A2
THE ASTORIAN • THURSDAY, JANUARY 20, 2022
SMALL
SURGE
IN BRIEF
State reports 134 virus cases for county
The Oregon Health Authority reported 134 new coro-
navirus cases for Clatsop County over the Martin Luther
King Jr. holiday weekend.
Since the pandemic began, the county had recorded
3,514 virus cases and 37 deaths as of Tuesday.
National Guard personnel to help at
local hospitals during virus surge
The Oregon National Guard is sending personnel to
Clatsop County hospitals to take pressure off staff during
a spike in coronavirus cases.
Five service members will be posted at Columbia
Memorial Hospital in Astoria, where they will help in
housekeeping and laundry services.
“This is where we have the greatest need,” Nancee
Long, the hospital’s director of communications, said in
an email.
Another fi ve will be posted at Providence Seaside
Hospital.
“They will help as extra hands in a variety of nonclin-
ical settings, such as housekeeping, food and nutrition
services, materials management and access monitors,”
Mike Antrim, the senior manager of communications at
Providence, said in an email.
Luke Whittaker/Chinook Observer
Astoria man dies in crash in Brownsmead
A wave crashed into the cliff s at Waikiki Beach on the Long Beach Peninsula on Saturday morning during a tsunami advisory.
An Astoria man died Sunday in a crash in Brownsmead.
Douglas Graham, 57, of Astoria, went off the road in
his car and into a slough at the intersection of Browns-
mead Dike Lane and Leino Road. He was pronounced
dead at the scene, the Clatsop County Sheriff ’s Offi ce said.
Volcanic tsunami tests emergency systems
By JAMIE HALE
The Oregonian
Retired corrections offi cer
to run for state House
Glenn Gaither, of Seaside, has fi led to run in the
Republican primary for state House District 32.
Gaither is a retired corrections offi cer with the Wash-
ington State Department of Corrections.
State Rep. Suzanne Weber, R-Tillamook, is giving up
the North Coast seat to campaign for Senate District 16.
— The Astorian
Omicron onslaught continues
in Pacifi c County
LONG BEACH, Wash. — Omicron has arrived with
a vengeance in Pacifi c County, as local health offi cials
reported nearly 300 confi rmed cases of COVID-19 over
just the past week, along with a handful of hospitaliza-
tions and two more deaths.
According to the county health department, 296 new
cases of the virus were reported locally over the past
week as of Monday, for a total of 2,836 cases. Five more
county residents were hospitalized over the past week,
bringing the total to 136.
Two more people died away due to complications
from COVID-19, bringing the county’s pandemic death
toll to 42. Both individuals were in their 60s.
— Chinook Observer
DEATHS
Jan. 16, 2022
In GRAHAM,
Brief
Doug-
las Alan Sr., 57, of Asto-
ria, died in Astoria.
Deaths
Caldwell’s
Luce-Lay-
ton Mortuary of Asto-
ria is in charge of the
arrangements.
RUSSELL,
Betty
Lou, 93, of Astoria, died
in Astoria. Caldwell’s
Luce-Layton Mortuary of
Astoria is in charge of the
arrangements.
ON THE RECORD
Sexual abuse
The crimes are alleged to
On
the
Record
• Loren
Christopher
have occurred earlier this
Tarabochia, 48, of Pend-
leton, was indicted last
week for using a child
in a display of sexu-
ally explicit conduct,
failure to report as a
sex off ender, unlaw-
ful contact with a child,
attempted sodomy in the
third degree and sexual
abuse in the third degree.
The crimes are alleged to
have occurred in Clatsop
County between July and
January.
Assault
• Mark Allan Spur-
lock, 41, of Astoria, was
indicted on Tuesday on
charges of unlawful use
of a weapon, strangula-
tion, assault in the fourth
degree and menacing.
month.
Theft
• Samuel Joe John-
son, Jr., 32, of Clatsop
County, was arrested
on Monday for theft in
the second degree and
criminal trespass in the
fi rst degree. The alleged
crimes occurred at Fred
Meyer in Warrenton.
DUII
• Dylan Robert Rabell,
27, of Warrenton, was
arrested on Tuesday on
S. Main Avenue in War-
renton for driving under
the infl uence of intox-
icants, driving on a
revoked license, driving
uninsured and failing to
install an ignition inter-
lock device.
PUBLIC MEETINGS
THURSDAY
PUBLIC MEETINGS
Seaside Transportation Advisory Commission, 6 p.m.,
(USPS 035-000)
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Mark Graves/The Oregonian
Some people went to the beach in Seaside on Saturday to catch a glimpse of the ocean after a
tsunami advisory.
said, and not wait for an offi -
cial alert.
In contrast, communi-
ties had several hours to pre-
pare Saturday, and most
didn’t bother with evacua-
tions, which proved to be
unnecessary.
“Yesterday’s events are
a really good test run and
reminder that we need to have
tsunami preparedness at the
top of our minds,” Tobin said
on Sunday.
People should have heeded
the alerts, he said, even though
scientists didn’t have the usual
playbook at hand with the vol-
canic tsunami.
For instance, he said, earth-
quakes are so baked into tsu-
nami alerts that when the
U.S. Tsunami Warning Sys-
tem issues a warning, it has to
include the magnitude of the
event. The volcanic eruption
that caused Saturday’s tsu-
nami didn’t have a magnitude,
so offi cials simply input "0.1,"
he said, a fi gure that initially
befuddled some researchers.
The unprecedented nature
of the volcanic tsunami off
Tonga also left offi cials
uncertain about how long it
would last, though they were
able to predict how soon it
would arrive. By the time
waves began to swell along
the Pacifi c coast, word had
already spread across the
region, aided by social media
and media reports, as well as
state and local alert systems.
But that time also gave
people time to drive out to
the coast and see the tsunami
for themselves — an activ-
ity that researchers and emer-
gency offi cials all adamantly
not be anywhere near as col-
orful or as interesting as it is
now,” Menge said.
Throughout the study,
the team measured environ-
mental factors, and found a
strong association between
changes to temperature and
the weakening recovery rate.
“With climate change, the
biggest thing that’s chang-
ing — at least in the imme-
diate sense — is tempera-
ture. So I think it’s fairly
clear that these are probably
related directly or indirectly
to warming,” Menge said.
They believe the fi ndings
apply to the North Coast
and beyond. Though results
varied depending on local
wildlife populations, signs
of declining resilience and
increasing variation were
found at all sites.
Though more visible
signs of climate change occur
off shore, such as the move-
ment of fi sh populations to
deeper water, Gravem said
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condemn.
Ana Santilli, who sells
soda and beer at the Turn-
around Market in Seaside,
woke up to a mobile alert
from the city about the tsu-
nami advisory, but went to
work anyway, only to fi nd an
early crowd of onlookers at
the beach, she told The Ore-
gonian on Saturday.
It was a similar scene at
towns up and down the Ore-
gon C oast, where people
fl ocked to viewpoints and
beaches in coastal communi-
ties — despite explicit warn-
ings from offi cials to stay
away — to catch a glimpse at
the incoming waves.
Contrary to their depic-
tion in some blockbuster mov-
ies, tsunamis don’t show up as
towering, crashing waves, but
as larger-than-normal swells.
Shaky YouTube videos of the
2004 tsunami in the Indian
Ocean, for example, off er a
much better depiction of the
disaster than the dramatization
of the event in the 2010 movie
“Hereafter.”
An inaccurate percep-
tion could lead to misplaced
excitement about seeing a
tsunami in person and might
result in people making dan-
gerous decisions like walk-
ing out to the beach and along
jetties, or even paddling out
to surf the incoming waves,
Tobin said. Most people don’t
have a good grasp on what a
3-foot wave actually looks
like, let alone a 100-foot wave,
and that might make them
misjudge the danger.
Most waves in Oregon
reached only about a foot or
less, with the largest reported
swell cresting at 1.5 feet near
Port Orford, according to the
National Weather Service.
But Tobin noted: “Just
because (tsunamis) are travel-
ing across the ocean from far
away, and it’s not being pre-
dicted to be a massive wave,
doesn’t mean there’s not
danger.”
The 2011 tsunami caused
by a 9.1-magnitude earth-
quake off the coast of Japan
is a prime example. While
not nearly as damaging in the
Pacifi c Northwest as it was
in Japan, the event still sent
waves up to 6 feet high to U.S.
shores, destroying docks and
causing other damage up and
down the Oregon C oast. Res-
cuers in Gold Beach strug-
gled against the waves to save
a woman who was pulled out
to sea.
Ross said while recent
events should instill more cau-
tion, some people will always
be drawn to the allure of tsu-
namis, either unaware of or
apathetic to the dangers they
bring.
“Sadly, it’s fairly normal,”
she said. “We’ve seen enough
tsunamis that we know it hap-
pens and sometimes people
die because of it.”
From the public’s reaction
to actions taken by state and
local offi cials, she said it’s still
too soon to do a proper post-
mortem on what happened
Saturday and the public’s
response.
“There’s a lot we have to
learn from this, and I think it’s
going to take a while to really
work it all out,” Ross said. “I
think we have our work cut
out for us.”
Ecosystem: Growing evidence on the shore is notable
Continued from Page A1
City Hall, 989 Broadway.
Established July 1, 1873
The tsunami that rippled
across the Pacifi c Ocean on
Saturday may have been a
good test run for the Pacifi c
Northwest’s emergency alert
systems, but it’s not yet clear
how useful the experience will
be in preparing Oregonians
for a major disaster.
Caused not by an earth-
quake but a massive erup-
tion of an undersea vol-
cano near the Pacifi c nation
of Tonga, the explosion sent
larger-then-normal swells up
the Oregon, Washington state
and California coastline in a
rare event that researchers and
emergency management offi -
cials are still trying to wrap
their heads around.
Stephanie Ross, a geo-
physicist with the U.S. Geo-
logical Survey and a tsunami
scenarios coordinator with the
Pacifi c Coastal and Marine
Science Center in Santa Cruz,
California, said the volca-
nic tsunami was unprece-
dented in the modern era and
the fi rst time the U.S. Tsunami
Warning Centers have issued
an alert based on a volcanic
source.
“We know they’re possi-
ble but it’s just not something
that we deal with very often,”
Ross said. “There’s just a lot
of uncertainty around a com-
plicated event like this.”
What researchers do know
is that there are a lot of dif-
ferences between a volcanic
tsunami far off in the Pacifi c
Ocean and a tsunami triggered
by an earthquake, especially
a Cascadia Subduction Zone
earthquake that Oregonians
are most concerned about.
One of the biggest diff er-
ences is time — as in, how
much time it takes for a tsu-
nami to reach shore and how
long people have to escape.
Harold Tobin, the director
of the Pacifi c Northwest Seis-
mic Network and a profes-
sor of seismology at the Uni-
versity of Washington, said
coastal communities would
have only fi ve to 10 minutes
to fl ee a tsunami caused by
a major earthquake just off -
shore. People on the coast
should evacuate immediately
if they feel an earthquake, he
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the growing evidence on the
shore is notable.
“I think, in the subtidal,
we’re seeing these changes.
They’re slapping us in the
face. So if anything, they’re
stronger there,” she said.
Menge said the fi ndings
are startling because, since
the 1980s, data from the
intertidal zone had depicted
a stress-resistant ecosystem
despite climate change. For
decades, the species had sta-
ble populations that looked
unaff ected.
“What that means is there
can be some pretty stark
changes that are going on
that are hidden,” Menge
said. “And to us they were
hidden until we analyzed
these experimental data and
saw: ‘Whoa, the system is
responding.’”
The researchers said
that a large-scale eff ort to
address climate change will
be needed to address the
issue.
“This is a big mess,”
Gravem said. “And without
really addressing all these
emissions, and changing our
electric grid to renewable
energy, we’re not going to
stop seeing this stuff . And we
need national legislation and
international legislation.”
“It needs to have teeth,”
Menge added. “The science
has been clear for decades.
And scientists have been
warning the public and pol-
iticians for as long as that,
and it’s been largely ignored
because it’s inconvenient to
change how you live.”