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OFF PAGE ONE
East Oregonian
Wednesday, July 6, 2016
KOVACH: Wants to focus attendance efforts on younger students
Contributed photo by Ricardo Lara
Extensive damage to a house on West Crockett Lane in
Milton-Freewater can be seen after the home caught
ire Monday night. An oficial cause is yet to be deter-
mined but residents suspect ireworks.
FIRE: District 1 responded to
four ires cause by ireworks
Continued from 1A
never burned during a ire-
works show before.
“Usually
with
the
prevailing winds and the way
they shoot, we’re good,” he
said.
Stanton said there was
only one truck on scene at the
bottom of the butte when the
ire started because District 1
was also standing by for the
Stanield show, in addition to
responding to a dumpster ire
and a separate brush ire at the
same time.
In total the department
responded to six ires, four
of which were caused by
ireworks. One not related
to ireworks was a structure
ire on Southwest 23rd Street
early Monday morning,
which caused signiicant
damage to the attic of a home.
Stanton said it seemed
like a fairly average Fourth of
July weekend.
“We’ve seen busier,” he
said.
In Milton-Freewater, the
cause of a house ire on West
Crockett Road late Monday
night is still under investiga-
tion by the Milton-Freewater
Fire Department, but one of
the home’s residents, Ricardo
Lara, believes it was caused
by neighbors’ ireworks.
He lived in the home —
which is a total loss — with
his mother and brothers, as
well as two of his brother’s
children that spend 50 percent
of their time there. He said the
family shot off some of their
own small, legal ireworks
before bed but heard other,
louder ireworks late into the
night.
“We kept hearing them
closer and closer,” he said. “I
was dozing off and the next
thing I know my brother is
telling me the house is on ire.”
They tried to hose down
the house and pull out what
possessions they could,
he said, but “we didn’t get
much.”
The Red Cross assisted
the family with temporary
shelter, and Lara said family
friend Lucy Munoz has set
up a GoFundMe account for
them and is taking donations
while they work with the
insurance company.
Pendleton Fire Chief Mike
Ciraulo said his department
responded to a total of 11
ireworks-related ires over
the holiday weekend.
He said there was one
“amazing” house ire save
where a quick-thinking
neighbor managed to put a
ire out themselves before the
ire trucks arrived, preventing
what could have easily been a
multi-structure ire.
Ciraulo said only using
legal ireworks, reading
instructions carefully and
keeping them well away from
brush can help prevent most
ires.
“I would say that the
majority (of ireworks-related
ires) are caused by illegal
use,” he said. “The second
leading cause would be
misuse of legal ireworks, or
a misunderstanding of how
“We kept hearing
them closer and
closer. I was
dozing off and
the next thing I
know my brother
is telling me the
house is on ire.”
— Ricardo Lara, resident
of Milton-Freewater house
destroyed by ire
they work.”
He said the ground bloom
lowers, which emit sparks
as they spin around on the
ground, are some of the worst
offenders because they have a
tendency to go spinning out
of control and into nearby
shrubbery that is often highly
lammable in spite of its green
appearance.
Ciraulo said ireighters
would much rather see people
head to the nearest commu-
nity ireworks show instead
of lighting off their own.
Those shows tend to cause
ires, too — Pendleton Fire
Department put out eight
different spots of ire caused
by the city show — but at
least the ire department is
standing by ready to intervene
the moment a lame is visible.
In Ione, the ireworks
show was actually cut off due
to a ire sparked by falling
embers. The all-volunteer
ire department couldn’t
be reached Tuesday, but a
post on the Ione 4th of July
Facebook page noted that the
show was cut short due to a
brush ire that started shortly
after the show began, but “our
volunteer iremen were on it
quick and have it out.”
Despite the ires, Nick
Bejarano, spokesman for
Good Shepherd Health Care
System, said the Hermiston
hospital didn’t see any ire-
works-related injuries in the
emergency room over the
weekend this year, including
smoke inhalation caused by
ires.
He said the hospital, too,
urged people to carefully read
the directions if they were
going to set off their own
ireworks.
Less than an hour after
the Fourth of July weekend
oficially ended at midnight,
ireighters from Hermiston
and Pendleton were called
out to a large brush ire on
Highway 37 near Pendleton.
Ciraulo said it grew to about
500 acres, and there was a
lare-up again later in the
day, but so far there was no
indication that it was caused
by ireworks.
———
Contact Jade McDowell at
jmcdowell@eastoregonian.
com or 541-564-4536.
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Continued from 1A
student performance.
At his previous job as the
principal of Ontario High
School, Kovach helped raise
graduation rates from the
low 50s to a shade under 70
percent.
Kovach said his transition
to Pendleton will be made
easier by the groundwork the
district has already started.
Answering
questions
during an interview at
Lincoln Primary School
earlier in the day, the
evidence of this groundwork
surrounded Kovach as
workers from Kirby Nagel-
hout Construction busied
themselves converting the
former elementary school
into the district’s new central
ofice.
Thanks to a $55 million
bond, Kovach is entering
the district with two new
elementary schools, an early
learning center, a career
technical education center
and improved facilities
across the district.
Kovach said the district’s
continuing focus on career
technical
education
is
important in making sure
every child’s aspiration is
addressed, whether that
be a four-year university,
a community college or
entering the workforce
straight out of high school.
“We need to meet the
children where they are,” he
said.
Staff photo by Kathy Aney
Incoming Pendleton Schools Superintendent Andy Kovach chats Tuesday with
Jason Terry, of Kirby Nagelhout Construction, about the renovation of Lincoln
School into administrative ofices.
Kovach also said the
district needs to focus
its attendance efforts on
younger students who
hadn’t been ingrained with
absentee habits.
“In short, it’s too late by
the time they reach high
school,” he said.
At the meeting, Kovach
also presented a plan for his
irst 100 days as superinten-
dent.
The plan acted as a guide
to the leader he wanted to
mold himself into, opening
lines of communication with
the district’s various constit-
uencies and identifying the
best improvement methods
for the district.
“I have three promises,”
Kovach told the board. “I
want to tell the truth, I want
to make decisions based on
what’s best for kids and I
want to keep an eye on the
budget. My experience has
been if you can do those
three things as superinten-
dent, you can go a long way
towards running a successful
program.”
Having oficially started
the job July 1, Kovach
was only into his second
workday of his irst 100
days as superintendent and
is just starting to settle into
his McKay Creek home.
Kovach grew up in Salem
but made a career in Eastern
Oregon, having served as a
teacher and administrator
in Ontario, Nyssa, Harney
County and Crane.
“I’m not allergic to sage
brush,” he joked.
Kovach, 51, brings his
wife Becki, his son Jeff, a
high school senior and his
22-year-old daughter Gabri-
elle.
———
Contact Antonio Sierra
at asierra@eastoregonian.
com or 541-966-0836.
BRIEFLY
ISIS tightens grip on
captives held as sex slaves
KHANKE, Iraq (AP) — The
advertisement on the Telegram app is
as chilling as it is incongruous: A girl
for sale is “Virgin. Beautiful. 12 years
old.... Her price has reached $12,500
and she will be sold soon.”
The posting in Arabic appeared
on an encrypted conversation along
with ads for kittens, weapons and
tactical gear. It was shared with The
Associated Press by an activist with
the minority Yazidi community,
whose women and children are being
held as sex slaves by the extremists.
While the Islamic State group
is losing territory in its self-styled
caliphate, it is tightening its grip on
the estimated 3,000 women and girls
held as sex slaves. In a fusion of
ancient barbaric practices and modern
technology, IS sells the women like
chattel on smart phone apps and
shares databases that contain their
photographs and the names of their
“owners” to prevent their escape
through IS checkpoints. The ighters
are assassinating smugglers who
rescue the captives, just as funds to
buy the women out of slavery are
drying up.
UK’s Iraq War report
could make grim reading
for Tony Blair
LONDON (AP) — Thirteen years
after British troops marched into
Iraq and seven years after they left a
country that’s still mired in violence,
a mammoth oficial report is about to
address the lingering question: What
went wrong?
On Wednesday, retired civil
servant John Chilcot will publish his
long-delayed, 2.6 million-word report
on the divisive war and its chaotic
aftermath. The U.S.-led conlict killed
179 British troops and some 4,500
American personnel. It also helped
trigger violence that killed hundreds
of thousands of Iraqis and still rocks
the Middle East.
And it overshadows the legacy of
former Prime Minister Tony Blair.
“Despite all the many other things
he did — and many people would
argue lots of positive achievements
— he will always be remembered for
this fateful decision in 2003,” said
Malcolm Chalmers, deputy director-
general of defense think tank the
Royal United Services Institute.