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THE ASTORIAN • SATuRdAy, AuguST 17, 2019
TP Freight: ‘There’s
no hard feelings’
Continued from Page A1
he said. “We’ll be out of
the way over there in Miles
Crossing.”
TP Freight, short for Til-
lamook and Portland in a
nod to its start hauling the
region’s cheese to the metro
area, has been in Astoria
since 1985. The company
takes freight from national
carriers the “final mile” to
businesses,
government
agencies and other larger
entities along the Oregon
Coast through depots in
Coos Bay, Lincoln City, Til-
lamook and Astoria. Trucks
operate after 10 p.m. to
avoid traffic.
The company supplies
anyone from Columbia
Memorial Hospital and the
Coast Guard to electric tug
manufacturer Lektro and
East Oregonian Publishing
Co., which prints The Asto-
rian. When the new depot in
Miles Crossing came before
the county Board of Com-
missioners on Wednesday,
local business leaders let
them know how important
the freight carrier is to the
region.
Kurt Englund, presi-
dent of Englund Marine &
Industrial Supply, testified
that TP Freight provides
competitive delivery times.
“They’re very efficient
and do it at a very compet-
itive price,” he said. “So,
it’s a benefit for everybody,
the community. Especially
us, being a retail business, a
lot of the time you have to
factor that freight into your
margins. So, the lower that
is, it keeps it more competi-
tive for local people.”
County
commission-
ers unanimously approved
the depot’s new location.
Julia Decker, the county’s
planning manager, said the
depot would generate the
same number of trips as two
homes.
Earlier this month, the
developer behind the pro-
posed 16,000-square-foot
Grocery Outlet asked the
city’s Design Review Com-
mittee to continue a pub-
lic hearing on the project
until September. City plan-
ning staff has recommended
approval.
TP Freight hasn’t been
formally noticed to move
out of the Astoria termi-
nal, but expects to be soon,
Shore said.
“There’s no hard feel-
ings,” he said. “I think it is
one of those things that was
meant to be and is going to
be a blessing.”
Edward Stratton/The Astorian
Work began in recent months on TP Freight Lines’ new
location in Miles Crossing.
ABLE: ‘We’re a
statewide program’
Continued from Page A1
Experience Act in 2014
— launched at a national
level in 2016. In Oregon,
there are more than 2,100
account holders.
In Clatsop County, just
14 accounts have been cre-
ated, but that number is on
the rise.
“It’s slow going,” said
Kaellen Hessel, the pro-
gram’s advocacy and out-
reach manager. “One fam-
ily at a time.”
Data from the Oregon
Office on Disability and
Health show 27% of res-
idents in Clatsop County
live with some sort of dis-
ability. Of those people,
about a third live in poverty.
“Hopefully, we’ll see
a change in this,” Hessel
said. “They didn’t think
they could save, but now
they can.”
Compared to other pro-
grams that can take months
or years to receive, ABLE
is designed to be sim-
ple and fast, with minimal
restrictions. It only takes
about 15 minutes to apply.
The ease, according to
Hessel, is part of the reason
the program has been slow
to spread.
“We sound too good to
be true,” she said.
“For decades they’ve
been told, ‘You can’t have
more than $2,000.’ They
have been functionally
forced to stay in poverty.
Then they hear there is this
new thing.”
Chick was initially skep-
tical of ABLE. She waited
more than a year before
signing up to ensure the
program was as beneficial
and secure as it sounded.
Now, she looks forward
to seeing Blake build sav-
ings the same way his little
brother can.
“We were really disap-
pointed to not have a sav-
ings account for our son,”
Chick said. “Just because
somebody has an intel-
lectual disability does not
mean that they don’t need
to save for their future. In
fact, they probably need to
think about it even more.”
This week, the Oregon
Savings Network hosted a
series of engagement work-
shops throughout Clatsop
County. Hessel met with 13
employees from NW Com-
munity Alliance, a local
nonprofit that works with
people with disabilities.
The nonprofit will be
one of the first programs
in Oregon to partner with
ABLE and help people who
need guidance or assistance
with their finances.
“Our goal is to get our
clients more flexibility
that’s due to them,” said
Joy Kropielniski, who
works for the nonprofit.
“ABLE will be able to do
this.”
The partnership will
be especially helpful for
coastal residents like the
Chick family. They fre-
quently found themselves
driving the “services tri-
angle,” as Chick called it,
between Astoria, Tillamook
and Portland to receive the
care they needed for Blake.
Hessel recognizes that
coastal towns, like other
rural regions of the state, do
not have the same access to
services as people living in
metropolitan areas.
“We’re a statewide pro-
gram,” she said. “So we
need to actually be every-
where in the state.”
So far, the outreach
is working. ABLE has
already received the same
number of applicants from
Clatsop County so far this
year as it did in both 2017
and 2018.
“We’re trying to get
our disability community
being able to participate in
life just like anybody else,”
Chick said. “It should look
no different. That’s the
whole point here.”
Chris Havel/Oregon Parks and Recreation Department
With the help of towels, buckets of water and volunteers, the beached humpback was kept wet to protect it from dehydration.
Whale: ‘Its chances of survival were
remote even without this stranding event’
Continued from Page A1
consultation with people on
the ground and other experts.
They took a number of factors
into consideration, including
the animal’s age.
It is early in the season
for a humpback that young
to be fully weaned from its
mother’s milk, Mate noted.
The mother may have
died or been injured. Or,
Mate theorized, food may
have been so scarce the
mother decided to wean it
early. Either way, once the
young whale was on the
beach, the chance of reunit-
ing it with its mother was
unlikely.
“However it got sepa-
rated from its mother, its
chances of survival were
remote even without this
stranding event,” Mate said.
“It was just way too young
and small to make it on its
own.”
On the beach, it was only
suffering, he said.
Gravity
Deep water supports large
whales’ enormous weight.
Stranded on land without
that support, gravity begins
to tear them apart, said Kris-
tin Wilkinson, the Washing-
ton state and Oregon strand-
ing coordinator for NOAA’s
West Coast Regional Office.
Organs and circulatory
systems can begin to col-
lapse. Prolonged exposure
can lead to blistered skin and
hyperthermia.
Attempts to tow a whale
back into water can injure or
dislocate the tail or even par-
alyze the animal. Dredging
around a whale to create a
channel to deeper water can
cause other environmental
disruptions.
In 1979, Mate was on the
scene after 41 sperm whales
stranded on the beach in
Florence. At the time, they
were not allowed to eutha-
nize the animals.
“If we could have, I
would have,” Mate said.
“There was no question.
They stranded at the highest
tide. They were never going
to get back in the water and
their death was a long and
anguished one.”
It took upward of three
days for most of the whales
to die.
Mate and other research-
ers were poised to collect
samples 20 minutes after
each whale died to try to
determine why the animals
stranded in the first place.
But when they sent these
freshly collected samples off
for analysis, they were told,
“These are tissue samples
from an animal that’s been
dead for three days.”
For the whales, every-
thing had started to break
down well before they
finally died.
Since 2015, at least
four large whales stranded
alive onshore in the Pacific
Northwest were able to
free themselves, but all of
them beached again and
died, according to informa-
tion compiled by NOAA
in 2018. Last year, a large
gray whale beached near
Olympic National Park was
able to refloat after several
attempts.
Nationwide, an aver-
age of eight large whales
have stranded alive in recent
years. Most die within 24
hours of being stranded,
even if they return to deeper
water. Only about two a year
are ever euthanized.
Each case is different. “It
really just depends on the
location, the animal’s over-
all condition, what resources
are available, what trained
staff are available. ... It’s not
a formula,” Wilkinson said.
Reports of marine mam-
mal strandings in general
are slightly lower in Oregon
than in California or Wash-
ington state. Between 2007
and 2016, Oregon had a
reported 3,776 strandings of
dead and alive animals, most
of them sea lions and seals.
Whales accounted for only
1% of the stranded animals.
“Most of the time when
we get a whale washed up,
it’s either dead or almost
dead,” said Chris Havel,
associate director for the
Oregon Parks and Recre-
ation Department. “Getting
a young animal that was rel-
atively healthy … that’s an
unusual experience for us.”
“It’s a hard thing to wit-
ness,” he said.
Pushed back
The young humpback
in Waldport had tried to
swim past a sandbar into
deep water during high
tides on Wednesday and
Thursday, but every time
it oriented itself toward the
ocean, it would get pushed
back, according to Brit-
tany Blades, the curator of
mammals at Oregon Coast
Aquarium, who stayed over-
night to monitor the whale.
“As the night went on,
the whale stranded fur-
ther on shore due to the
strong waves and extremely
high tide,” Blades said in a
statement.
The group gathered
around the whale considered
trying to move the whale
closer to the water, but
decided the plan wasn’t fea-
sible. Given the amount of
time the whale had already
spent stranded on land,
Blades said it was likely the
internal organs had already
“suffered irreparable dam-
age that is not externally
apparent.”
A Washington state veter-
inarian administered a series
of injections to humanely
euthanize the whale. The
method NOAA follows
involves first sedating the
animal so it is fully asleep
with needles that cause
about as much pain as a vac-
cine shot.
Then, a veterinarian
delivers potassium chloride
to stop the heart.
Sometimes the whale
reacts in these final moments,
briefly raising its flippers or
tail, a movement referred to
as “the last swim.”
“This may be difficult
to witness, but if eutha-
nasia is being adminis-
tered, qualified veterinar-
ians have determined it is
the most humane option for
the whale,” Wilkinson notes
in a fact sheet she com-
piled about large live whale
strandings.
Scientists and research-
ers will perform a necropsy
on the Waldport whale and
collect samples. The whale
will be buried on the beach
near the site of the final
stranding.
Scholarship: Rudduck plans to graduate next year
Continued from Page A1
members of Oregon work-
ers who have died or been
permanently disabled on the
job.
“It’s really hard whenever
people talk about him,” Rud-
duck said of her father. “He
sounds like a really good guy
who would have helped.”
McMaster, a former
Coast Guardsmen, joined
the Warrenton police as a
trainee while still in military
service. In March 1996, he
and his partner were called
out to what ended up being
a false alarm at the grade
school.
On the way, a driver
pulled out onto Harbor Drive
in front of the patrol car.
The car flipped while try-
ing to avoid the other vehi-
cle, landing upside down
in the Skipanon Slough.
McMaster, the passenger,
and his partner were trapped
inside for 10 minutes as the
car filled with water. Rescu-
ers reached the two and took
them to the hospital, where
McMaster was pronounced
dead. His partner escaped
with minor injuries.
McMaster is the only
recorded death of a War-
renton police officer while
Edward Stratton/The Astorian
A tree was planted at the site where the Warrenton patrol car
carrying the late Robert ‘Bernie’ McMaster and his partner
went into the Skipanon Slough.
on duty, said Warrenton
Police Chief Mathew Work-
man. A tree decorated with
a cross marks the site of the
crash. A modest memorial to
McMaster sits on the book-
shelf at Warrenton City Hall.
Workman, a police officer
in Nebraska at the time of the
crash, never knew McMas-
ter. But he lived next to Rud-
duck and her mother, Elena
McMaster, in Hammond.
“From what people tell
me, she reminds them of
Bernie,” he said. “She looks
just like her mom, but she
has his personality.”
When Rudduck was in her
senior year of high school,
Workman began telling her
about scholarships for the
families of officers killed in
the line of duty. He put her
in touch with Oregon Con-
cerns of Police Survivors, an
advocacy group. The group
awarded Rudduck a scholar-
ship and has helped her learn
about other support.
“It’s amazing,” she said.
“I didn’t realize how many
scholarships are out there for
children in my predicament.”
Rudduck, who grew up
in a single-parent household,
has adopted her father’s pen-
chant for public service. She
volunteered with the War-
renton Fire Department’s
holiday food drive from
2007 until her senior year
at Warrenton High School
in 2014. While attending
school, she worked days at
the grade school’s preschool
and nights at Fultano’s Pizza
in Warrenton.
After high school, she
married fellow Warrenton
graduate Ryan Rudduck, a
petty officer in the Navy.
She moved to Gresham,
where she earned three asso-
ciate degrees from Mt. Hood
Community College in gen-
eral studies, science and art,
along with a nursing assis-
tant license. While attending
college, she volunteered at
Legacy Mount Hood Med-
ical Center filling IV carts
and cleaning patient rooms.
Alannah Rudduck now
lives in Georgia, where her
husband is stationed at Fort
Gordon. She is studying for a
bachelor’s in dental hygiene
with a minor in business at
nearby Augusta University
and plans to graduate next
year.
“My mom always said
he was a futuristic planner,”
she said of her father. “With-
out him, I’d struggle, and I’d
be in debt. I’m almost done
with school, and I haven’t
taken out a single loan.”