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About The daily Astorian. (Astoria, Or.) 1961-current | View Entire Issue (March 29, 2018)
3A THE DAILY ASTORIAN • THURSDAY, MARCH 29, 2018 Laundromat fire in Seaside threatens County selects firm for housing study neighboring businesses and homes No injuries reported By R.J. MARX The Daily Astorian SEASIDE — A fire at the The Laundry Mat Wednes- day night led to the evacua- tion of neighboring buildings on South Roosevelt Drive, including Coast Hardware and Kiosco Mexicano. Seaside resident Desiree Palmer said she was stand- ing on her back deck at about 8:30 p.m. when she smelled “something like burning firewood.” “I said to my daughter, is that white smoke coming from the Chevron station?’ And sure enough, you could see huge billows of smoke,” Palmer said. A neighboring 26-unit apartment complex was evac- R.J. Marx/The Daily Astorian Firefighters responded to a fire in Seaside Wednesday night. The cause is under investigation. uated for more than an hour as firefighters sought to prevent the spread of fire. No injuries were reported. The cause is under investiga- tion. Mary Freiburger stood among the residents waiting to return to their homes. “We heard a loudspeaker: ‘Resi- dents, you need to evacuate, the building in front of you is on fire,’” she said. Cyrus Knox, a Gearhart resident, was driving by when he said he saw smoke billow- ing from what he thought was an apartment. He said he saw flames in the rear of The Laundry Mat. He went to check on a friend in Kiosco Mexicano. “Everybody was all right,” he said. “But they could have lost the whole building. It’s all connected.” The fire brought a response of between 35 and 40 firefight- ers and emergency respond- ers, Seaside Public Informa- tion Officer Jon Rahl said at the scene, including fire- fighters from Seaside, Can- non Beach, Gearhart, Ham- let, Lewis and Clark and Warrenton. Some crews had been con- ducting weekly drills at the time of the blaze. Astoria man allegedly robs bank Wednesday Police said he did not use any weap- ons in the robbery just before 10 a.m. and fled with an undisclosed amount of money. Haberman was arrested about an hour after the robbery at the Columbia Inn on Marine Drive. The money was recovered. The Daily Astorian An Astoria man allegedly robbed the U.S. Bank in Astoria Wednesday morning. Craig Francis Haberman, 65, was described by police as a known cus- tomer of the Duane Street branch. Haberman is charged with third-de- gree robbery. He is also facing a federal crime of bank robbery. “Astoria police would like to com- mend the staff at U.S. Bank for their quick actions and professionalism in their response to a serious incident,” the police said in a statement. New Washington state tsunami maps show ‘shocking’ flooding By TOM BANSE Northwest News Network The worst-case scenario for flooding from a tsunami along the Pacific Northwest coast just got even worse. Washington’s Depart- ment of Natural Resources, with help from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the Fed- eral Emergency Management Agency, remapped the max- imum tsunami threat from Grays Harbor down to the Columbia River mouth. Chief Hazard Geologist Corina Forson said updated science about the offshore Cascadia fault zone produces a bigger surge. “There are places in Ocean City where you have 50 to 60 feet of inundation modeled from this map,” she said. “It is quite shocking. That’s on the outer coast if you’re standing on the shoreline.” Forson said the biggest difference from previous maps published in 2005 is that the tsunami waves pen- etrate higher upriver and into creek valleys. As before, all of Ocean Shores, most of the Long Beach Penin- sula and downtown Aber- deen and Hoquiam could be more than 6 feet under water. Forson’s takeaway is that low-lying coastal areas should be thinking about vertical evacuation structures. “This is really a tool to push for vertical evacuation structures and informing resi- dents of the hazard where they live,” Forson said Wednes- day. “Our next step is working with local emergency manag- ers and planners to update the evacuation routes and edu- cate the community on where the best place to go to evacu- ate is.” Forson said both the ear- lier and the new tsunami inun- dation maps assumed a mag- nitude 9 earthquake, but the newer modeling produced a bigger movement of the sea- floor at the Cascadia Sub- duction Zone, yielding a big- ger tsunami. The first waves would arrive at the south- west Washington coast about 15 to 20 minutes after the earthquake. By KATIE FRANKOWICZ The Daily Astorian A comprehensive study to examine housing needs countywide is moving forward. A majority of the Clat- sop County Board of Com- missioners Wednesday night selected the Portland-based firm Johnson Economics/ Angelo Planning Group to analyze current and future housing needs as well as rec- ommend how communi- ties might ensure a supply of affordable and workforce housing. Astoria, Warrenton, Gearhart, Seaside and Can- non Beach have contributed money to conduct the study. The firm projected the study could take around six months to complete. The pro- jected total cost is $73,967. Each city contributed $10,000 and the county con- tributed $50,000 for the work for a total of $100,000. The steering committee, made up of representatives from across the county and the cit- ies, agreed to keep the left- over funds in reserve in case they want to add on to the scope of work later. “We may not spend the whole $100,000,” County Manager Cameron Moore said. A majority of the com- missioners approved the contract, but Commissioner Lianne Thompson abstained from voting because she was not guaranteed a seat on a technical advisory commit- tee that will provide feedback and receive updates from the firm throughout the project’s duration. Other commissioners and Moore said it was early to talk about who would be included on the committee. Moore said the county will want a representative, but he believed it was beneficial to wait and hear from the con- sultants about what kind of skills and backgrounds should be involved. He said he hoped some of the steering committee members would continue to be involved. Thompson wouldn’t budge, saying her vote was “contingent“ on being included on the future advi- sory committee. 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