Wallowa County Chieftain
News
wallowa.com
September 21, 2016
Mass-casualty drill
PLAN
tests county’s response
Continued from Page A1
By Steve Tool
Wallowa County Chieftain
The Enterprise High School
bus driver who was texting
while driving is slumped
over the wheel, deceased. A
smashed truckload of chemical
fertilizer is leaking profusely
while a female EHS student
staggers off the wrecked bus
crying and bleeding profusely
from several wounds. Other
injured students sit wounded
in the bus.
It wasn’t real, but rather a
planned mass-casualty drill
for Wallowa County’s emer-
gency services and Wallowa
Memorial Hospital on Thurs-
day evening.
Wallowa County emergen-
cy services director Paul Kar-
voski said the drill mainly was
a test of Wallowa Memorial
Hospital’s new emergency
operation plan and the emer-
gency room’s ability to handle
multiple patients.
“We just decided to throw
in the wreck and the hazmat
material for the local ire de-
partment,” he said.
Personnel from Enterprise
Fire Department, Enterprise
Police Department, Wallowa
Memorial Hospital and Emer-
gency Medical Services par-
ticipated in the drill.
Enterprise High School
and the Alternative Education
School contributed 10 stu-
dents between them to serve
as accident victims. EHS ju-
nior Paul Stangel volunteered.
Two members from the Ore-
gon Health Authority, Dean
Marcum and Kris Hansen,
oversaw the event and provid-
ed a later critique.
The crash scenario took
EVENT
Continued from Page A1
Plenty of folks already love
this event, but for those still sit-
ting on the fence, here are a few
good reasons to give it a try this
year.
• Ladies, you can dress the
part.
These little dresses and vests
are adorable and fun and you
can get them at Heidi’s Dress
Shop in Joseph. It’s amazing
what a little embroidery and
lounce can do for your spirit.
• The polka is easy to learn.
Don’t be intimidated by
the professional dancers you’ll
marvel at during the Alpenfest.
You don’t have to know what
they know, you just have to get
inspired to take the loor. To
help you out, you can take free
45-minute lessons on both Fri-
day and Saturday at noon and
5 p.m.
• Liquid courage is readily
available.
A pint of Terminal Gravi-
ty Alpenfest Ale is part of the
enjoyment this year — served
in free souvenir pint glasses.
Classy.
• There are accordions.
Sure, accordions are the
subject of a lot of bad jokes
made by people with limited
musical taste — or folks who
once overdosed on a single mu-
Steve Tool/Chieftain
Emergency services personnel, including firefighters and
EMTs, load a wounded Enterprise High School student
into an ambulance during a mass casualty incident drill on
Thursday.
place at approximately 6
p.m. at the county’s gravel
pits several miles north of
Enterprise along Highway
3. Beforehand, students and
county personnel gathered at
the Cloverleaf Hall for the ap-
plication of faux wounds and
blood stains.
EHS junior Jean Luc Pal-
ma also volunteered for the
exercise.
“I volunteered to help be-
cause I thought it was import-
ant,” he said.
Palma’s injuries included a
severe concussion with bleed-
ing from both ears. He later
said he received excellent
treatment during his subse-
quent interactions with emer-
gency services and medical
personnel.
The incident required three
ambulances to transport 10
students and the “dead” bus
driver to the hospital.
Before the “hot wash”
(critique) offered later in the
evening, Marcum praised the
performance of the iremen he
supervised.
“These guys did good,” he
said. “We’re not here to yell
at people. We’re here to help
them help the public the best
way they can.”
Hansen added that emer-
gency room personnel stood
up well to the incident, espe-
cially considering they hadn’t
had a mass casualty drill in
some time.
“Overall they did well.
There’s some lessons to be
learned, but they want to im-
prove,” she said.
“I was impressed with the
scale of it, getting all the de-
partments involved, because
that would be all the depart-
ments involved in a real-life
situation,” said hospital infor-
mation oficer Stacy Green af-
ter the critique. “It was a good
exercise to go through.”
“I think overall it went
well and opened some eyes in
areas we need to improve on,”
Karvoski said.
sical style. Those folks will not
be at Alpenfest to ruin your fun.
Accordions are amazing
inventions with world-wide
appeal, and when they came
to our country with our forefa-
thers, they were the best thing
to happen to a community gath-
ering since the iddle. They’re
easier to carry than a piano,
encompassing rhythm and base
in addition to a keyboard, loud-
er than a mouth harp for great
projection into a packed room
of revelers and well respected
by many musicians from jazz
to country to chamber music
artists.
• You can be an outdoor
sport enthusiast, despise loun-
cy dresses, choose to wear lycra
compression gear and still love
Alpenfest.
This year is the ifth anni-
versary of the Alpenfest Race,
a serious multi-discipline event
that includes a 5.5K paddle, a
31.5K road bicycle race that
gains 2,300 feet in altitude, an-
other 25K trail bicycle ride that
gains 600 feet in altitude and
a inishing 10K trail run that
gains 1,200 feet in altitude.
The bike race begins at 9
a.m. Saturday at the Wallowa
Lake State Park boat ramp and
ends at the beer tent at the foot
of the Tram.
Alpenfest kicks off Thurs-
day in Enterprise with the cer-
emonial Main Street proces-
sion from Depot Street to the
Wallowa County Courthouse
Gazebo at 3:45 p.m.. It then
moves to Terminal Gravity for
the tapping of the irst barrel of
Alpenfest Ale at 5:30 p.m.
The many events of Alpen-
fest, which include art shows,
dancing, yodeling, alpenhorn
demonstrations, dancing, eat-
ing and drinking, begin at
the Edelweiss Inn at Wallowa
Lake at noon Friday.
wallowa.com
No matter
what your business is,
the Wallowa County
Chieftain has the
audience you need!
We have many options
to market your business
in an affordable
and effective manner.
Call
Jennifer Powell
today!
541-426-4567 (office)
or email jpowell@wallowa.com
The group, which includes
County Commissioner Susan
Roberts, Commissioner-elect
Todd Nash and Wallowa Cham-
ber of Commerce Director Vic-
ki Searles, then discussed other
details of branding the project:
the need to become a 501c3; a
theme for signs at both ends of
the city; and their irst real proj-
ect toward the dream — mov-
ing the Lostine train station to
Wallowa.
The revitalization dream is
in the most preliminary stag-
es with little “nailed down,”
but the “visioning” option of
determining what residents
most want to see is something
they feel will work well for the
group, Lowe said.
This is not the irst time the
city has geared up to attempt a
revitalization. In 2008 Wallowa
was among local cities to par-
ticipate in a study, conducted
by Johnson-Gardener LLC, a
consulting irm with experience
working with communities to
visualize their industrial fu-
tures. Much has changed since
that time, and Wallowa is ready
to test the waters in a new craft.
Northeast Oregon Eco-
nomic Development District
(NEOEDD) Development Spe-
cialist Sara Miller was on hand
to explain the process of gath-
ering consensus through a pro-
gram called Vision to Action.
The program asks members of
the community to come togeth-
er and literally draw pictures
of their ideas for revitalization.
The pictures, along with some
facts about the physical layout
of the town and the amenities
it already provides (new water
system, for example), are taken
to an artist who then creates a
conceptual visual plan of what
the new Wallowa might look
like.
“It’s really helping you go
through a process where you
ind those common things that
enough people in the commu-
nity can support that you get
that traction you need to move
forward,” Miller said.
The conceptual rendering
shows where a community
wants to go, that the communi-
ty has worked together to create
their plans and can be included
in grant applications or presen-
tations made to potential inves-
tors.
The process has worked
well in many other cities. A
brochure from the city of Cre-
swell, Ore., was distributed at
the meeting. Creswell has a
project in mind similar to that
of Wallowa — revisioning the
site of a former lumber mill.
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Doing something with the
Bate’s Mill site certainly is
on the minds of Wallowa res-
idents, but much would have
to be done to make that a re-
ality and discussions center-
ing around the site have been
had before. The fact that it’s a
Brownields site that may need
expensive restoration has been
a major hurdle for potential sale
of the site for years. A prelim-
inary Department of Environ-
mental Quality Phase 1 study
— a survey of operational func-
tions only — was completed in
2008. That study is now out of
date and the DEQ will require a
new Phase 1 before the process
of converting a Brownield site
to a building site can be begin.
For now there is just one
project on the table — moving
the Lostine Train Station from
Terry Jones’ property in Los-
tine to Wallowa and placing it
on 1.5 acres of land that will be
deeded to the Wallowa Home-
town Project by Bud Phillips
of Wallowa. The new Wallowa
Hometown Project already
owes $2,400 for the partition-
ing of that property, and fund-
raising must start immediately.
Lowe’s goal is to have the
train station moved and fund-
raising done before November.
The need for quick action is
pushed by the fact that the train
station needs a roof before win-
ter.
That one project is the nu-
cleus of a much grander plan,
but it encapsulates that grand
plan well because, as it stands,
the grand plan centers around
the railroad. In thinking about
what Wallowa City had to of-
fer, Lowe said, it became clear
that they had one of the larg-
est industrial properties in the
county, adjacent to rail, in the
Bates Mill site. They had the
“incubator” building, in which
entrepreneurs built their busi-
nesses for a set time also sitting
right on the rail line. And they
had a product at the Integrated
Biomass Resources plant that
could be shipped out by rail.
“Timber is not coming back
to what it was,” Lowe said.
“Timber harvest is not the an-
swer, but it’s part of the answer.
Tourism is not the answer, but
it’s part of the answer. Industri-
al shops are not the answer, but
they are part of the answer.”
Lowe also serves on the
A7
Wallowa Union Railroad Au-
thority (WURA) and is in a po-
sition to know what the railroad
can and cannot offer. So an ear-
ly move on his part was to pres-
ent WURA with a petition from
the city to have the train service
returned to Wallowa — provid-
ed WURA had a good working
budget for that, and provided
the city got the Friends of the
Joseph Branch (who own the
engines and cars) to agree.
“Both those requirements
have been met,” Lowe said.
“WURA sent inspectors from
Minam to Wallowa and they let
WURA know the cost.”
But that’s not all there is
running in Lowe’s train of
thought. WURA owns the rail
and rail bed, but Union Paciic
owns the land beneath. So Sara
Miller asked Union Paciic if
they’d be open to letting some-
one run iber optic cable down
the rail bed. Union Paciic said
yes. No plans were discussed,
no agreements signed, but there
was willingness on the part of
Union Paciic to consider such
a plan.
“We’ll be looking for i-
nancing for that (rail work), and
if you’ve got to ix the rail you
might as well throw iber optics
under it,” Lowe said.
Lowe contacted Sen. Jeff
Merkley and mentioned the
fact that the state gave $5 bil-
lion to iber-optic companies
and they’ve not yet delivered
on that investment in Wallowa.
“We have suggested the
legislature appropriate some
of that money and give it to a
company who’ll get iber optic
out to Wallowa.” Lowe said.
Jeff Crews, Vice President
of Eastern Oregon Net, Inc.,
also attended the meeting and
helped establish the new web-
site name and address.
It’s another big push for
Wallowa, but Lowe inds the
community ready to give it a
go. He’s certainly ready and
has volunteered to be the point
man through which companies,
grantors, politicians and others
can communicate.
“We’re strong citizens here
in Wallowa,” Lowe said. “I’m
putting my money where my
mouth is. My wife Beth (Mc-
Crae) Lowe is ifth generation
and the minute we got married
I started planning on how we’d
get back to Wallowa.”
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