DailyAstorian.com // TUESDAY, DECEMBER 28, 2021
149TH YEAR, NO. 77
$1.50
Researchers
see good ocean
conditions for
Chinook salmon
Promising signs from
ecosystem indicators list
By KATIE FRANKOWICZ
KMUN
Photos by Lydia Ely/The Astorian
Gigi Thompson thanks the staff of Providence Seaside Hospital before returning home in December after battling COVID-19.
‘I thought I would never
get it, and boy was I wrong’
Astoria woman
recalls her battle
with COVID-19
Ocean conditions look better than they
have in years, which could be good news
for salmon.
The National Oceanic and Atmo-
spheric Administration recently posted its
ocean ecosystem indicators list. The list
paints a picture of how the ocean is doing
and what kind of world young, ocean-
bound salmon are about to enter.
The list looks at a variety of fac-
tors, including the abundance of certain
minuscule but key prey groups and large
climate and atmospheric processes like
seasonal upwelling, which brings nutri-
ent-rich water to the surface.
Researchers assign different colors to
each indicator: green is good, yellow is
fair and red is bad news.
See Salmon, Page A6
Former
firefighter
sues over
discrimination
A $5 million complaint
By ABBEY McDONALD
The Astorian
igi Thompson doesn’t remem-
ber the August night when
she knocked on her neigh-
bor’s front door, desperate for help.
She doesn’t remember getting in the
neighbor’s truck to go to the hospital,
or saying goodbye to her husband and
asking him to watch over their pets.
She doesn’t remember being trans-
ferred from Providence Seaside Hos-
pital to St. Vincent Medical Center in
Portland the next day, or getting the
scars on her neck.
What she does remember, from
moments in and out of conscious-
ness, is the feeling of the oxygen mask
tight on her face and her sense of
suffocation.
She remembers a nightmare that
seemed so real, where she died and
cold hands pulled her into the dark-
ness of a mortuary drawer as she
kicked at them and begged God for
more time. She doesn’t think she’ll
ever forget that.
G
By ERICK BENGEL
The Astorian
Providence Seaside Hospital staff clap for Gigi Thompson as she leaves to return home.
Thompson spent 122 days in
the hospital after contracting
COVID-19.
Her neighbor drove her to Prov-
idence Seaside on Aug. 15, and she
was quickly transferred to St. Vin-
cent, where she stayed until early
November. She then spent another
month back in Seaside, getting
less-intensive treatment and physical
therapy.
Thompson has pieced together
what happened through conversations
with doctors, family and friends.
Her neighbor filled her in about the
night she was admitted. Her daughter
told her she had approved the emer-
gency tracheotomy that cut into her
neck, leaving scars but saving her
life. After she woke from a month-
long coma, a doctor told her she had
nearly died twice.
A former paramedic firefighter at the
Knappa Fire District is suing for more
than $5 million, alleging she experienced
gender-based discrimination and harass-
ment at work.
Amy Lenz joined the fire district in
2003 and served as an emergency med-
ical services officer.
Her claims against the fire district
were the basis of a state Bureau of Labor
and Industries report issued in December
2020. The bureau found substantial evi-
dence that the fire district engaged in an
unlawful employment practice, including
subjecting Lenz to “disparate treatment
and a hostile work environment based on
her sex.”
The Bureau of Labor and Industries
declined to press charges last summer.
Lenz is pursuing a lawsuit with Port-
land-based Dolan Law Group PC.
See COVID-19, Page A6
See Lawsuit, Page A6
SEASIDE
Firefighter finds purpose in preparing recruits
Former
Marine helps build
high school the fire service
sold for
$3.2 million C
By ERICK BENGEL
The Astorian
Local business
owners buy property
By R.J. MARX
The Astorian
SEASIDE — The Seaside
School District has sold the for-
mer high school to TM Develop-
ment LLC for $3.2 million.
Registered agents of TM
Development include business
owners Tom Utti, Mark Utti and
attorney Jeremy Rust.
“They do not have any imme-
diate plans that I’m aware of for
See School, Page A6
ANNON BEACH — As a
teenager, Lt. Shaunna White,
the recruitment and retention coor-
dinator at the Cannon Beach Rural
Fire Protection District, swore she
would never be a firefighter.
Her mother worked at Gear-
hart’s fire department, then at
Seaside’s. Her boyfriend, now
husband, T.J., worked at the Can-
non Beach department. And both
worked for Medix Ambulance Ser-
vice, as well.
With her loved ones’ pag-
ers going off more or less con-
stantly, White started to resent the
paramedic firefighter profession.
“Hated the fire industry, to be hon-
est,” she said.
After she and T.J. left the U.S.
Marine Corps, White struggled to
transition from the military mind-
set to civilian life. T.J. convinced
her to join the Cannon Beach fire
crew in 2014, the year two mem-
orable wildland fires — both the
Erick Bengel/The Astorian
Lt. Shaunna White, the recruitment and retention coordinator at the
Cannon Beach Rural Fire Protection District, sits atop a fire truck.
result of strong winds reigniting
slash piles — erupted in Arch Cape
and Falcon Cove, torching about
400 acres.
White asked if she could go on
the second fire — she had joined
the department a couple of months
before — and was told she was
too new. It was a formative disap-
pointment, one that motivated her
to gain as much knowledge and as
many certifications as she could.
Later, a new fire chief, Matt
Benedict, showed White how the
industry was “supposed to be,”
she said: organized, hierarchical,
team-oriented and full of camara-
derie — the parts of the military
she didn’t realize she’d missed.
White was ready to pursue fire-
fighting as a career. “I saw the
road of what I needed to do,” she
recalled.
White went on to earn her asso-
ciate degree in fire science from
Clatsop Community College. Can-
non Beach hired her full time in
2019. She is currently pursuing
her bachelor’s degree in fire ser-
vices administration through East-
ern Oregon University and minor-
ing in communications.
The construction throughout
Cannon Beach worries her. Many
homes and buildings have cedar
shake siding or resemble log cab-
ins. Structures are frequently not
up to code — several major hotels
don’t have sprinkler systems, for
example. And the fire department
hasn’t had a full-time fire marshal
See White, Page A6