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WEDNESDAY, MARCH 29, 2017
141st Year, No. 117
WINNER OF THE 2016 ONPA GENERAL EXCELLENCE AWARD
One dollar
Woman killed in Highway 11 crash
By GEORGE PLAVEN
East Oregonian
One woman is dead following
a multiple vehicle crash Tuesday
afternoon on Highway 11 near
Adams.
Authorities have not identifi ed
the victim, but said she was
ejected from her Ford Explorer
after it rolled and landed upside
down next to a wheat fi eld
along the northbound lane of
the highway. Shawn Penninger,
Pendleton assistant fi re chief, said
she was the only person in the
SUV and died before emergency
crews arrived.
Two other semi-trucks were
also involved in the wreck. Both
truck drivers and one passenger
were not hurt.
Fire
departments
from
Pendleton, Athena and Helix
all responded, as well as the
Oregon Department of Transpor-
tation and Oregon State Police. A
hazardous materials team from
Hermiston was also called in
to clean up about 50 gallons of
diesel fuel that leaked from one
of the trucks.
Highway 11 was closed into
the evening near milepost 8, and
See CRASH/8A
Smithsonian Institution photo
Layer by layer, a whale’s earwax ac-
cumulates into a large plug over the
animal’s lifetime, sealing all sorts of
information in wax. The sample ap-
pears in the Objects of Wonder exhib-
it at the National Museum of Natural
History in Washington, D.C.
Earwax
tells whale
of a tale
Pendleton grad seeks insight
into whales’ environment
By KATHY ANEY
East Oregonian
Staff photo by E.J. Harris
Umatilla County Public Works Department operator Jerad Mitchell drives a grader while working on Midway Road on Tuesday
north of Pendleton.
What winter left behind
Umatilla County catching
up on road damage
By PHIL WRIGHT
East Oregonian
Jerad Mitchell rumbled along in the high
seat of the dirt-covered grader, guiding the
big machine to smooth the gravel bumps
and dips on Midway Road north of Pend-
leton.
Tuesday’s weather provided the Umatilla
County road crew another opportunity
to tune up surfaces after one of the worst
winters on record. Tom Fellows, director
of county public works, said it looked
like Mitchell was having a good day. That
meant he would complete four miles of the
road work on his shift.
Umatilla County maintains about 1,700
miles of roads, Fellows said, the second-
most road miles of any county in Oregon.
Around 500 of those are paved.
The rest are gravel.
See ROADS/8A
Staff photo by E.J. Harris
North Fourth Street just outside of Hermiston is showing signs of raveling, the
breaking down of pavement, due to the winter weather.
HERMISTON
City taking HART data to heart
Snow days caused problems for new bus system
By JADE MCDOWELL
East Oregonian
Hermiston’s bus service is
catching on after a snowy start.
The Hermiston HART, which
started offering free rides around
town at the beginning of the year,
averaged 24 rides a day in January
and 25 rides a day in February
despite a series of snowstorms that
disrupted service seven days in
January and once in February.
“That’s been a challenge,
obviously, because we are trying
to portray it as a reliable system,”
assistant city manager Mark
Morgan said.
Morgan thought March would
likely see 26 riders per day,
equaling nearly 600 riders for the
month. As the weather gets warmer
and more people realize the bus
is a free option open to anyone,
ridership is expected to continue
growing.
The bus is part of the Kayak
Public Transit system run by
the Confederated Tribes of the
Umatilla Indian Reservation. The
city of Hermiston contracts with
Kayak for the HART bus, and the
city’s transit advisory committee
helped put together the bus route
and will submit recommendations
about adjustments in the future.
Kristi Avery, who sits on
the committee, said the service
seems to be going “great” so far.
Avery is a lead personal agent for
Eastern Oregon Support Services
Brokerage, which serves clients
with disabilities and is the top
buyer of the city’s subsidized taxi
tickets for senior and disabled
residents.
She said the brokerage will be
doing some trainings and ride-
alongs with clients to help them
feel comfortable riding the bus for
free instead of using up their $2
taxi tickets.
“Sometimes new things come
with a little bit of anxiety,” she said.
See HART/8A
Scientist Sacsha Usenko gets odd looks
when he tells people he studies whale
earwax.
That whales even have earwax might
surprise many. And one might wonder
why anyone would want to study the fi shy
smelling stuff anyway.
Usenko, a 1997 Pendleton High School
grad and associate professor at Baylor
University, says
there are a multi-
tude of reasons.
“Studying
Before revealing
whales
them, however,
he described the
through their
inside of a whale’s
earwax is a
ear.
“Just like every
unique op-
other mammal,
whales
have
portunity to
earwax. Whales
are
unique make a giant
because their ear
contribution
is not external
— wax can’t
to the fi eld.”
leave their body,”
Usenko said. “The — Sacsha Usenko,
scientist, Pendleton
wax accumulates
High School grad,
in the ear canal
and forms a plug.” associate professor
The environ- at Baylor University
mental chemist
said these long,
rhubarb-shaped plugs consist of alternating
light and dark layers, each representing
about six months of a whale’s life. Dark
layers form when the whale is feeding.
Light layers appear during migration when
the animals don’t eat much.
Scientists have used earplugs for more
than a century to determine whales’ ages,
but Usenko and fellow Baylor scientist
Stephen Trumble wondered if they
could fi nd other interesting information
embedded in the wax.
Turns out, there was a treasure trove.
These wax plugs are akin to time capsules
that tell the tale of the whale’s life —
encounters with pollutants and stress, as
well as times of giving birth, nursing or
competing for mates. The two scientists
and their team got access to whale
earplugs from Smithsonian Institution
collections. The researchers examined the
archived museum samples harvested from
dead whales from as far back as the 1860s
and looked at how contaminants (such
as pesticides and metals) and hormones
(such as cortisol and testosterone) differed
from layer to layer. Usenko was ecstatic at
fi nding a way to fi ll something of a black
hole in knowledge about whales.
“These are animals in the sea who
travel great distances,” Usenko said. “We
don’t know a lot about them. It’s hard to
chase around a whale for its entire life.”
The presence of cortisol, the stress
See WHALES/8A