7A
THE DAILY ASTORIAN • THURSDAY, JANUARY 18, 2018
Fires: Tip line is 800-452-7888
Continued from Page 1A
Fire Investigation Team, the
Clatsop County District Attor-
ney’s Office and a represen-
tative from the Oregon State
Fire Marshal’s Office have
been investigating. Officials
have not announced suspects
in the case and have declined
to specify whether they have
any leads.
Prior to this week, two
houses sustained burn marks
to the left of the front doors.
One also had damage on the
side after someone apparently
tried to use an accelerator to
light a gas meter, while the
other was burned on two sep-
arate occasions.
The most recent incidents
took place about 2:30 a.m.
Tuesday and Wednesday. The
Tuesday fire erupted inside
a detached garage outside a
home occupied by two adults
and their two young children.
Matt Pierce, 37, was alerted
by a neighbor before he hurried
outside, turned a garden hose
and fire extinguisher on the
flames and called 911. By the
time firefighters arrived, the
blaze was almost completely
contained. He and the rest of
the family were unharmed.
“I’ll never complain about
having a detached garage
again,” he said. “It’s been a
hell of a couple days.”
Because the door didn’t
work — and they were uncon-
cerned about the motorcycle
being stolen on the quiet street
— the Pierces had left the
garage open for years. Despite
that and the timing, authori-
ties told the family it’s highly
unlikely the fire was started on
purpose. It began near a bat-
tery toward the rear wall and
moved forward, and tamper-
ing with the battery to achieve
that precise result is highly
complicated.
“We are confident that that
is not related to the others,”
Astoria Fire Chief Ted Ames
said.
But several residents say
the coincidence remains
impossible to ignore.
“They were frustrated
last night,” Pierce said of the
investigators. “They had a
Jack Heffernan/The Daily Astorian
More than 75 residents attended a town meeting Wednes-
day night on the Uppertown fires.
clear pattern with the scorches
on the front of the houses, and
the vehicle fires don’t fit that
pattern. As soon as the vehi-
cles started getting destroyed,
that’s a clear escalation. They
can’t rule out arson, really,
but they couldn’t prove it was
arson either.”
While it’s hard to discon-
nect the fire from other inci-
dents in the area, Pierce said he
trusts the official judgments.
“Of course we’re all going
to jump to conclusions because
we’re not trained on this.
That’s our job,” said Pierce, a
teacher at Astoria High School
along with his wife, Rebecca.
A weary Pierce could not
rest the following night either.
He was sleeping on his couch
as two neighbors across the
street slept on hammocks in
their front yard.
“I heard a ‘woof,’ like a gas
grill lighting or a gas stove,”
Pierce said.
Yelling “fire!” as he exited
his home, he grabbed a fire
extinguisher and rushed up the
street with the two men from
across the street.
At some point during the
commotion, Erik Burgher
heard pounding at his door. He
was asleep in his home near
the corner of Harrison Avenue
and 38th Street.
“My first thought is, ‘Why
are you knocking on my
door?’” Burgher said. “I’m not
happy.”
When Burgher went out-
side, he saw flames tower-
ing above his red Ford F-150.
When the fire was extin-
guished, the engine of the
truck had melted and the cab
was scorched.
“There is no natural cause
for that one to occur. None
whatsoever,” Ames said. “If
I was a betting man, which I
don’t like to do, I would say
it was probably intentionally
set.”
A house farther west on
Harrison Avenue from the
scene had similar marks as
the two other houses. Those
burns likely were created the
same night as well, a neighbor
pointed out.
Burgher, a 49-year-old rec-
reation specialist for the state
Department of Forestry, joked
about the improbability of this
happening in Astoria, adding
he was thankful no one has
been hurt.
“It’s usually pretty quiet
at night and we’re just living
our lives,” Burgher said. “You
know, this is Astoria. Every-
body’s supposed to just be get-
ting drunk or stoned.”
Town meeting
Unnerved by the fires,
more than 75 residents gath-
ered inside Alderbrook Hall
for a town meeting Wednesday
night with city officials. Offi-
cers, some of whom will work
overtime until the string of
fires ends, guarded the neigh-
borhood during the meeting.
“This is a situation that,
believe it or not, is as scary
for me as it is for all of you,”
Ames told the crowd.
Interim Police Chief Geoff
Spalding discussed ways to
protect homes — buying items
such as smoke detectors, secu-
rity cameras, motion sensor
lights and fire extinguishers.
He also announced a tip line
— 800-452-7888 — and a
website for neighbors to con-
nect and form a neighborhood
watch — nextdoor.com.
Due to the commotion and
concern, many residents have
lost sleep. The Pierces even
brought their two young chil-
dren to a day care so they could
take naps throughout the day.
Numerous
residents
Wednesday
were
either
researching or about to pur-
chase some of the items Spal-
ding listed. Burgher said he
would keep his shotgun nearby
as he slept.
Goonies house
Neighbors have become
accustomed to cars driving
slowly on their street, but it
typically involves people try-
ing to find the Goonies house
just up the road. Some took the
opportunity at the meeting to
make those long-held frustra-
tions known as well.
“Maybe this is the time
for us to step up and stop this
insanity,” one neighbor said.
The man said he encoun-
tered a man Wednesday morn-
ing who appeared to be home-
less, wearing a backpack and
surveying peoples’ backyards.
When he approached him, the
man inquired about how to
find the Goonies house.
“If I see a guy with a back-
pack trying to look into peo-
ple’s backyards, I’d doubt
that they were looking for the
Goonies house,” Spalding
advised the crowd.
Some detailed the fears
their children have been expe-
riencing and how they’ve been
explaining the situation to
them. One person asked, since
no major damage has been
sustained at a house, whether
someone was attempting to
physically harm them.
“Not so far,” said Ames,
knocking on a wooden
mantle.
Academy: Enrollment must increase to be more sustainable
Continued from Page 1A
Four years after the closure
of Cannon Beach Elemen-
tary School because of cost
concerns and tsunami dan-
ger, the new school is battling
an information gap and look-
ing to evolve from commu-
nity startup into a community
staple.
“I think we were so focused
on getting the doors open, we
just assumed people knew who
we were,” Moore said. “Now
we want to push forward with
the message we are tuition-free
public school, that you don’t
have to live in Cannon Beach
to attend, and that we have
small class sizes.”
Traditionally,
charter
schools offer a choice in cur-
riculum or program focus that
a school district isn’t already
providing. Many have special-
ties, like the arts or sciences, or
are driven by the desire to seek
independence from a central-
ly-run school system.
But part of the confusion
with Cannon Beach Academy
is the fact it was not intended
to be a charter school at the
beginning, said board mem-
ber Phil Simmons. The pri-
mary mission of the original
task force was to keep a tradi-
tional public school in Cannon
Beach.
“This started a year and a
half before the school closed.
Our focus at that point was to
get a school district school in
town. The only problem was
that the school was in this bad
location,” Simmons said. “We
wanted to keep the school and
just move it. People would
propose a charter school to
me as an alternative, and I
can tell you personally had
no idea what a charter school
was. I just knew we had a good
school in Cannon Beach and
wanted to keep it.”
It was only after the final
door was closed that Sim-
mons started researching
charter schools. His research
dispelled his negative conno-
tations when he realized char-
Joshua Bessex/The Daily Astorian
Sea lions have taken over the docks at Astoria’s East
Mooring Basin.
Sea lions: NOAA
study will inform future
management decisions
Continued from Page 1A
Upward of 1,000 pinni-
peds were recorded in a sin-
gle daily count at the moor-
ing basin in 2015. While
fewer sea lions returned this
spring, plenty showed up in
the fall and many have stuck
around through the winter
instead of leaving like they
have in the past, said Janice
Burk, marina manager.
The Port plans to install
more low railing fabricated
by students from Knappa
along the docks in the spring.
It has proved to be the one
deterrent that seems to work.
Sometimes.
“When there’s large num-
bers of the animals out there,
they kind of wiggle their way
wherever,” Burk said.
Farther up the Columbia
River, controversial manage-
ment decisions have sought
to curb sea lions hunting for
salmon below Bonneville
Dam. Oregon and Washing-
ton state fish and wildlife
officials are authorized to
kill problem sea lions to pro-
tect endangered species of
salmon and steelhead at the
dam and Congress is consid-
ering broadening that author-
ity to the Willamette River
and its tributaries.
So someone’s take on
whether a robust sea lion
population is a good thing
or a bad thing “depends on
where you sit,” said Chris
Yates, assistant regional
administrator for NOAA
Fisheries.
The NOAA study will
provide a baseline for under-
standing the population and
will inform future manage-
ment decisions, he said.
The future
Researchers believe the
sea lion population may have
stopped growing. In recent
years, it has actually declined
slightly.
California sea lions are
sensitive to environmental
changes and the population
experiences “abrupt, signifi-
cant declines” in years asso-
ciated with El Nino events,
the study noted. There
have also been declines in
2009, 2010, 2013 and 2014.
Warmer ocean conditions
can dramatically affect the
food chain and can be diffi-
cult for sea lions to weather.
The study’s authors pre-
dict that if sea surface tem-
peratures off the West Coast
increase by 1 degree Cel-
sius, it could halt the growth
of the sea lion population. An
increase to 2 degrees Cel-
sius would lead to a 7 percent
decline.
The sea lion population
dropped between 2013 and
2014. It had reached a high in
2012 at around 306,220 ani-
mals. By 2014, that number
dipped to just over 250,000.
Beginning in 2012, ocean
conditions were particularly
unfriendly for sea lions. A
marine heat wave referred
to as “the Blob” persisted off
the West Coast and combined
with an El Nino climate pat-
tern. Thousands of malnour-
ished sea lion pups stranded
on beaches in Southern
California.
“This is not just a story
about continued growth of
the population,” said Robert
DeLong, a co-author of the
study and leader of Califor-
nia Current Ecosystems pro-
gram at the Alaska Fisheries
Science Center. “These last
several years have brought
new environmental stresses
to the California current, and
we’ve seen that reflected by
the sea lions.”
Ocean temperatures are
expected to shift back toward
normal, or even colder lev-
els than normal this year,
said Nate Mantua, a clima-
tologist with NOAA’s South-
west Fisheries Science Cen-
ter. “But we’ll have to wait
and see.”
Because, he added, very
little in the climate has been
doing the expected for the
last three years.
Program: Support dramatically
impoves academic performance
Colin Murphey/The Daily Astorian
Dawn Jay, right, teaches a small group of students at the Cannon Beach Academy.
Continued from Page 1A
ter schools are still tuition-free
public schools, part of a school
district.
“I can understand why there
is some confusion, because I
was similarly without knowl-
edge,” he said.
mother, Sondra, but said he
plans to use Upward Bound’s
tutoring services to help stay
on top of his classes.
“I definitely want to go
to an Ivy League school,
because those are the best for
law,” he said. “But the great
thing about this is it will
show all of the different state
schools here and community
schools, which will help me
with my undergraduate.”
Aside from music, Annat
has interest in newspaper
editing and engineering, but
said she isn’t quite sure what
direction she’ll go.
“I think it will help me
find out what other possibil-
ities there are, different col-
leges I can possibly go to,”
she said of Upward Bound.
The additional support
dramatically improves aca-
demic performance. Upward
Bound students averaged a
98 percent high school grad-
uation rate between 2013 and
last year, compared to 75 per-
cent or less overall at Asto-
ria, Warrenton and Seaside.
Nearly 80 percent of high
school graduates in Upward
Bound last year started col-
lege the fall after graduat-
‘Community-
supported place’
Due to state requirements,
the academy chose to offer
a different curriculum and a
bilingual element to differ-
entiate from other schools in
the school district. They chose
Spanish as a way to build upon
the number of native Span-
ish speakers who already live
within the town, Simmons
said.
Out of 22 students, seven
come from Spanish-speak-
ing families, according to
Moore. Of those, six qualify
for English language learner
services, which is 27 percent
of the student body. By com-
parison, 9 percent of students
at Gearhart Elementary School
and 22 percent at Seaside
Heights Elementary School
qualify for the help.
While parents have noted
that the small class sizes and
bilingual aspects add value,
the common motivating factor
for many is still proximity.
Alberto Rodriguez, a par-
ent of a kindergartner, works at
the Ocean Lodge and Wayfarer
hotels in town and is from one
of the seven Spanish-speak-
ing families the school serves.
While he appreciated Span-
ish being incorporated, being
close to his daughter is what
drove his decision.
“I like it because my job
is here,” Rodriguez said.
“It’s easier to be around and
involved.”
For Colin Woody, a parent
of a first-grader at the acad-
emy, having the school close
to his work at the restaurant
Castaways enables him to be
more involved with his child’s
education.
“I think this school has had
to go through so many hoops
that it hasn’t had a chance to
define itself,” Woody said.
“But I see it as a positive
place. A community-supported
place.”
Moore said the same rea-
sons that make the charter
school different from others
are also crucial to success.
“Why we’re here is why
we’re here. Choice is a part
of our mission, but this school
is here because we wanted to
bring community back to Can-
non Beach,” Moore said. “The
essence of identity is tied to
knowing our importance in the
community while also provid-
ing choice to those who may
not live in Cannon Beach.”
‘Information gap’
With the doors open, the
academy now has access to
grant money to help promote
the school in a way that wasn’t
possible before, Moore said.
In the past three months, the
academy has invested in a new
website, marketing campaign
and a billboard to get the word
out.
Enrollment must increase
to be more sustainable, and
Moore would like to see 50
students by next school year,
she said.
“Our biggest barrier for this
year I think was people being
nervous about whether or not
we will open and stay open,”
she said. “But we’re looking to
fix that information gap, and I
think between demonstrating
our academics is sound and
educating why we are here, we
will grow.”
ing, compared to 61 percent
of Clatsop County graduates
overall.
Jon Graves directs the
federal TRIO outreach and
student support programs
for the college, including
Upward Bound and a less-in-
tensive variant called Tal-
ent Search, which serves 671
middle and high school stu-
dents in the county each year.
Besides the academic suc-
cess, he said, Upward Bound
intermingles high schoolers
from around the county. “It
really breaks down the bar-
riers in Clatsop County,” he
said.
New participants have
two months to decide if
they can meet all the pro-
gram’s requirements before
the college begins tracking
their academic progress over
the next seven to 10 years,
Graves said.
“We do track how many
Talent Search and Upward
Bound students gradu-
ate with either an associate
degree or a bachelor’s degree
within six years of starting
college,” he said. “Currently,
41 percent of the Talent
Search and Upward Bound
students are graduating col-
lege within six years.”