149TH YEAR, NO. 80
DailyAstorian.com // TUESDAY, JANUARY 4, 2022
$1.50
Shipping
troubles
snarl ag
exports
In Cannon Beach,
distinctive
tsunami sirens
need a new owner
Delays lead to increased costs
Maintenance and upgrades
are costly for the famous
‘mooing’ warning system
By GEORGE PLAVEN
Capital Press
TANGENT — As congestion at ocean
ports along the West Coast has continued ,
Alexis Jacobson has seen her schedule
thrown into chaos.
Jacobson is the international sales man-
ager for BOSSCO Trading, a company
based in Tangent that sells grass straw
from farms around the Willamette Valley
to customers in Japan and South Korea.
The straw is used as feed for beef and dairy
cattle.
Under normal circumstances, Jacobson
spends roughly an hour a day working with
ocean carriers to ensure their cargo makes
it aboard ships bound for Asia.
That was before COVID-19 infl amed a
nationwide shipping crisis that has snarled
ports, catapulted costs and left agricultural
exporters scrambling for options.
“We’re constantly making a plan, and
then changing that plan because of circum-
stances out of our control,” said Jacobson,
who now spends most of her time each day
calling audibles whenever a vessel is late
or the booking is canceled. Timetables are
constantly in fl ux, and often change with
only a few days’ notice.
BOSSCO Trading is hardly alone. Just
about every Northwest farm exporter —
from Oregon hazelnuts to Washington state
apples to Idaho potatoes — is feeling the
pinch.
Shipping containers that once sat on the
docks for three to eight days are now wait-
ing a month or longer to be loaded onto
vessels, depending on their destination.
In some cases, carriers are forego-
ing Asia-bound exports altogether, opt-
ing instead to send empty containers back
to Asia, where they are loaded with high-
er-priced merchandise such as clothing,
footwear and kitchen appliances. Critics
of the practice describe it as a money grab,
with the industry reporting record profi ts
this year of more than $200 billion.
The price of shipping exports from the
U.S. is also skyrocketing. Jacobson said
general rates that once ran $400 to $500
per container are now as high as $2,000 to
$2,500.
While that added cost can be tacked
onto the prices of most consumer goods,
farmers are largely price-takers, meaning
they cannot pass along higher costs.
Peter Friedmann, the executive direc-
tor of the Agriculture Transportation Coa-
lition, a trade group in Washington, D.C.,
that represents U.S. agricultural exporters,
said he has heard from at least one mem-
ber — a hay grower in Washington —
who did not bother cutting hay for the fi rst
time because he could not get his product
through the ports.
Delayed and canceled shipments hurt
By NICOLE BALES
The Astorian
ANNON BEACH — The city’s famous
“mooing” tsunami warning sirens are in
need of a new owner.
The Cannon Beach Rural Fire Protec-
tion District, which installed the Community
Warning System — known as COWS — in
the 1980s, has decided to move away from
managing the system.
Fire Chief Marc Reckmann said main-
tenance and upgrades are costly, making it
unsustainable for the fi re district to continue
to own and operate the seven 40-foot tall siren
towers around Cannon Beach and Arch Cape.
“It is outside of the district’s responsibil-
ity to manage those and maintain them,” he
said. “Emergency management does not fall
within a fi re district. It falls within a city and
a county.”
The fi re district’s board agreed to start try-
ing to shift the responsibility to the city or
county. I n the meantime, Reckmann said the
fi re district will continue to broadcast the
iconic mooing sound on the fi rst Wednesday
of every month.
Picked as a playful joke by the late fi re dis-
trict board member Alfred Aya Jr., the moo-
ing sound is a riff off of the system’s acronym .
C
See Sirens, Page A6
Photos by Lydia Ely/The Astorian
ABOVE: ‘Mooing’ sirens warn against
tsunamis in Cannon Beach. RIGHT: A tsunami
evacuation sign near Haystack Rock points
beachgoers uphill.
See Shipping, Page A6
A ruby holds a message of hope
part in that. We see this with vet-
erans of all wars. They start to rec-
ognize that they have more in com-
mon with the pawns on the other
side than the generals on their own
side.”
After her brother’s
death, Fairless hopes
to raise awareness
By R.J. MARX
The Astorian
A
ruby is helping Angela Fair-
less make sense of grief.
After two tours of military duty
and struggling with his war-related
injuries, as well as the diffi culty of
reentering civilian life, her brother,
Curtis Fairless, took his own life
on Dec. 16, 2018.
Angela Fairless and Lutheran
Community Services Northwest
will use proceeds from the sale of
a ruby her brother purchased at an
Afghan market to drive aware-
ness to Afghan refugees seeking
to settle in this country. Lutheran
Community Services Northwest
has been asked to resettle an esti-
mated 550 emergency evacuees.
The group launched a $2.5 million
campaign to help refugees fi nd sta-
bility in the Northwest.
Fairless hopes her brother’s
memory will draw attention to the
impacts of war, not only on civil-
ians, but on the soldiers on the
battlefi eld.
“We don’t hear the cries of the
children dying of war,” she said.
“Curtis was struggling with his
Military hero, yet struggling
Curtis Fairless was two years
older and one grade higher than
his sister, a good student and ath-
lete who graduated before he was
18. He went directly into the U.S.
Marine Corps after graduation
from Seaside High School. After
9/11, he served on the front lines of
the Iraq invasion as a mortarman in
the infantry.
When a rocket-propelled gre-
nade hit the Humvee he was driv-
ing, he took shrapnel to the head
and was transported to Kuwait.
Since he was at the end of his
See Hope, Page A2
Angela Fairless and her brother, Curtis.