NORTHWEST
East Oregonian
A2
Saturday, July 23, 2022
Closed for 15 years, Prairie Wood Products is up and running again
By STEVEN MITCHELL
Blue Mountain Eagle
PRAIRIE CITY — Prai-
rie City residents woke up
last week to a sound they had
not heard in years.
A working sawmill.
The Prairie Wood Prod-
ucts sawmill off icially
reopened on July 11 for its
first full day of operations.
The D.R. Johnson Lumber
Co. announced last month
that it intended to reopen the
mill, which was shuttered 15
years ago. To staff the oper-
ation, the company hosted a
two-day job fair at Chester’s
Thriftway in John Day.
Plant manager Tom
Moore said the mill hired
roughly 25 people. He said
once the planer is up and
running, he would be look-
ing to hire between 15 and
20 more employees.
Prairie Wood Products
President Jodi Westbrooks
said the company was
happy to be able to hire the
staff needed to get the mill
running again.
“They are working hard,”
she said. “I’ve been in the
mill watching them go as
hard as they can.”
Westbrooks said there
are some kinks the sawmill
has to work out with the old
equipment. But all in all,
she said, things are running
smoothly at the mill.
“It is going,” she said,
Steven Mitchell/Blue Mountain Eagle
Dustin Wright of John Day, part of the gang edger crew at Prairie Wood Products, shortens a
saw blade July 14, 2022. Prairie Wood Products in John Day officially reopened July 11.
“and we are thrilled.”
Moore, who used to work
for the D.R. Johnson-owned
Grant Western sawmill
in John Day, told the Blue
Mountain Eagle the mill’s
mothballed cogeneration
plant has some issues that
must be worked through
before it can be fired up
again.
Craig Trulock, Malheur
National Forest supervi-
sor, told the newspaper last
month the cogeneration
plant could provide a way
to remove biomass from the
forest. Currently, he said,
there is no market for that
material.
The biomass, which
consists of small logs,
branches and bushes that
would otherwise get burned
up in the forest or left on the
ground, could be ground and
burned in the cogeneration
plant to generate heat and
electricity, Trulock said.
Westbrooks said the
company plans to get its
timber supply from a combi-
nation of public and private
lands and will purchase logs
Forecast for Pendleton Area
TODAY
SUNDAY
| Go to AccuWeather.com
MONDAY
TUESDAY
WEDNESDAY
from independent loggers
and landowners.
Brett Morris, the owner
of Morris Forestry, said in
a July 15 interview that he
already had delivered nine
loads of logs to the sawmill.
“(Prairie Wood) is really
cranking up production,” he
said.
Morris said he works as
an independent logger in
the spring, but during fire
season he works as a wild-
land firefighter with his
logging equipment, which
makes him good money.
Plenty of sunshine
91° 57°
96° 61°
Hot with plenty of
sunshine
Hot with plenty of
sunshine
Very hot with
plenty of sun
PENDLETON TEMPERATURE FORECAST
100° 65°
103° 69°
101° 68°
HERMISTON TEMPERATURE FORECAST
94° 58°
99° 62°
101° 64°
106° 71°
104° 66°
OREGON FORECAST
ALMANAC
Shown is today’s weather. Temperatures are today’s highs and tonight’s lows.
PENDLETON
through 3 p.m. Fri.
HIGH
LOW
TEMP.
Seattle
Olympia
70/55
83/51
92/57
Longview
Kennewick Walla Walla
89/62
Lewiston
78/57
95/60
Astoria
68/55
Pullman
Yakima 91/58
78/52
93/61
Portland
Hermiston
80/59
The Dalles 94/58
Salem
Corvallis
81/54
Friday
Normals
Records
La Grande
88/54
PRECIPITATION
John Day
Eugene
Bend
84/54
90/52
91/51
Ontario
98/65
Caldwell
Burns
89°
70°
95°
60°
108° (1938) 43° (1982)
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
81/55
0.00"
0.03"
0.09"
7.48"
2.46"
5.11"
WINDS (in mph)
95/61
93/48
0.00"
0.31"
0.27"
11.13"
4.32"
8.22"
through 3 p.m. Fri.
HIGH
LOW
TEMP.
Pendleton 86/51
82/57
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
91/57
89/61
90°
69°
91°
60°
111° (1905) 41° (1897)
PRECIPITATION
Moses
Lake
77/53
Aberdeen
87/60
91/65
Tacoma
Friday
Normals
Records
Spokane
Wenatchee
76/58
Today
Boardman
Pendleton
Medford
93/58
Sun.
WSW 7-14
W 7-14
SW 4-8
NNW 6-12
SUN AND MOON
Klamath Falls
91/49
Forecasts and graphics provided by AccuWeather, Inc. ©2022
Sunrise today
Sunset tonight
Moonrise today
Moonset today
New
5:28 a.m.
8:34 p.m.
1:13 a.m.
5:03 p.m.
First
Full
ships going forward.
Moore said he could not
say how many board feet
of timber the mill plans to
process because it is in its
“infancy stages.”
Nonetheless, Moore —
who worked for Malhuer
Lumber before coming to
Prairie Wood Products —
said that reopening the mill
has been a great feeling.
“It is not every day,” he
said, “that you get to bring
something back from the
dead.”
The Prairie City mill was
purchased by the D.R. John-
son Lumber Co. in 1976. Two
years later, the family-owned
company added a stud mill
and planer. Then, in the late
1980s, the company installed
a cogeneration power plant.
The sawmill, which oper-
ated successfully in Prairie
City for more than 30 years
and employed upwards of
100 people who worked two
different shifts, shuttered in
2008 amid a housing market
crash that led to a lack of
available sawlogs.
D.R. Johnson restarted
the mill in early 2009 but
shut it down permanently
by the end of the year. The
cleanup of the mill, which
sits at the west end of Prairie
City, concluded in 2019.
Since then, much of
the mill equipment has
remained on site, along with
the co-gen plant.
ODF fire managers raise restrictions
The Observer
Plenty of sunshine
With Prairie Wood open, he
said he would be running his
logging company during fire
season.
In the long term, he said
running his business would
be better for him and his
family.
“My family will appreci-
ate that I won’t be gone for
two to three months in the
summertime,” Morris said.
Morris said his company
had been about a month
behind schedule with the
late spring rain, but things
are going well now.
He said if the mill had not
been open in Prairie City,
he would have had to haul
logs to Elgin or Pilot Rock
for milling. With rising fuel
costs, there would have been
a good chance he would not
have been able to operate.
“My lit tle company
couldn’t afford to haul (logs)
that far with the way fuel is
right now.”
Having the mill open
benefits local private land-
owners with respect to fuel
reduction and removing
wildfire risks, Morris added.
While Prairie Wood
hopes to collaborate with
the Malheur National Forest
and other public agencies
on forest restoration proj-
ects, Moore said the mill has
primarily been working with
private landowners so far.
He said the company
hopes to build other relation-
LA GRANDE — Rising
fire danger, due to drier
and warmer conditions,
is prompting the Oregon
Department of Forestry to
increase public use restric-
tions in Northeast Oregon.
The added public use
restrictions are intended to
prevent or minimize human-
caused wildfires and to
protect natural resources and
public health and safety.
“This year has been
unique in the sense that we
are seeing large fires around
the region several weeks
ahead of when we would
normally expect them. With
the thunderstorms that have
been hitting the area, we
must consider our options
in reducing the number of
preventable fires,” said Steve
Meyer, Baker City wildland
fire supervisor.
Public use restrictions
are being amped up because
measurements that fire
managers use to estimate
seasonal fire severity are indi-
cating extreme fire conditions
across the region, according
to an Oregon Department of
Forestry press release.
The public use restric-
tions now in place include
the following fire prevention
measures:
• Open fires are prohibited,
including campfires, char-
coal fires, cooking fires and
warming fires.
• Portable cooking stoves
using liquefied or bottled
fuels are allowed. Propane
fire pits are not allowed.
• Debris burning is prohib-
ited, including the use of burn
barrels.
• Nonindustrial chainsaw
use is prohibited.
• Smoking is prohibited
while traveling, except in
vehicles on improved roads,
in boats on the water, or at a
cleared area free of flamma-
ble vegetation.
• The use of motor vehi-
cles, including motor-
cycles and all-ter rain
vehicles is prohibited except
on improved roads, except in
the commercial culture and
harvest of agricultural crops.
• Possession of the follow-
ing firefighting equipment
is required while traveling,
except on state highways,
county roads and driveways:
one shovel and one gallon of
water or one 2½ pound fire
extinguisher.
• The cutting, grind-
ing and welding of metal is
prohibited.
• The mowing of dried
and cured grass with power
driven equipment is prohib-
ited.
• The use of fireworks is
prohibited.
• The use of exploding
targets is prohibited, as is the
use of tracer ammunition or
any bullet with a pyrotechnic
charge in its base.
• Any electric fence
controller in use must be:
listed by a nationally recog-
nized testing laboratory or
be certified by the Depart-
ment of Consumer Business
Services; and operated in
compliance with manufac-
turer’s instructions.
T h e Um a t i l l a a n d
Wallowa-Whitman national
forests, as well as Bureau
of Land Management lands
are currently under public
use restrictions in Northeast
Oregon. Fire restrictions for
these forestlands in North-
east Oregon can be found at
www.bmidc.org.
Last
NATIONAL EXTREMES
IN BRIEF
Yesterday’s National Extremes: (for the 48 contiguous states)
High 116° in Needles, Calif. Low 32° in Afton, Wyo.
July 28
Aug 5
Aug 11
Aug 18
NATIONAL WEATHER TODAY
Young La Grande mother
suffers sudden cardiac arrest
LA GRANDE — A La Grande woman,
Vanessa Durfee, 26, the daughter of Sharee
Henderson and Ed Durfee of Elgin, suffered
a sudden cardiac arrest at her residence on
Sunday, July 17.
Her 6-year-old daughter found her unre-
sponsive and alerted Vanessa’s partner, Troy
Jones, who immediately called 9-1-1 for emer-
gency medical assistance. According to her
aunt, Sandra Roda, Durfee was intubated
and admitted July 17 to the intensive care
unit at Grande Ronde Hospital, where she has
undergone tests to determine the cause of her
condition. To date no medical reason can be
ascertained.
“The doctors have done all the testing they
can do, and there’s no explained reason why
Vanessa had a sudden cardiac arrest,” Roda
said. “They performed a drug screening, and
it was negative, so there’s no known reason
for this. We’re also unsure how long she was
without oxygen. She might have gone without
oxygen for up to 20 minutes. Right now, she’s
sedated and has some major brain swelling
due to the time she was without oxygen.”
The physicians will be reevaluating
Durfee’s condition on July 23, said Roda, who
works as a neurological trauma nurse in ICU at
the Sacred Heart Medical Center in Spokane.
Durfee is a graduate of Elgin High School
and is currently a stay-at-home mother of two
daughters, ages 6 and 1. The family has estab-
lished a GoFundMe account to help the young
family with the costs related to her medical
emergency and her absence from home.
“As a long-time resident of the community,
anything the community can give her would
be extremely beneficial,” Roda said.
— EO Media Group
Shown are noon positions of weather systems and precipitation. Temperature bands are highs for the day.
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