COTTAGE GROVE SENTINEL • MARCH 6, 2019 •
3A
What Now? Cottage Grove area emerges from once-in-a-century snowstorm
By Damien Sherwood
dsherwood@cgsentinel.com
Snowfall in the Willamette Valley
is often greeted with a certain affec-
tion. Children may get to skip some
school days, families bond while cre-
ating snowmen and winter sports en-
thusiasts rub their hands together at
a chance to make their mark on fresh
slopes.
The evening of Feb. 24 likely
sparked such sentiments as weather
forecasts made good on their promise
and the first snowflakes lazily floated
to the valley’s floor. To the surprise of
many, however, the snowflakes didn’t
stop. And soon they weren’t falling so
lazily.
By 8 p.m. that night, the first re-
ports of power outages had begun
to surface in Cottage Grove and
the snow had risen to eight inches
in some areas. Through the night,
the storm battered the valley and,
by Monday morning, the National
Weather Service reported 14 inches
had fallen in Cottage Grove while
residents in outlying areas posted
through social media snowfall closer
to two feet or more.
Sporadic snowfall followed as
people tried to dig their way out, but
many became stuck on the slushy
roads.
Finally, late afternoon Wednes-
day, the first sun rays began peeking
through overcast gray into a snow-
caked Willamette Valley. Though the
clouds parted, darkness had fully set
inside thousands of electricity-de-
prived homes in and around Cottage
Grove. Many roads were still impass-
able, blockaded by fallen trees and
barriers of snow. Fuel stations and
grocery stores were understaffed and
overwhelmed by throngs of custom-
ers stocking up for a wait that many
expected to be long, dark and cold.
DAMIEN SHERWOOD/COTTAGE GROVE SENTINEL
A deep layer of snow covers Bohemia Park, hiding park attactions such as the walking trails, fountain and amphi-
theater under a blanket of white.
declared for both Cottage Grove and
Lane County Tuesday, Feb. 26. Be-
fore long, Gov. Kate Brown issued an
emergency declaration for 10 Oregon
counties, including Lane, last Thurs-
day.
The governor’s declaration pro-
vided access to additional resources
and the potential for federal highway
system funds in the future while di-
recting Oregon’s Office of Emergency
Management (OEM) to coordinate
responses with the Oregon Depart-
ment of Transportation (ODOT),
Oregon State Police and the Oregon
National Guard to ensure cities and
small communities received support
A State of Emergency
The situation was nothing short of as needed.
With a Lane County state of
a crisis and states of emergency were
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emergency declared, local spend-
ing limits were lifted and the need
to go through the County Board of
Commissioners for approval was re-
moved, expediting the response pro-
cess and allowing the county and its
local partners to request additional
state support from OEM and other
partners if needed.
“It frees up resources that
wouldn’t otherwise be available to
us,” said Lane County Commission-
er Heather Buch. “Getting those ad-
ditional resources is critical because
people are not as available to help
when they’re stuck in their own lo-
cations. We have several other folks
from different counties in our office
helping with us.”
Lane County’s own OEM staff of
five swelled to about 15 or 20, Buch
said.
The accelerated access to funding
is also expected to come with possi-
ble reimbursement.
“When smaller cities are expend-
ing large amounts of money to get
services out to their communities to
put things back together, that’s very
expensive and our small cities have a
really hard time being able to afford
those kinds of services,” said Buch
The county can now document
those expenses and later request
some reimbursement of those funds
from FEMA and state sources.
Distributed resources around the
county included fuel, food, water,
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medicine, baby formula and Ameri-
can Red Cross assets.
“Just those critical essentials that
everyone needs to get by,” said Buch.
“Stability for me means they have
electricity and all their basic needs
met. Not everybody has that yet.”
As for Cottage Grove, the declara-
tion didn’t entitle the city to any aid
— distribution is at the discretion of
the county or state — though it does
open the door for the city to tap into
any of the aforementioned resources.
“The emergency declaration can
also be very valuable if FEMA steps
in,” said Public Works and Develop-
ment Director Faye Stewart said.
Years ago, an ice storm quali-
fied Lane County for emergency aid
funding. “I think we got close to 80
percent of our expenses from that
storm reimbursed,” Stewart said.
All clean up and spending must
be done during the window that the
state of emergency is declared and
reimbursements in the form of state
or federal funding may come later,
though it is not clear how much can
be reimbursed.
“So, it was best for us to take the
action and be in position to be able
to take advantage if it happens,” said
Stewart.
The city’s state of emergency is ex-
pected to last at least a month or two
as extensive coordination efforts are
needed to respond to damage caused
by the storm.
“We will probably keep this decla-
ration of emergency active for awhile
because there’s lots of clean-up that
needs to be done,” said City Manager
Richard Meyers.
Cottage Grove and its surround-
ing communities still need plenty of
attention. Though power has large-
ly been restored to the city proper,
downed trees and debris litter pub-
lic and private property. And many
roads, if cleared, are bookended by
large snow banks.
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