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About East Oregonian : E.O. (Pendleton, OR) 1888-current | View Entire Issue (Jan. 17, 2020)
NORTHWEST East Oregonian A2 Friday, January 17, 2020 Brown proposes new wildfire protection plan By CASSANDRA PROFITA Oregon Public Broadcasting SALEM — Oregon Gov. Kate Brown is calling for a major expansion in the state’s wildfire response plans in a new legislative concept law- makers heard on Tuesday. The draft proposal out- lines the governor’s long-term vision for how the state should adapt to wildfire, reduce wildfire risks on forestland and improve fire suppression. The plan echoes a 110- page report from the Gov- ernor’s Council On Wildfire Response, which spent about a year developing recommen- dations for improving the state’s ability to prevent and respond to wildfires. It calls for land-use plan- ning changes, new building codes and requirements for “defensible space” around homes to reduce the risk of wildfires damaging residen- tial areas. It requires new standards for residential smoke filtration systems to protect people from the health risks of wildfire smoke. It adds new jobs in the Office of Emergency Man- agement that would be designed to handle wildfire emergencies, and it sets a goal of “treating” 300,000 acres of forestland a year to reduce wildfire fuel through logging, controlled burning and eco- OSU Extension Photo/Emily Jane Davis, File A rangeland wildfire burns in Wasco County in 2018. Oregon Gov. Kate Brown is calling for a major expansion in the state’s wildfire response plans in a new legislative concept. system restoration projects. Over the next 20 years, the governor wants to see similar treatment on 5.6 million acres of forestland across the state, which her wildfire council estimated would cost about $4 billion in a report released in November. The legislative draft calls for a study of how the state might pay for wildfire pre- paredness and suppression. It does not include any dollar figures for how much money should be appropriated to pay for legislative require- ments, leaving lawmakers to determine later what parts of the bill would actually receive funding. Jason Miner, Gov. Brown’s natural resources policy man- ager, outlined the broad strokes of the bill for law- makers in the Senate Interim Committee on Wildfire Pre- vention and Recovery. He said the governor is open to discussion and amendments to her proposal. Committee member Her- man Baertschiger, R-Grants Pass, said wildfire risk is so immense that the governor’s proposal will barely begin to address it. “When you look at how big the problem is and what you’re proposing here — even at 300,000 acres a year — it’s like mowing your grass with Forecast for Pendleton Area a tweezers,” he said. “Every- body needs to know how big this problem is. It is big. It is huge. And how we’re going to pay for it, I have no idea.” Sen. Baertschiger told Miner and other members of the governor’s wildfire coun- cil that the plan will have to produce its own revenue through logging because law- makers are facing demands for funding to help with major problems with foster care, mental health care and homelessness as well as the need to fund Medicaid and the Public Employee Retire- ment System. “Those are the dollars you’re competing with,” he SATURDAY SUNDAY MONDAY TUESDAY Chilly with periods of sun Mostly cloudy with a few showers Cloudy and chilly Cloudy and chilly Rain and drizzle in the p.m. By EMILY THORNTON Walla Walla Union-Bulletin 38° 33° 41° 34° 42° 33° DAYTON, Wash. — A judge in Columbia County Superior Court on Wednes- day imposed a more than 36-year prison sentence on Dayton native Benjamin Orozco, 45, convicted by a jury last August of sec- ond-degree murder, first-de- gree assault with firearm enhancements, and sec- ond-degree unlawful fire- arm possession. Orozco and a former co-defendant were accused of fatally shooting Lance Terry and wounding David Eaton near downtown Day- ton on the night of July 7, 1996. Orozco’s co-defen- dant, David Delarosa, cut a deal to avoid prosecution in return for providing testi- mony for the state. Orozco fled after the killing to Mexico, where he was apprehended and returned to Washington in 42° 29° 40° 33° HERMISTON TEMPERATURE FORECAST 37° 32° 41° 33° 43° 29° 43° 36° 39° 31° OREGON FORECAST ALMANAC Shown is today’s weather. Temperatures are today’s highs and tonight’s lows. PENDLETON through 3 p.m. yest. HIGH LOW TEMP. Seattle Olympia 41/38 30/25 32/26 Longview Kennewick Walla Walla 36/31 Lewiston 42/40 37/30 Astoria 44/41 Pullman Yakima 32/27 40/38 34/28 Portland Hermiston 43/40 The Dalles 37/32 Salem Corvallis 43/40 Yesterday Normals Records La Grande 35/30 PRECIPITATION John Day Eugene Bend 45/40 36/30 37/32 Ontario 39/26 Caldwell Burns 31° 22° 42° 28° 63° (1961) -9° (1957) 24 hours ending 3 p.m. Month to date Normal month to date Year to date Last year to date Normal year to date Albany 43/40 Trace 0.13" 0.66" 0.13" 0.32" 0.66" WINDS (in mph) 39/29 30/20 Trace 0.60" 0.85" 0.60" 0.29" 0.85" through 3 p.m. yest. HIGH LOW TEMP. Pendleton 33/26 43/41 24 hours ending 3 p.m. Month to date Normal month to date Year to date Last year to date Normal year to date HERMISTON Enterprise 38/33 36/32 45° 24° 41° 27° 63° (1976) -5° (1950) PRECIPITATION Moses Lake 40/36 Aberdeen 30/25 29/22 Tacoma Yesterday Normals Records Spokane Wenatchee 41/38 Today Medford 40/34 Sat. W 3-6 S 6-12 Boardman Pendleton SW 3-6 SSE 7-14 SUN AND MOON Klamath Falls 33/23 Forecasts and graphics provided by AccuWeather, Inc. ©2020 Sunrise today Sunset tonight Moonrise today Moonset today Last 7:31 a.m. 4:39 p.m. 12:06 a.m. 11:39 a.m. New First Full NATIONAL EXTREMES Yesterday’s National Extremes: (for the 48 contiguous states) High 88° in Zapata, Texas Low -35° in Fosston, Minn. Jan 17 Jan 24 Feb 1 Feb 8 NATIONAL WEATHER TODAY “So-called fire reduction proposals that I’m seeing in practice look like just the same old commercial logging and clear-cut style practices with a fire or fuel rationale tacked onto them,” she said. “I think it’s really import- ant for us to be really skep- tical of these so-called fire reduction logging projects.” The governor’s wild- fire council created a prior- itized list of forest thinning and burning projects that are ready to go and have already gone through environmental reviews. How many of those projects get accomplished in the next year will likely depend on how much fund- ing lawmakers allocate to that portion of the proposed bill. Sen. Lew Frederick said the funding question is a big one, but he wants the state to do what it can to address wildfire risks with the fund- ing it can muster. “Everybody wants some- body else to pay for it and that’s simply not going to be available,” the Portland Dem- ocrat said. “We’re not going to be harvesting the way we were in the ’70s and ’80s. We’re not going to be stopping everything from happening in the forest the way some folks would like to have hap- pen. We have to find a bal- ance and this is an attempt at a balance.” Man sentenced to more than 36 years for 1996 murder TODAY PENDLETON TEMPERATURE FORECAST said. “We have to produce some commodities to pay for this. You can’t run to the gen- eral fund for the dollars. We need them somewhere else.” Critics of the governor’s proposal warned the commit- tee to focus its spending on measures that have proven to be effective in reducing wild- fire risks and avoid logging in back-country areas where wildfire could be beneficial and there aren’t any homes in need of protection. “Scientists have found that thinning forests far from homes does nothing to pro- tect Oregonians from wild- fire,” Lluvia Merello, energy justice organizer for Oregon Physicians for Social Respon- sibility, said. “Ironically, thin- ning forests to reduce wild- fire risk releases more carbon than the fire itself.” Merello and others with conservation groups told the committee the most import- ant changes will be the ones that make homes and com- munities more resilient to wildfire in the future. Samantha Crop with Cas- cadia Wildlands said many of the fuel reduction logging projects she’s seen on fed- eral land involve opening the forest canopy with clear- cuts that remove medium and large trees that would typi- cally be resistant to fire, com- pacting the soil and drying out the forest. 2016. He has been housed at the Washington State Peni- tentiary in lieu of $2 million bail, which was revoked upon his conviction in August 2019. Walla Walla County Superior Court Judge Scott Wolfram sentenced Orozco to the high end of the range — 192 months, or 16 years, on count one, with an addi- tional five years for firearm enhancements; 123 months, or just over 10 years, for count two, with another five years added for fire- arm enhancements; and 12 months on count three. The first two will run consecutively and the third concurrently. Upon release, Orozco will have two years of community supervision, which was the maximum allowed in 1996. The sentence was longer than anticipated for some. Columbia County Prose- cuting Attorney Dale Slack said a records custodian from the Department of Corrections gave “a decla- ration that Mr. Orozco was on community supervi- sion, adding one point to the offender score.” Previously, Slack said he thought sentencing ranges were lower because Oroz- co’s DOC records from 1996 “were 20 years old and destroyed.” During the trial last year, Orozco was the final one on the stand in the self-defense case. He told about his life, including his birth in Day- ton, moving to Walla Walla where he graduated from high school, and moving back to Dayton, where he was a migrant worker and encountered “racial issues” and “wasn’t treated fairly.” He said he ultimately ran to Mexico because he “wouldn’t get a fair trial” and thought people wouldn’t like him because he’d shot Eaton and Terry. BRIEFLY Bail raised to $5M for man accused of luring girls online BEND — A judge raised bail to $5 mil- lion Wednesday for a 41-year-old Bend man who allegedly posed as a teenage boy online to seek explicit photos from dozens of girls around the country. Keith Fyten was arrested in November 2019 on a 95-count indictment and warrant at Chicago’s O’Hare Airport as he returned from the Netherlands, heading back to Bend, Deschutes County sheriff’s deputies revealed Wednesday. A Deschutes County Circuit Court indictment of Fyten was unsealed Wednes- day, listing 28 counts of luring a minor and 67 counts of using a child in a display of sex- ually explicit conduct, KTVZ-TV reported. The indictment alleges incidents between July 2014 and May 2018. Fyten’s alleged online luring efforts included at least 16 underage girls in Cen- tral Oregon, who were asked over Facebook Messenger to send sexually explicit photos or videos of themselves, sheriff’s Detective Sgt. Jayson Janes said. The investigation dates back to October 2017, when the sheriff’s office received a report of sexually explicit photos of under- age girls being distributed, Janes said. Detectives obtained internet service pro- vider and Facebook information that led them to Fyten, who had moved to the Neth- erlands in 2018. The detective looked through Fyten’s social media history and found he’d com- municated with numerous underage females throughout the United States. Law enforcement agencies around the country were asked to help locate and inter- view other underage females related to the case, Janes said. It wasn’t immediately known if Fyten has a lawyer. — Associated Press Shown are noon positions of weather systems and precipitation. Temperature bands are highs for the day. -10s -0s 0s showers t-storms 10s rain 20s flurries 30s snow 40s 50s ice 60s cold front E AST O REGONIAN — Founded Oct. 16, 1875 — 211 S.E. Byers Ave., Pendleton 541-276-2211 333 E. 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