A6
THE ASTORIAN • THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 25, 2021
County
reports 12 new
virus cases
The Astorian
Hailey Hoff man/The Astorian
The landslide started at the end of Blue Ridge Drive, where a house burned down in December 2019.
Landslide: One of several to hit area this year
Continued from Page A1
funding from the Department
of Labor and have a contrac-
tor on-site. I will continue
to engage with all the par-
ties involved to make sure
the federal responsibility is
fulfi lled.”
At the top of the slide is the
broken foundation of a dere-
lict house that burned down
in December 2019. The Mat-
sons suspect the fi re weak-
ened the soil and contrib-
uted to the slide. The property
belongs to Paul Mossberg,
who died in 2017.
“I don’t even care (who’s
responsible), because my
house is safe, my husband’s
safe, my dogs” are safe,
Cheryl Matson said. “I just
care that somebody comes in
and cleans up this mess.”
Jeff Harrington, the Asto-
ria public works director,
said the Department of Labor
plans to have the road cleared
by the end of the week. The
road appears stable, and the
city’s water main underneath
is undamaged, he said.
“Like everywhere else in
town, it’s just landslide ter-
rain that, with enough rain,
decided to move,” Harrington
said .
The landslide is one of
several to hit Astoria this year
during a particularly wet win-
ter. A slide in January east
of the city trapped a passing
truck and temporarily closed
U.S. Highway 30.
Another slide in Jan-
uary sheered off part of a
steep slope in Uniontown
and uprooted the home of
Cati Foss, leaving it wedged
against a neighboring prop-
erty and sitting on top of the
sidewalk along Alameda
Avenue. She and the neigh-
bor suspect leaking pipes
might have contributed to the
slide.
A GoFundMe account has
raised more than $37,000 to
help the Foss family move
the house, which is now sit-
ting on blocks. Foss said her
family is still trying to pay
off the cost of moving the
house off the sidewalk and
doesn’t know yet whether it
can be affordably salvaged.
“I’m still waiting to hear
back from the insurance
company,” she said. “I am
trying to get a geotechni-
cal engineer to kind of help
speed up the process. But
basically, where the house
is right now, is where we’re
stuck.”
Cheryl Matson said her
home was built on bedrock,
but that she worries about the
trees still perched in the land-
slide zone .
In addition to the slide
just north of her home,
state geological maps show
another large historical land-
slide just south of the prop-
erty. Harrington said city
records show two landslides
occurring on Tongue Point
in 1917, albeit without spec-
ifi ed locations. He suspects
the new slide just north of
the home isn’t done moving.
“That’s what concerns
me, is that the whole hill-
side is just one huge land-
slide, you know,” Harrington
said. “Because it all looks the
same when you’re out on the
ground.”
Salmon: ‘I have a lot of faith in the fi sh’
Continued from Page A1
Under the model, changes
in the ocean presented more
of a threat to salmon than
what they could confront
during the freshwater stage
of their lifecycle.
It was surprising to see
how much the ocean stage
dominated, scientists said.
The ocean is in many ways
still a “blue box.” But the
study’s authors had already
gotten a hint of their predic-
tions in real time.
Though aspects of the
work had yet to be fi nal-
ized, researchers had already
completed their model
when a mass of warm water
formed off the West Coast
nearly six years ago.
The so-called “Blob”
formed in 2013 and 2014 and
persisted through 2015 and
2016. Temperatures inside
this warm water anomaly
were recorded at nearly 3
degrees C warmer than nor-
mal and it set off a chain
reaction — a bomb, some
scientists said — through the
marine ecosystem. Salmon
returns over the next few
years ran the gamut from
“poor” to “concerning.”
“To some extent, we’ve
already seen exactly what
we predicted,” said Lisa
Crozier, a research ecologist
with NOAA’s Northwest
Fisheries Science Center
and lead author of the recent
study. “It’s frightening.”
The study does not detail
what types of conservation
and management actions
should happen to protect
salmon under shifting cli-
mate conditions — that is
the work that needs to hap-
pen next, Crozier said.
But, Richard Zabel, head
of the fi sh ecology division
at the Northwest Fisher-
ies Science Center and one
of the paper’s authors, told
The Seattle Times “all alter-
natives have to be on the
table.”
‘Hard choices’
For decades now, there
have been efforts to recover
salmon with some successes
along the way, the research-
ers write.
“However,” they con-
tinue, “there are hard choices
where human demands on
land and water have come at
the cost of wildlife.
“The urgency is greater
than ever to identify success-
ful solutions at a large scale
and implement known meth-
ods for improving survival,”
the study states, while also
noting, “we have shown
that prospects for saving
this iconic keystone species
in (the United States) are
diminishing.”
U.S. Rep. Mike Simpson,
R-Idaho, recently unveiled
a plan to breach four dams
on the l ower Snake River by
the end of the next decade in
an effort to conserve salmon
populations.
But there are many
unknowns. As climate
change pressures pull certain
ecological threads or unfold
in ways scientists did not
expect, it isn’t always clear
what else starts to unravel or
what knits back together in
new ways.
Crozier is part of a push
now to delve into models
that will look across marine
species and their life cycles
to start to build an under-
standing of intersecting rela-
tionships between predators
and prey and how they all
might shift in different ways
with climate change.
Despite all the terrible
things that have come with
the coronavirus pandemic,
Crozier believes the tempo-
rarily lower carbon footprint
that came with decreased
travel may offer an import-
ant opportunity.
Normally,
research-
ers look to quantify human
impact by comparing differ-
ences between years, some-
thing that is hard to isolate
for climate change research
as human activities rush for-
ward. With the pandemic, air
traffi c slowed and there were
fewer vehicles on the road as
work and school moved into
the home.
“We were quieter for a
while,” Crozier said, “and
that’s a big deal for the
ocean.”
‘Faith in the fi sh’
W hile the news is dire for
salmon under the model she
recently had a hand in com-
pleting, Crozier is not with-
out hope. The situation is not
a simple black and white, she
said.
“It’s not really a good situ-
ation, but I don’t think they’ll
go completely extinct,” Cro-
zier said. “I think they will
change their behavior. They’ll
modify things. That’s what
salmon do, they change.”
While salmon are resilient
and adaptable, it is on humans
to watch for these responses
and “give nature the fl exibil-
ity it needs,” she said.
“I have a lot of faith in the
fi sh,” she added. “I have a
lot of faith that a lot of peo-
ple care about these fi sh and I
have a lot of faith that people
will see the shared benefi ts.”
Then there is everything
we don’t know, things sci-
entists cannot predict about
salmon and how climate
change alters their habits
and relationships with prey
and predators. There could
be an “ecological surprise,”
the study states, “that will
reverse the historical rela-
tionship between (sea sur-
face temperature) and salmon
survival.”
“I hope for the unex-
pected,” Crozier said.
Risk: ‘We are seeing great progress in stopping the spread’
Continued from Page A1
“For the second time in
a row, we are seeing great
progress in stopping the
spread of COVID-19 across
Oregon and saving lives,” the
governor said in a statement
Tuesday.
“Oregonians
continue
to step up and make smart
choices. While these county
movements are welcome
news, we must continue to
take seriously health and
safety measures, especially as
more businesses reopen and
we start to get out more. As
we see infection rates going
down and vaccinations ramp-
ing up, now is not the time to
let down our guard. Continue
to wear your masks, keep
physical distance and avoid
indoor gatherings.”
Clatsop County, which
has been in the high risk cat-
egory for the past two weeks,
is one of 10 counties that
will be at lower risk through
March 11. Five counties will
be at extreme risk, 11 will be
at high risk and 10 will be at
moderate risk.
Mark Kujala, the chair-
man of the county Board
of Commissioners, said
the announcement is wel-
come news for local business
owners.
“Many have been strug-
gling with restrictions and
limitations on indoor activ-
ities, so it’s good news,” he
said. “But if we want to stay
in the lowest risk category,
we can’t be complacent.
“So we’ll need to continue
to limit exposure risk through
masking and social distanc-
ing. And of course, the effort
to get our community vacci-
nated will continue to be the
major focus in the months
ahead as we navigate through
this.”
Counties with a popula-
tion of 30,000 or more are
evaluated for risk based on
virus cases per 100,000 over
two weeks and the test posi-
tivity rate for the same period.
Counties at lower risk
have a case rate under 50 per
100,000 people, and may have
a test positivity of 5% or less.
As of Saturday, Clatsop
County had 30.5 cases per
100,000 over a two-week
period. Test positivity was
1.5%.
Capacity for indoor din-
ing at restaurants and bars
in counties at lower risk can
increase to 50% with a mid-
night closing time. Up to 300
people can dine outdoors.
Tables must be limited to
eight people.
Gyms, indoor pools,
museums, theaters and other
entertainment venues can
operate at 50% of capacity.
Grocery stores, pharma-
cies, retail shops and shop-
ping malls can operate at
75% of capacity.
Churches can increase
capacity to 75% indoors and
300 people outdoors.
Indoor social gatherings
must be limited to 10 peo-
ple from four households in
counties at lower risk. Out-
door gatherings can have 12
people.
Indoor and outdoor visits
are allowed at long-term care
facilities.
T he county has recorded
780 virus cases since March .
According to the county, 18
were hospitalized and six have
died.
Clatsop County reported 12 new coronavirus
cases over the past few days.
On Wednesday, the county reported two cases.
The cases include a female between 10 and 19
living in the northern part of the county and a man
in his 70s living in the southern part of the county.
Both were recovering at home.
On Tuesday, the county reported 10 cases.
The cases include a man and a woman in their
30s, a woman in her 60s and a man in his 80s living
in the southern part of the county. The others live
in the northern part of the county and include two
females between 10 and 19, a woman in her 20s,
two men in their 40s and a woman in her 60s.
The county has recorded 780 cases since last
March. According to the county, 18 were hospital-
ized and six have died.
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