Wallowa.com
Wednesday, March 3, 2021
PROGRESS BEING MADE ALL OREGONIANS ELIGIBLE
ON EAST MORAINE FOR VACCINE BY JULY
LOCAL, A3
A1
$1.50
LOCAL, A11
HIGH
SCHOOL
SPORTS
RETURN
Sports, A12-A13
136th Year, No. 47
Wednesday, March 3, 2021
WINNER OF THE 2020 ONPA GENERAL EXCELLENCE AWARD
Katrina
Haines
Enterprise
She never
wants to live
anywhere else
ENTERPRISE — Katrina Haines
has lived her whole life in Wallowa
County and has traveled enough to
know she never wants to live any-
where else.
“I just really like the place,” she
said. “I really don’t want to go any-
where else.”
A senior at Enterprise High
School, her parents and sister also
live here. At present, she has no col-
lege plans and just hopes to con-
tinue working at Safeway, where she
hopes to have a career.
Haines recently shared her
thoughts on living in Wallowa
County.
What’s your favorite thing
about Wallowa County?
Honestly, because we’re sur-
rounded by nature all the way
around.
What challenges do you
believe Wallowa County
faces?
Being kind of secluded from
other, bigger places. It makes it
harder to get things in.
How has the COVID-19
pandemic aff ected you?
It’s made work really hard for me
because all of the mask-wearing and
such. But other than that, it really
hasn’t aff ected me all that much.
Do you plan to get the
vaccine against COVID-19
or are you hesitant as some
people are?
Yes, as soon as it’s available.
What have you learned from
living in Wallowa County?
A lot about what I want to do.
I’ve been a lot of places but I haven’t
seen any other place I want to live.
I want to live here. I’ve learned from
visiting other places that they’re just
not my thing.
What’s your advice for
people who are thinking
about moving here?
It’s a really nice place, but you
have to accept the fact that a lot of
the things you might want to do you
won’t be able to do here.
— Bill Bradshaw,
The Wallowa County Chieftain
Bill Bradshaw/Wallowa County Chieftain
A cut-to-length harvester operated by Tom Zacharias, of Pro Thinning Inc., of Joseph, falls, limbs and cuts a tree into standard 16-foot lengths in
just minutes Thursday, Feb. 25, 2021, on the Lostine Corridor Public Safety Project.
Lostine Canyon project
passes halfway point
By BILL BRADSHAW
Wallowa County Chieftain
L
OSTINE CANYON — Despite
past controversy, hard work and
uncertain weather, the Lostine Cor-
ridor Public Safety Project is well
underway, just past the halfway point in
efforts to remove hazard and diseased trees,
improve public safety and improve forest
resources in the area.
“It’ll be completely dependent on what the
weather does for us,” said David Schmidt,
owner of Integrated Biomass Resources in
Wallowa, which successfully bid on the tim-
ber harvest portion of the stewardship con-
tract in September 2018.
The harvest is slated to conclude Feb. 28,
2023, he said, though it could qualify for an
extension.
But the logging must be done under “win-
ter conditions,” said Jim Zacharias, a member
of the Wallowa Resources Board of Directors.
Schmidt said those conditions require 6
inches of frost or 12 inches of snow on the
ground for logging equipment to operate on.
The approximately 2,110 acres of tim-
berland along 11 miles of the Lostine River
is being thinned of hazard trees and under-
brush to make the area safer for recreation-
ists and residents of the Lostine Canyon. The
hazard trees appear the greatest threat to pub-
lic safety, the experts said Thursday during an
interview in the canyon.
“The Forest Service spends an abundance
of time and effort trying to keep this corri-
dor open safely to the public,” said Mark
Moeller, U.S. Forest Service assistant fi re
management offi cer. “That consists primarily
of falling hazard trees that present a danger to
the public.”
A decision memo by the Forest Service
dated in 2017 included photographs of those
hazard trees that had fallen on tables in camp-
grounds and across roads, backing up the
Forest Service claim of the necessity of their
removal.
In addition to tree removal, the project also
includes installing a helicopter pad, re-deck-
ing the bridge at Lake Creek and removing
slash leftover from the logging work. Some
of the slash will be burned, while some will
be masticated — ground into mulch for the
forest fl oor. Some slash will be left for use by
campers as fi rewood.
“The purpose of this project is to reduce
the risk of these forest stands in the corridor
to future insect and disease impacts (such
as falling trees), which, in turn, reduces the
risk to the people who use this corridor, the
improvements in the corridor to private land
and the resource in the canyon including the
riverfront,” said Matt Howard, of the Oregon
Department of Forestry’s Wallowa Unit.
In addition to public safety, the timber
harvest portion of the stewardship contract is
seen as a benefi t both for safety against wild-
fi res and economically.
Moeller estimated there would be a total
of 4 million board feet of timber harvested.
See Lostine, Page A14
New four-wheel drive ambulance conquers winter weather
By ELLEN MORRIS BISHOP
For the Wallowa County Chieftain
WALLOWA COUNTY — Nei-
ther snow, nor freezing rain, nor
fog, nor gloom of night, stays Wal-
lowa County’s emergency medi-
cal providers from the swift com-
pletion of their life-saving rounds.
Their new, $300,000 four-wheel
drive, high-tech ambulance is
designed and built to reach and
safely transport critical care
patients through the worst of Wal-
lowa County’s weather.
“It’s what we’ve needed — very
reliable ambulance to transport
critical-care patients, especially to
regional hospitals including Lew-
iston, Walla Walla, or Tri-Cities,
and especially in bad weather,”
Wallowa Memorial Hospital
Emergency Service Director Tim
Peck said.
The ambulance, which went
into service on Feb. 1, has already
delivered on getting emergency
patients to regional hospitals for
critical care.
“We’ve already been through
some diffi cult storms both going
and coming. That includes a trip
on Cabbage Hill in near-white-
out conditions,” Peck said. “And
we’ve taken it over Tollgate and
down Buford and up Rattlesnake
grades in some of the heaviest win-
Ellen Morris Bishop/For the Wallowa County Chieftain
Tim Peck, left, and other members of Wallowa Memorial Hospital’s Emergency Medical Technician staff stand in
front of their new high-tech four-wheel drive ambulance on Tuesday, Feb. 23, 2021. The $300,000 ambulance
was funded by local Hearts for Health fundraisers, a matching grant from the Murdock Charitable Trust and an
additional grant from the Lewis and Clark Valley Health Care Foundation.
ter weather we’ve had this season
— sometimes led by ODOT plows
to ensure everyone’s safety.”
The new medical capabilities
include a neonatal transport system
(BabyPod®), which is an enclosed
capsule that creates a warm envi-
ronment for the newborn, Peck
said.
“The new ambulance would
be used if the crews responded
to a precipitous home birth or
other locations outside the hospi-
tal,” Peck said. “The BabyPod’s
warmer and other features, includ-
ing openings for use of IV and a
ventilator, keep the infant warm
and secure.”
The ambulance was designed
See Ambulance, Page A14