ORANGE CRUSH
CLEMSON TOPPLES NO. 1 ‘BAMA FOR TITLE
SPORTS, B1
TUESDAY, JANUARY 8, 2019
143rd Year, No. 57
$1.50
WINNER OF THE 2018 ONPA GENERAL EXCELLENCE AWARD
FIRES RAVAGE TWO
PENDLETON HOMES
Hansell
introduces
fi refi ghting
legislation
Bills would give farmers
more freedom to fi ght fi res
By ANTONIO SIERRA
East Oregonian
Staff photo by Kathy Aney
Fire gutted a home at 1908 S.W. Goodwin about 3:30 a.m. Saturday.
See Hansell, Page A8
Family of fi ve loses
home, car and pets
Environmental
groups leave
wolf plan talks
By PHIL WRIGHT
East Oregonian
F
ires Friday and Saturday
destroyed two Pendleton homes.
“It took everything,” Alicia
Reynen said. “It took our two dogs,
and my cat and all the presents my
kids got for Christmas.”
She said her husband, Jesse Reynen,
was playing video games early Friday
when he spotted fl ames on the front
porch of their 1970 model trailer home
at Shadeview Mobile Home Park,
1437 S.W. 37th St. She called 911 at
1:14 a.m.
“He tried to fi nd a way to put it
out,” she said, “and I ran after my kids
because they were in two different
rooms.”
Alicia, Jesse and their three chil-
dren, Dean, 4, Breelynn, 6, and Ath-
ena, 8, escaped unharmed. Assistant
fi re chief Shawn Penninger said crews
rolled up at 1:17 a.m. and found the
heavy fi re engulfi ng the trailer home
and threatening to spread to more
homes.
In the wake of a July fi re that burned
80,000 acres of land in Sherman and
Wasco counties, state Sen. Bill Hansell
is introducing a package of bills that he
thinks will improve fi refi ghting efforts on
farmland.
The four bills sponsored by the Athena
Republican are intended
to provide fl exibility in
fi ghting wildfi res in the
area and move a previ-
ously unprotected land
into the Oregon State Fire
Marshal’s jurisdiction.
At its height, the Sub-
State Sen. Bill
station Fire was the larg-
Hansell
est fi re in the United
States, burning thousands
of acres of wheat in the process.
Hansell attended a debriefi ng on the
fi re with Gov. Kate Brown and several
other legislators in Sherman County.
Opposed to rule allowing
private citizens to kill wolves
By GILLIAN FLACCUS
Associated Press
Staff photo by Kathy Aney
Fire destroyed this mobile home at 1437 S.W. 37th Place on Friday.
“They concentrated their effort on
saving the adjacent trailer,” he said.
The fi re caused some minor exte-
rior damage to the next-door home,
Penninger said, but there was no hope
of saving the Reynen’s home. The fi re
also totaled their 2017 Jeep Renegade
in the driveway.
Penninger said the cause appears to
be hot coals from a wood stove. The
coals were in a bucket on the wood
deck, and something, perhaps the
wind, knocked over the bucket, spill-
ing the coals. He said he and the state
fi re marshal concluded the blaze was
an unfortunate accident.
See Fires, Page A8
PORTLAND — Environmental
groups in Oregon announced Monday
they have withdrawn from talks on how
to manage the state’s rebounding wolf
population because of what they called a
“broken” process, and concerns that state
wildlife offi cials want to make it easier to
kill wolves that eat livestock without try-
ing other alternatives.
The announcement came after months
of negotiations to update rules on how
and when wolves can be killed as their
numbers increase and they spread farther
west and south after reentering north-
eastern Oregon from Idaho more than a
decade ago.
See Groups, Page A8
EVERY DROP COUNTS
Local blood donations
can help save lives
around the country
By JADE MCDOWELL
East Oregonian
Lives were being saved at
the Hermiston Public Library on
Monday.
While
patrons
browsed
through books on the main fl oor,
people were trickling downstairs
into a city-sponsored Red Cross
blood drive.
Karis Miller, one of several
phlebotomists on-site, said Red
Cross employees in the Tri-Cit-
ies area spend their days traveling
to churches, athletic clubs, librar-
ies, hospitals, schools and other
places willing to host a drive.
“We do a lot of high schools,”
she said. “People 19 and under
make up a good 30 to 40 percent
of what we collect.”
On the other end of the spec-
trum are many retired donors who
have been donating regularly for
years.
“The older donors who donate
all the time are starting to pass
away and the next generation isn’t
stepping up,” Miller said.
After the blood is collected, it
is sent to a processing center in
Portland where it is tested for dis-
eases, such as hepatitis, and sepa-
rated out into three components:
red blood cells, plasma and plate-
lets. The components are then
packaged and sent to hospitals,
which have a contract with the
Red Cross for a certain amount
of blood per month in addition to
extra supplies during a crisis. Red
blood cells can be stored for up to
42 days, platelets are stored for
up to fi ve days and plasma can be
frozen and saved for up to a year.
Usually blood processed at
the Portland center will stay
nearby, but if there is a surplus or
a greater need somewhere else in
the country, a donation in Oregon
could end up in a patient in North
Carolina.
If a hospital in Eastern Oregon
needs more blood urgently, they
See Blood, Page A8
Staff photo by Kathy Aney/
Jennifer Fullerton watches as phlebotomist
Victor Reyna, of the Red Cross, tends to
the Umatilla woman during a blood drive
Monday in the basement of the Hermiston
Public Library.