A2
THE ASTORIAN • SATURDAY, APRIL 9, 2022
IN BRIEF
TAKING
A BREAK
Seaside man sentenced to prison for theft
Damien James Arrin Ruiz, 27, of Seaside, was sen-
tenced on Thursday to fi ve years in prison for several
thefts and burglaries that took place in 2020 and 2021.
In July 2020, he committed fi rst-degree aggravated
theft at End of Trail Public House in Seaside, second-de-
gree burglary at the Seaside Elks Lodge and Inca’s Inc.
clothing store and second-degree theft by removing
items from septic trucks.
In November 2020, he committed second-degree
burglary at Seaside Rentals and the Clatsop Behavioral
Healthcare offi ce in Seaside.
And in November, he committed second-degree bur-
glary at Astoria law offi ces.
Two sea gulls sit on a beach access
sign at Fort Stevens State Park.
Lydia Ely/The Astorian
Astoria to make emergency
sanitary sewer repair downtown
An emergency repair to a sanitary sewer main in
downtown Astoria will begin Monday.
The city will close 10th Street at Commercial Street
while the repairs are made. The work is expected to take
three days, and the city anticipates traffi c impacts will
be minimal.
Immunization deadline set for schools
The deadline to meet annual state school immuniza-
tion requirements is April 20.
Families are required to show proof of immunization
for children attending school, preschool or child care.
The Clatsop County Public Health Department had
extended the deadline due to the challenges of the coro-
navirus pandemic.
The required vaccinations diff er based on age and
grade. The Oregon Health Authority lists the require-
ments on their website.
A coronavirus vaccine is not an immunization
required by the state.
— The Astorian
Day resigns from Pacifi c County
Tourism directorship
SEAVIEW, Wash. —Andi Day, the executive director
of Pacifi c County Tourism, is resigning at the end of June.
She will stay on while a search is made for her
replacement.
Day, one of Washington’s leading destination man-
agement executives, is stepping aside after 10 years.
She plans to reinstate her marketing consulting business
and provide her destination marketing, management and
development services to a wider industry base.
— Chinook Observer
Environmental groups fail to stop
southern Oregon logging projects
Environmental groups have failed to convince a fed-
eral judge to block two logging and fuels reduction proj-
ects on 8,000 acres of public forestland in southern
Oregon.
U.S. District Judge Ann Aiken has refused to issue a
preliminary injunction against the U.S. Bureau of Land
Management’s Bear Grub and Round Oak projects
because the environmental lawsuit against them proba-
bly won’t succeed.
The Klamath Siskiyou Wildlands Center, Oregon
Wild and Cascadia Wildlands nonprofi ts are unlikely
to prevail on their claims that federal wildlife biologists
improperly considered the eff ects of forest treatments on
threatened spotted owls, the judge said.
— Capital Press
DEATHS
In Brief
Deaths
April 7, 2022
ROEHR,
Ernestine
Joy, 77, of Astoria, died
in Astoria. Caldwell’s
Luce-Layton Mortuary of
Astoria is in charge of the
arrangements.
April 6, 2022
ENGLISH, Ronald Vin-
cent, 78, of Astoria, died
in Astoria. Ocean View
Funeral & Cremation Ser-
vice of Astoria is in charge
of the arrangements.
PUBLIC MEETINGS
MONDAY
Warrenton Parks Advisory Board, 4 p.m., (electronic
meeting).
Port of Astoria Airport Advisory Committee, 4 p.m.,
terminal building, Astoria Regional Airport, 1110 S.E. Flight
Line Dr, Warrenton.
Seaside City Council, 7 p.m., City Hall, 989 Broadway.
TUESDAY
Clatsop County Planning Commission, 10 a.m., (elec-
tronic meeting).
Cannon Beach City Council, 6 p.m., work session and
special meeting, City Hall, 163 E Gower Ave.
Clatsop Community College Board of Education, 6 p.m.,
work session, Columbia 219, 1651 Lexington Ave.
Lewis & Clark Fire Department Board, 6 p.m., main fi re
station, 34571 U.S. Highway 101 Business.
Warrenton City Commission, 6 p.m., City Hall, 225 S. Main
Ave.
PUBLIC MEETINGS
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Steigerwald
wildlife refuge
to reopen after
restoration
Associated Press
The largest habitat res-
toration project along the
lower Columbia River
is coming to a close this
spring.
The Steigerwald Lake
National Wildlife Ref-
uge, east of Washougal in
Clark County, is slated to
reopen May 1 after almost
two years of being inter-
mittently closed to the
public.
The roughly $31 mil-
lion project to decrease
fl ooding and increase
salmon and steelhead
migration was funded, in
part, by the Bonneville
Power Administration, the
Washington Department
of Ecology, the National
Fish and Wildlife Foun-
dation, the U.S. Fish and
Wildlife Service and the
Bonneville Environmental
Foundation.
Updates
included
removing a levee that sep-
arated the Columbia River
from nearby Gibbons
Creek, which offi cials say
reopened a natural path-
way for salmon and steel-
head migration and will
prevent the creek from
fl ooding, the Daily News
reported.
Before removing the
levee, fi sh could only
bypass the embank-
ment through a fi sh lad-
der, which is a series of
pools built to allow fi sh to
swim over obstacles like
dams. The fi sh ladder was
removed.
The levee was con-
structed by the U.S. Army
Corps of Engineers in
the 1960s to prevent the
Columbia River from
fl ooding the refuge. How-
ever, it exacerbated Gib-
bons Creek’s fl ooding,
which often spilled into
the Port of Camas-Wash-
ougal property.
Oregon adds to its network
of wildfi re-spotting cameras
By ALEX BAUMHARDT
Oregon Capital Chronicle
Oregon will soon have
nearly 60 cameras across the
state perched on cellphone
towers, old fi re towers and
mountaintops, watching for
forest fi res across the state.
The cameras, part of the
ALERTWildfi re
network,
help fi re departments and
state agencies spot wildfi res
early, predict their move-
ments and slow their spread.
They also allow Oregonians
the opportunity to make evac-
uation decisions early, based
on their proximity to fi res.
T he network has two
dozen cameras, which will
more than double with new
state money.
Legislators in February
appropriated $4.5 million to
the Oregon Hazards Lab at
the University of Oregon to
add at least 29 cameras across
the state over the next year.
Most of the two dozen cur-
rently operating are in south-
east and western Oregon.
New cameras will be con-
centrated in the Rogue Valley
and in the Bend, Richmond
and La Pine areas.
The video streams are
accessible online 24 hours
a day, seven days a week, to
the public and to emergency
response agencies and fi re-
fi ghters, who can also use a
time-lapse feature to go back
and trace the origins of a fi re.
Additionally, artifi cial intelli-
gence software in the system
can detect smoke and alert
fi re agencies and emergency
responders.
Such a forest surveillance
system was fi rst implemented
around Lake Tahoe in 2014
by the University of Nevada,
Reno and has expanded to
Oregon, California, Washing-
ton state and Idaho in part-
nership with state and fed-
eral agencies and public
universities.
The Oregon expansion
InciWeb
Legislators appropriated $4.5 million to the Oregon Hazards
Lab for more cameras.
is spearheaded by Doug
Toomey, a geophysicist and
director of the Oregon Haz-
ards Lab, where scientists
study natural disasters in the
Pacifi c Northwest and search
for ways to use technology to
monitor and mitigate them.
Toomey hopes the cam-
era’s will be useful to peo-
ple living in areas prone to
wildfi re.
“You don’t have to sit and
wait to see if your home is
being evacuated. You can see
what things look like in real
time,” he said.
In California, the system
has allowed fi re agencies to
respond more strategically
to fi res when they begin to
move. During the Lilac fi re
in San Diego County in 2017,
several fi re departments
collaborated to double the
size of their initial response
within the fi rst 10 minutes of
fl ames spreading. They could
see the size of the fi re from
the elevated cameras rather
than waiting to assess on the
ground, according to a CBS
news report.
Toomey said the Oregon
Hazards Lab can program
cameras to gray out homes or
businesses upon request for
privacy reasons. He said, for
the most part, people living
within view of the fi re cam-
eras have seen the benefi ts
outweigh concerns.
The number of cameras in
Oregon are still small in com-
parison to other states that are
part of the ALERTWildfi re
collaborative. In California,
the network has more than
1,000 cameras positioned
around the state, including
dozens near the border with
Oregon.
“It is a great start to have
this money, but we have a
long way to go,” Toomey
said.
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