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About The daily Astorian. (Astoria, Or.) 1961-current | View Entire Issue (March 30, 2018)
WARRENTON FIRE DEPARTMENT PERFORMS A CONTROLLED BURN PHOTO FEATURE | PAGE 4A DailyAstorian.com // FRIDAY, MARCH 30, 2018 145TH YEAR, NO. 194 TOURISM | EMERGENCY PREPAREDNESS ‘Hit and miss’ Photos by Colin Murphey/The Daily Astorian A sign posted on the seawall at The Waves hotel in Cannon Beach lets guests and others know where to go in case of a tsunami. ONE DOLLAR Bonamici tackles guns, safety, more at town hall Congresswoman speaks at Astoria High By EDWARD STRATTON The Daily Astorian Guns and safety headlined a town hall Thursday with U.S. Rep Suzanne Bonamici at Astoria High School. A small crowd turned out for the discus- sion, the congresswoman’s sixth this month during a spring tour of her district in North- west Oregon. She started out thanking Asto- ria sophomores Isabel Tal- ley and Kegan Rascoe, who handed her a stack of 78 signed form letters from students and staff calling for more federal funding to improve school safety. The letters specifically Suzanne called for federal money Bonamici to provide better cameras, automatically locking doors and bulletproof glass for inner school doors. On her congressional website, Bonamici mentions her support for reinstating the fed- eral ban on military-style assault weapons that was in place from 1994 to 2004, point- ing out their use in recent mass shootings. Beginning a back-and-forth with Bonamici, Ken Ellsworth of Warrenton asked how she defines assault weapons. “I’m not myself defining assault weap- ons,” the Oregon Democrat said. “What I think we should do is look at the assault weapons ban that was in effect for 10 years and … figure out if that’s something that’s going to keep our community safe.” See BONAMICI, Page 8A Local hospitality leaders tackle emergency preparedness Odd Fellows Building now off the market By BRENNA VISSER The Daily Astorian A fter the devastating earthquake in Japan in 2011 that spurred tsunami fears across the Pacific, Linda Beck-Sweeney remembers driving through Cannon Beach and knocking on the doors of her dozens of rental properties to make sure guests knew about the evacuation. Her urgency was an example of the often unique and challenging relationship between the hospitality indus- try and emergency preparedness. In the past few years, the topic has evolved from taboo into must-do as communities on the North Coast wrestle with the growth in tourism and greater tsunami awareness. But emergency planning is a balancing act, with obstacles for commerce at many turns. How do you educate people about the risks of a disaster without scaring travelers away? “(The threat of a tsunami) is something we’ve been aware of for a long time,” said Beck-Sweeney, of Can- non Beach Vacation Rentals. “We want to give them the best information we have. Because informed is bet- ter than fearful.” See HOSPITALITY, Page 8A By KATIE FRANKOWICZ The Daily Astorian An employee at The Waves hotel in Cannon Beach holds up an example of the tsunami evacuation information in guest rooms. “We can tell hotels they should have resources, but then those supplies need to be maintained and purchased — another cost in an already difficult industry.” Althea Rizzo | Oregon Office of Emergency Management The Odd Fellows Building in downtown Astoria is in local hands. Jessamyn West, executive director of the Astoria Arts and Movement Center, which uses the historic building’s ballroom for exercise and dance classes and commu- nity events, and Andrea Mazzarella, a real estate agent and the center’s board president, closed the sale Thursday. Together with Mazzarella’s mother, Nancy Mazzarella-Tisch, the women make up the newly-formed Astoria Odd Fellows, LLC. The nearly 100-year-old building was listed for $575,000 and sold for around $425,000. West and Mazzarella estimate they face about $260,000 worth of repairs, not including major updates to plumbing or See BUILDING, Page 9A From Bigfoot and butterflies to poetry Author speaks at Columbia Forum By KATIE FRANKOWICZ The Daily Astorian After years of being known for Bigfoot and butterflies, author and professional lepi- dopterist Robert Michael Pyle is now a poet. Or, rather, he has always written poetry — from a fourth-grade poem about animals in the forest (“In the forest lives a bear, he looks like a hunk of hair”) to his two pub- lished collections — but writing poems has taken on a new significance. “I’d say they’re the heart of my writ- ing now,” he said Thursday at the Colum- bia Forum. Pyle is best known for his natural his- tory writing and nonfiction: the handbooks, essays and books on butterflies; “Winter- green,” a series of essays about the land- scape and wildlife of Washington state’s Willapa Hills region; “Where Bigfoot Walks: Crossing the Dark Divide,” a book about Sasquatch first published in 1995, rereleased last year to include updated information. But poetry and science, poetry and prose, go together, he told an audience at Colum- bia Memorial Hospital’s Community Cen- ter. Poetry just gets there faster. A poem can be “a quick response to any event or aspect of life, for which prose takes just too damn long to write or to read,” he said. Though, he added, “a good poem can take as long to get right as a long essay.” Joshua Bessex/The Daily Astorian See PYLE, Page 9A Robert Pyle, author and professional lepidopterist, spoke about poetry Thursday night at the Columbia Forum.
