GREAT COASTAL GALE OF 2007
Page 10 // December 2017
DailyAstorian.com
‘You’ve just got to hunker down
and fight your way through it’
2007 storm tested
Seaside’s public
works employees
By R.J. MARX
Seaside Signal
N
eal Wallace was the public works
director for Seaside in 2007,
and it fell to he and his team to
respond to the cleanup left in the after-
math of the Great Coastal Gale.
“I feel like we are always prepared for
something,” Wallace said. “It’s part of
what we do.”
It was Sunday eve-
ning, Dec. 2, 2007,
and “it was blowing up
pretty good outside.” A
light sleeper, at 6 a.m.
there was a knock on the
door.
Neal Wallace
It wasn’t until he saw
a big billboard tossed
onto the highway that he realized the
scale of the storm.
“We get big winds, but those winds
just kept up,” he said. “It was howling for
24 hours.”
Among his first actions was to gather
crews and help respond to public safety
concerns.
Despite three days of high winds, Wal-
lace and crew battled the outdoor ele-
ments. “Monday they were really bad,”
he said. “You just do. It’s just one of those
things. You’ve just got to hunker down
and fight your way through it.”
The com-
munity pulled
STORM FACTS:
together
to
Daytime temperatures
help each other
were fairly comfortable
out, from indi-
in the mid-50s.
vidual
resi-
dents to the fire
department and
Pacific Power, which brought crews from
throughout the West.
The Bob Chisholm Community Center
turned into a shelter for hundreds of resi-
dents, under the direction of Mary Blake,
then executive director of the Sunset
PAM ROBEL
Pacific Northwest Natural Foods and
adjoining shops in Gearhart suffered
from roof and water damage.
A business sustained damage in high winds.
PAM ROBEL
North Coast residents gather at the Bob Chisholm Senior and Community Center in
Seaside for warm food, kids games and movies during the storm.
Empire Park and Recreation Department.
While the building didn’t have a
backup power source at the time, Wallace
and his crew helped hook up a 60-kilowatt
generator so they could run the kitchen
and run lights.
The emergency operations center,
using walkie-talkies, allowed the city to
coordinate cleanup operations.
“Down at the south ‘Y,’ off on the east
side of the highway, was a big empty lot
that had been graded off,” Wallace said.
“We got permission to bring debris there,
which was very handy.”
A hauling crew brought grinders in and
hauled the material away. Western Ore-
gon Waste added to the recycling effort.
Wallace sees the city’s 2007 response
as indicative of what might happen when
future disasters strike.
“Wherever there is a problem, people
figure out a solution,” Wallace said.
While storms will always hit, moving
power lines underground makes a big dif-
ference, he said. The city is working on
that now — all new development requires
underground power, and busier areas are
targeted — access areas, the beach, Ave-
nue A, 12th Avenue and Holladay Drive.
“Hopefully they’ll do that on South Holl-
aday Drive,” he added.
Unfortunately, for many streets, if
wires are already overhead, “it gets wick-
edly expensive,” he said.
Any special commendations during
the storm?
“I think everybody overall,” Wallace
said. “I think it is hard to single out peo-
ple, because so many people just did what
they could to make it happen in so many
different areas.
“Whether it is a storm or you’ve got a
main break, that’s when the public works
guys kind of shine,” he continued. “When
they respond to fix some things, that’s
when they look the best.”
South County had its own problems
By PAMELA ROBEL
For The Daily Astorian
W
hen the weather report
came in, I decided the eas-
iest thing to get for myself
in the event that I was out of power for
a little while would be easy “cheese”
— you know, the stuff that comes in
a can and doesn’t have to be refriger-
ated — and a loaf of bread for cheese
sandwiches.
I bought my first camping lantern,
brought my sleeping bag in from my
car, plugged in my laptop, and taped
my windows because I’d never been
in a storm like was predicted.
I remember the lights flickering
out, and the wind making my apart-
ment sway enough that I felt seasick.
Waking up in the morning and head-
ing to the Seaside Signal office, the
first thing I remember seeing that sug-
gested it was a doozy of a storm was
the huge pine in front of the office
uprooted in the parking lot.
As more light came, more dam-
age showed. Stops at city hall, the
police and fire departments confirmed
there was no power and that an emer-
gency shelter was being set up. From
there on out, the shelter was my first
stop every morning. The radio was
the other vital part of the information
train. Everywhere I went had a radio
on so that updates could be heard
quickly; the hum of the radios became
an almost constant background noise.
What struck me most was the sense
of community throughout the whole
immediate aftermath and the longer
cleanup. Having moved to Seaside
to work, getting through the storm
with everyone else made me a local,
not a tourist. Maybe because we all
went through things together, maybe
because when I wasn’t working I went
to the shelter to help make meals.
Coverage and reporting was tricky.
You couldn’t make phone calls or send
emails. As I remember it, U.S. High-
way 101 was closed for a few days, so
I was standing on the beach sending
my reports to The Daily Astorian via
text message, taking my own humble
photos, and doing a lot of literal foot-
work for every story before returning
to my dark, cold apartment to wash
my hair in cold water in my bathroom
sink and snuggle into my sleeping bag
at curfew each night.
On day three or four, when 101
was reopened, I drove my story notes
to the Astoria office, typing on the
shared computer and grateful for the
warmth of the office. Whether it was
a story about chopping tree debris or
flipping pancakes, every story seemed
critically important through that time.
When the power came back on in
Astoria, I’d never been more thank-
ful for the offer to stay in a hotel. I’ll
always be thankful for the paper put-
ting me up for two nights. Having
access to heat and hot water felt unbe-
lievably luxurious after a week in the
dark and cold!
Pamela Robel is a writer based
in Moses Lake, Washington. She was
The Daily Astorian’s Seaside-based
South County reporter in 2007.
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