergin said.
Ham radio a vital link during storm
Gear is relatively
cheap, easy to
operate, portable
By NATALIE ST. JOHN
and JACK HEFFERNAN
Chinook Observer & The Daily Astorian
T
hey just don’t make technology
like they used to.
When the fierce 2007 storm
knocked out phone, internet,
power and cable lines on both sides of
the Columbia River, fans of a largely
forgotten, century-old innovation came
to the rescue — amateur, or ham, radio
operators.
“There was a period of time when ham
was basically it,” Pacific County Com-
missioner Frank Wolfe recalled.
Wolfe is one of the roughly 100
“hams” in Pacific County. In the after-
math of the storm, he and his fellow ama-
teur radio operators helped county offi-
cials get in touch with Camp Murray, the
center of Washington state’s emergency
operations. They also helped dozens of
locals.
“We would dispatch someone to
go down and find Aunt Sally,” Wolfe
explained.
In one case, their coordination with
emergency responders may have saved
the life of a man who lost consciousness
when his oxygen
concentrator ran
out of power.
STORM FACTS:
The
opera-
Wild combination
tors also provided
of continuous
on-the-ground
wind and tropical
information about
rain was fueled by
weather and road
remnants of
conditions to the staff
Typhoon Mitag
in Pacific County’s
and Typhoon
Emergency Operations
Hagibis.
Center in South Bend.
In Oregon, too, doz-
ens of radio operators facilitated commu-
nications between dispatchers and emer-
gency responders. Their services were so
vital that when Clatsop County commis-
sioners signed a disaster declaration, they
Come Visit The
PORT OF ILWACO
ALEX PAJUNAS
A Ford Explorer is trapped by downed telephone poles and power lines looking east
on Olney Avenue.
Frank Van
Winkle, left, Don
Hillgertner and
Charles “Buddy”
Hoell field
emergency calls
at the Clatsop
County Sheriff’s
Office.
used amateur radio to send it to Gov. Ted
Kulongoski.
“It was really the first time that I under-
stood why they were a value to the extent
that they were,” said Tiffany Brown, Clat-
sop County’s emergency manager. “They
really saved the day in those few days
before we got communications back up
and running.”
A decade later, people are even more
dependent on cellphones and the internet,
and that means they may be in for some
unpleasant surprises when the weather
goes wild, Wolfe said. That’s when ham
radio really shines. Unlike a lot of more
modern communication tools, it doesn’t
rely on fiber-optic cables, electrical con-
nections or other things that are likely
to fail in a storm. The gear is relatively
cheap, easy to operate and portable. The
radios can be powered with solar panels
or batteries, and they can be used to com-
municate with people all over the world.
That’s why Wolfe has spent 20 years
training local operators and expanding the
county’s ham infrastructure, largely at his
own expense.
When he first got interested in helping
the county with disaster preparedness in
1980, officials were worried about a dif-
ferent kind of disaster.
“The big thing back then was Mount
St. Helens,” Wolfe said. “The debris from
the volcano had blocked the Toutle River
and basically built a dam made out of tal-
cum powder.”
While workers raced to stabilize the
Toutle, emergency managers feared the
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dam would collapse, sending a 30-foot-
deep mud flow through Cowlitz County,
and potentially setting off a domino effect
that would cause flooding all the way to
the coast.
Local leaders realized that if the
Toutle dam collapsed, siren systems in
Longview and Kelso might spur huge
numbers of people to head for the coast,
Wolfe said. That got local leaders think-
ing seriously about how they would feed,
shelter and care for people during a large-
scale disaster.
The 2007 storm inspired leaders on
both sides of the river to take another hard
look at their disaster-response plans. As
a result, Brown, and her Pacific County
counterpart, Stephanie Fritts, both devel-
oped stronger ties with the amateur radio
community. Radio operators have set up
equipment at county-owned facilities on
both sides of the river. In Clatsop County,
about 500 people earned their amateur
radio licenses.
Enthusiasts continue to work on cre-
ating more radio sites, and strength-
ening the signal. Wolfe has personally
improved the local radio system by buy-
ing and installing repeaters — the devices
that help transmit strong radio signals
across larger distances. A decade ago,
much of the region had a ham signal, but
coverage was spotty, especially in hilly
or mountainous areas. Now, due to the
roughly 20 repeaters Wolfe has installed
at his own expense, Pacific County’s sig-
nal extends all the way to Camp Murray
in Tacoma. That ensures that local emer-
gency responders will always have a way
to get in touch with their state-level coun-
terparts on the National Guard base.
“I think windstorms are good for us
because they test our planning,” Wolfe
said. “It’s just enough of a disaster to get
people’s attention.”
He hopes these events will show a
new generation of potential amateur radio
enthusiasts that while ham might seem
antiquated, it’s still very relevant when
everything else goes haywire.
“Our people are already deployed.
They live there,” Wolfe said. “They’re
already equipped. It’s their own equip-
ment that they bought, so they know how
to use it. And they’re already trained.”
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