GUEST COLUMN:
MEMORIAL DAY’S
FORGOTTEN
HISTORY
PAGE 4A
Memorial Day
Honoring all who served for 150 years
DailyAstorian.com // MONDAY, MAY 28, 2018
145TH YEAR, NO. 235
ONE DOLLAR
Snowy plovers spotted in Fort Stevens
First sighting in decades
By KATIE FRANKOWICZ
The Daily Astorian
Oregon Parks and Recreation Department
Snowy plovers (not the nest on Clatsop Spit).
Legion
posts
seek new
members
Three years ago, Fort Stevens State
Park designated a half-mile portion of the
beach as a “Western Snowy Plover Man-
agement Area” and invited the endangered
birds to nest there. No snowy plovers took
the park up on its offer.
But this week snowy plover nests were
spotted at Clatsop Spit — the first time
since the 1980s that anyone has seen the
birds there.
Vanessa Blackstone, a wildlife biolo-
gist with the Oregon Parks and Recreation
Department, says the sighting is even more
exciting because it connects the Western
Washington state and Northern Oregon
snowy plover populations.
The possibility for this overlap was one
big reason why the department originally
picked the Clatsop Spit area, bordered by
the Columbia River and the Pacific Ocean,
as a management area.
“Oregonians have helped plovers
return to the North Coast, and Clatsop
Spit is an important link between our Til-
lamook County birds and those that live in
Washington,” Blackstone said. “Plovers
See BIRDS, Page 7A
Headed for the hills
As 100-year
anniversary nears,
American Legion
membership falters
By BRENNA VISSER
The Daily Astorian
Hundreds will attend Memorial Day
events around the county in memory of those
who died while serving in the military.
But as wreath ceremonies and flag salutes
unfold, concerns about the longevity of the
institution that largely coordinates these
events remain a troublesome undercurrent to
an already somber holiday.
The American Legion, a wartime veter-
ans organization that focuses on veteran out-
reach and community service, will celebrate
its 100th anniversary in 2019. But it has
been declining in membership nationwide
for years.
In Oregon alone, membership has
dropped from around 21,500 in 2005 to
16,700 last year — and local legion posts are
also feeling the crunch.
Mike Phillips, the adjutant of Clatsop
Post 12 of the American Legion, said while
the local finances have remained stable,
membership between the Legion, Auxiliary
and Sons of the American Legion branches
have dropped from 1,110 when he joined in
2002 down to below 800.
With fewer people joining, worries have
mounted about who will take over organiz-
ing traditional ceremonies and events.
“We want to get more young people
involved,” Phillips said. “We only have about
50 members from Middle East wars — that’s
the same as our World War II membership.”
At American Legion Post 168 in Cannon
Beach, membership has dropped about 25
percent in the last 10 years, Adjutant Agris
Pavlovskis said. But what has impacted this
post more has been a decline in turnout at
fundraising events like classic oyster feeds
and rib night specials.
See LEGION, Page 5A
Colin Murphey/The Daily Astorian
Joel Huckins unpacks a kit containing emergency response supplies at the fire station in Elsie.
Inland communities bear burden of tsunami warnings
By BRENNA VISSER
The Daily Astorian
E
LSIE — When a tsunami watch was
issued early Jan. 23, dozens of peo-
ple got in their cars and headed for the
hills.
By 3 a.m., cars were stranded on the side
of the highway — either from running out
of gas or from slipping off the black ice that
covered the highway that night. A bonfire
was already raging in the Camp 18 Restau-
rant parking lot.
Out to respond was the Commu-
nity Emergency Response Team from
Elsie-Vinemaple, an unincorporated town
about 20 miles up Highway 26. The 12-per-
son team walked along the road, going car
by car to make sure everyone was safe.
“We were making sure people weren’t
frozen in their cars,” said team member
Diane Jette. “People didn’t have gas in
their tanks, with little babies bundled up in
the back. They were cold and couldn’t go
anywhere.”
The event hardly surprised the locals. In
fact, it’s a phenomenon that happens nearly
every time a tsunami watch or warning is
issued along the coast.
As one of the first communities clearly
out of the tsunami inundation zone when
heading east from the coast, the all-volun-
teer response team has come to face the
realities of being a default evacuation cen-
ter when disaster strikes.
“If the coast gets threats of inundation,
like it did (in 2011), half the coast ends up
here,” said Assistant Fire Chief Hans Mulder
of Elsie-Vinemaple Fire Department.
“We get a major influx this way.”
‘Way behind the curve’
Like many community emergency
response teams in Clatsop County, the one
in Elsie-Vinemaple developed after the
2007 Great Coastal Gale closed roads and
shut down power for almost two weeks.
Relative geographic remoteness, no
communication and multiple road closures
from tree blowdown and flooding isolated
the community from major services, Jette
said.
Since then, the group has worked
to become as self-sufficient as possi-
ble, conducting training in emergency
See WARNINGS, Page 7A
New Astoria employee blending in with the community
Taylor ‘seduced
by the river and
forest’
By KATIE
FRANKOWICZ
The Daily Astorian
T
iffany Taylor stood out-
side her house one day and
listened to Astoria’s particular
music: fog horns, church bells,
the Fort George Brewery’s 5
o’clock whistle.
Taylor is about to begin
her third week with the city of
Astoria as the new administra-
tive assistant for the commu-
nity development department,
after moving here nearly two
years ago.
She grew up in Southern
California and Hawaii and has
lived in Australia and Utah, but
all of those places were deter-
mined by circumstances. They
were places her family chose
to live when she was a child,
where she moved for school or
work or because of marriage.
Then she looked up one day
and the business where she had
worked for years was about to
be sold and her son was about
to graduate from high school.
Taylor knew changes were on
the horizon. She thought about
moving.
“All of the sudden, I
was like, wait, I could pick
anywhere.”
She had never explored the
Pacific Northwest and wanted
to live near water again, but
when she flew up to look
around, Astoria felt the most
like home.
She found herself “seduced
by the river and forest and
how they’re both providers
of life but will also take life.”
She thought about the kind of
Katie Frankowicz/The Daily Astorian
See TAYLOR, Page 7A
Tiffany Taylor is the new administrative assistant for Asto-
ria’s community development department.