A8
OFF PAGE ONE
East Oregonian
Thursday, April 18, 2019
Floods: ‘Never again’ becomes rallying cry
Continued from Page A1
AP Photo/File
In this April 10, 2019, file photo, provided by the North
Korean government, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un
attends the 4th Plenary Meeting of the 7th Central Com-
mittee of the Workers’ Party of Korea in Pyongyang.
North Korea says it
test-fired new tactical
guided weapon
By FOSTER KLUG AND
KIM TONG-HYUNG
Associated Press
SEOUL, South Korea
— North Korea said
Thursday that it had test-
fired a new type of “tac-
tical guided weapon,” its
first such test in nearly
half a year, and a possible
sign of its displeasure with
deadlocked nuclear talks
with the United States.
The test, which didn’t
appear to be of a banned
mid- or long-range ballis-
tic missile that could scut-
tle negotiations, allows
Pyongyang to show its
people it is pushing ahead
with weapons develop-
ment while also reassuring
domestic military officials
worried that diplomacy
with Washington signals
weakness.
The North’s leader,
Kim Jong Un, observed
the unspecified weapon
being fired Wednesday by
the Academy of Defense
Science, the North’s state-
run Korean Central News
Agency said. Kim was
reported to have said
“the development of the
weapon system serves as
an event of very weighty
significance in increasing
the combat power of the
People’s Army.”
The Associated Press
could not independently
verify North Korea’s
claim, and it wasn’t imme-
diately clear what had
been tested. A ballistic
missile test would jeop-
ardize the diplomatic
talks meant to provide the
North with concessions in
return for disarmament.
A South Korean analyst
said that details in the
North’s media report indi-
cate it could have been a
new type of cruise missile.
Another possible clue: One
of the lower level officials
mentioned in the North’s
report on the test — Pak
Jong Chon — is known as
an artillery official.
The test comes during
an apparent deadlock in
nuclear disarmament talks
after the failed summit in
Hanoi between Kim and
President Donald Trump
earlier this year. Some in
Seoul worry that the North
will turn back to actions
seen as provocative by out-
siders as a way to force
Washington to drop its
hardline negotiating stance
and grant the North’s
demand for a removal of
crushing
international
sanctions. A string of
increasingly
powerful
weapons tests in 2017 and
Trump’s response of “fire
and fury” had many fear-
ing war before the North
shifted to diplomacy.
The test came amid
media reports in South
Korean and Japan that
Kim plans to visit Vlad-
ivostok next week for
a summit with Russian
President Vladimir Putin.
Japan’s Fuji Television
Network on Wednesday
showed Kim’s de facto
chief of staff, Kim Chang
Son, visiting an area near
Vladivostok’s train station.
Ahead of Kim Jong Un’s
two summits with Trump,
Kim Chang Son visited
Singapore and Vietnam
in advance and handled
logistical preparations.
Trump said last month
that he “would be very dis-
appointed if I saw testing.”
As the diplomacy stalls,
there have been fresh
reports of new activity at
a North Korean missile
research center and long-
range rocket site where
Pyongyang is believed
to build missiles target-
ing the U.S. mainland.
North Korean media said
Wednesday that Kim
guided a flight drill of
combat pilots from an air
force and anti-aircraft unit
tasked with defending the
capital Pyongyang from an
attack.
During a speech at his
rubber-stamp parliament
last week, Kim set the
year’s end as a deadline for
Washington to offer mutu-
ally acceptable terms for
an agreement to salvage
diplomacy.
Kim Dong-yub, an ana-
lyst from Seoul’s Insti-
tute for Far Eastern Stud-
ies, said North Korea’s
descriptions of the test
show the weapon is pos-
sibly a newly developed
cruise missile. The North’s
report said the “tactical
guided weapon” success-
fully tested in a “peculiar
mode of guiding flight”
and demonstrated the abil-
ity to deliver a “powerful
warhead.”
The analyst said the
test could also be intended
as a message to the North
Korean people and mili-
tary of a commitment to
maintaining a strong level
of defense even as it con-
tinues talks with Washing-
ton over nukes.
Melissa Hanham, a
non-proliferation expert
and director of the Datayo
Project at the One Earth
Future Foundation, said
the North Korean weapon
could be anything from
an anti-tank weapon to a
cruise missile.
The North said Thurs-
day that Kim Jong Un
mounted an observation
post to learn about and
guide the test-fire of the
weapon.
This is the first known
time Kim has observed
the testing of a newly
developed weapon system
since last November, when
North Korean media said
he watched the success-
ful test of an unspecified
“newly developed ultra-
modern tactical weapon.”
Some observers have been
expecting North Korea
to orchestrate “low-level
provocations,” like artil-
lery or short-range missile
tests, to register its anger
over the way nuclear nego-
tiations were going.
North Korean officials
accompanying Kim at the
test included Ri Pyong
Chol and Kim Jong Sik,
two senior officials from
the North’s Munitions
Industry Department who
have been sanctioned by
the U.S. Treasury Depart-
ment for their activities
related to the country’s
ballistic missile program,
including the develop-
ment of solid-fuel mis-
siles and intercontinental
ballistic missiles poten-
tially capable of strik-
ing the U.S. mainland.
The
Pyongyang-based
department is sanctioned
both by the United States
and the U.N. Security
Council.
joined him that unless they
had new questions, he had
answered them as best he
could.
Kimbrel earlier explained
a month’s worth of rain fell
over the area in a mere three
days. Marc Austin with the
National Weather Service
said the downpour was a
record. The rain filled the
reservoir south of Pendle-
ton, and the water flowing
in exceeded the water going
out. Kimbrel called that a
“serious problem,” and he
had to open the flow and let
the water crash into McKay
Creek.
“We knew that was going
to be a problem for the down-
stream community,” he said
during his presentation.
That made little differ-
ence in the breakout session
to the folks giving Kimbrel
the third degree.
Steve Alderman attended
the presentation and tuned
into some of the exchanges
with Kimbrel. He and his
wife, Dawn Alderman, and
their family own Lavender
Road Botanicals, 10 acres
along McKay Creek where
four years ago they planted
several thousand lavender
plants. They grow culinary
lavender for cooking, and a
mature crop was coming up
for harvest, which they do
by hand. Dawn Alderman
uses some of the lavender in
the goods she offers at Lav-
ender Mercantile Co., her
store on Pendleton’s Main
Street.
The
creek’s
water
swamped their farm. The
waters are receding, but
sections nearest the creek
remain murky. Their small
tractor is is stuck in feet of
mud. The hundreds of sand-
Staff phto by E.J. Harris
Mark Easley climbs over a wall of sandbags build to keep flood waters from McKay Creek out
of a field of lavender plants Wednesday in Pendleton.
bags they lined across their
property helped only so
much.
“The quicker we can get
the lavender out of the water,
the better,” Steve Alderman
said.
Lavender farmers can
buy crop insurance, but the
Alderman clan did not. And
replacing mature plants cost
more than replacing young
ones. Some plants show new
growth in spite of the flood-
ing, so they have hope the
plant are going to make it.
“As long as they don’t get
root rot, the plants should be
OK,” he said.
Mark Mulvihill, super-
intendent of the Inter-
Mountain Education Ser-
vice District, lives near the
lavender farm. He said he
lost 6 pounds this weekend
fighting the flooding, and
Mulvihill is not a hefty guy.
He also peppered Kimbrel
with questions, but typical
of Mulvihill, he was driving
to a point.
He said he wants to
see action “to make sure
this never happens again”
becomes a reality. This was
property damage, he said,
but if a child drowned?
Mulvihill said Kim-
brel did what his author-
ity allowed, and that meant
relying on rain and snow
melt and flooding metrics
long out of date.
Mulvihill offered another
question: What metrics
should we use for flood con-
trol in the age of climate
change?
Mulvihill said he wants
to help build a coalition to
take on the challenge of
changing how the Bureau
of Reclamation operates
McKay Dam. That means
bringing in local, state and
federal voices, including
the Confederated Tribes of
the Umatilla Indian Reser-
vation, and the representa-
tives this affects the most —
the people living along the
banks of McKay Creek.
Other officials are eye-
ing immediate help from
the state. Umatilla County
commissioners are draft-
ing a letter Friday morning
to ask Gov. Kate Brown to
declare an emergency for
Umatilla County.
Commissioner
John
Shafer said he is going to
hand-deliver the letter to the
governor’s office; he will at
the Oregon Capitol to tes-
tify before the Legislature’s
Ways and Means commit-
tee for funding to renovate
the county jail and the Farm
2 project at Blue Mountain
Community College.
State Sen. Bill Hansell
of Athena and state Rep.
Greg Baretto of Cove, both
Republicans, tried that
Monday, but Brown did not
make the declaration.
Port: Race draws two candidates for seat on board
Continued from Page A1
has gained an understanding
of the facility.
“I feel like I have the
experience, and an under-
standing of what’s happen-
ing here, and why it’s called
the ‘Morrow Miracle,’” she
said. “I’ve been a part of it,
and supported various func-
tions as a tenant.”
Radie said her company
was attracted to the port
because of the people run-
ning it, as well as the exist-
ing infrastructure. They
started construction on the
plant in May of 1992, and
were able to start processing
onions the day after Thanks-
giving in the same year.
“They had good electric-
ity, fresh water, the waste
water system was taken care
of, natural gas,” she said.
“The port brought in a rail
spur specific to our site so
we could utilize the daily
services of Union Pacific,
and that opened up oppor-
tunities for us that our com-
petitors didn’t have. It had
the barge service as well.”
She said wants to see the
port continue on that trajec-
tory, as well as continuing
to attract diverse industries
and businesses.
“With the land we have
available, even in a down
market, overall, businesses
at the port can continue to
be prosperous,” she said.
Radie said she doesn’t
have one specific project
in mind, and believes each
project or proposal should
be looked at on its own
merit. She said she also
wants to continue the port’s
efforts to increase livability
in the area, citing the recre-
ation center and the work-
force development program
as successes.
Murray is a Morrow
County native, and has a
longtime connection to the
port commission — his
father-in-law is Larry Lind-
say, who will vacate the
position for which Murray is
running. Murray said watch-
ing his father-in-law work
on the commission over the
years has given him a sense
of the importance of the job.
“My entire adult life,
I’ve worked to serve Mor-
row County,” he said. “I’ve
owned a business, and
served on the health district
(board).”
With pharmacies in
Boardman and Heppner,
Bridge: Work may take
several years to finish
Continued from Page A1
School and Clara Brownell
Middle School, and Stock-
dale said an estimated 50
students had been taking
that route to school every
day in addition to adult
pedestrians. Now some of
the students are walking or
riding across the Highway
730 bridge further west.
“It really is a travesty,”
he said of the loss.
Umatilla School District
superintendent Heidi Sipe
said the South Hill neigh-
borhood is covered by bus
routes, and any student who
had previously been walk-
ing across the bridge to
school could elect to ride
the bus instead of going the
long way around.
“There’s no reason for a
student to feel they have to
walk,” she said.
“THERE’S NO
REASON FOR
A STUDENT
TO FEEL THEY
HAVE TO
WALK”
Superintendent Heidi Sipe
She said they had seen
an increase in bus riders
this week, and had needed
to “reeducate” some stu-
dents who hadn’t ridden
the bus previously and
were confused about which
bus they were supposed to
take.
She said law enforcement
was doing a good job of
keeping people away from
the broken bridge, and the
district had sent out mes-
sages to parents.
Murray said they now have
customers in every commu-
nity in Morrow County.
“I’m an independent
business owner, and 80 to
90 percent of businesses fail
within the first or second
generation,” he said. “We
haven’t failed.”
He said he brings hard
work, discipline, and a
knowledge of Morrow
County, as well as a desire
to see it improve.
Recently, at a town hall
meeting in Boardman, U.S.
Sen. Ron Wyden cited work
he had done with Murray to
bring down pharmaceutical
costs.
“We’re active in the Ore-
gon Legislature,” he said.
“We’ve done that for 20
years.”
Murray said he is not
approaching the position
with any particular agenda
or specific project.
“I think some people
fear that board members
come with a particular ax to
grind, and I don’t have that,”
he said. “I don’t have a big
course change in what the
port’s doing. They’ve done a
fantastic job and I’d like to
see it continue.”
He said he has been
impressed by the quality and
variety of companies that
the port has attracted, from
food processing companies
to Vadata, and he’d like to
continue that by develop-
ing land and making it shov-
el-ready, so businesses can
move in quickly.
He said he’d also like to
see development at the port
continue to benefit other
areas of Morrow County.
“Developing Workforce,
the Early Learning Center,”
he said. “Giving kids an
opportunity to come back
and make a living here. The
port cares about Morrow
County from start to finish.”
Murray said whatever
the outcome of the race, he
thinks the port will be in a
good position.
“It’s honestly not a bad
problem to have two candi-
dates that would do well,” he
said. “It’s a win-win.”
ST. ANTHONY HOSPITAL VOLUNTEERS
have the unique opportunity to make a positive
difference in peoples' lives every day that they
generously donate their time and talents.
Volunteering gives you the opportunity to learn new
skills, make new friends and develop new interests!
When you join the St. Anthony Hospital family, you will experience the
personal fulfi llment and rewards that only come from helping others.
At St. Anthony Hospital, you can volunteer as little as an hour a week or as
often as you'd like. Your service is greatly appreciated, so we are thankful
for any time you off er. We attempt to fi nd just the right fi t for your talents
and skills and our hospital needs.
Frequent volunteer opportunities include:
• Customer service/cashier in the gift shop,
Inspirations.
•Customer service at the information desk.
• Patient services.
• Day Surgery
If you’d like to discuss how you can join the St. Anthony Hospital family, please call the number below.
Emily Smith • 541-278-2627 • emilysmith@chiwest.com
2801 St. Anthony Way, Pendleton, OR 97801
www.sahpendleton.org