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About Cottage Grove sentinel. (Cottage Grove, Or.) 1909-current | View Entire Issue (Aug. 7, 2019)
8A | WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 7, 2019 | COTTAGE GROVE SENTINEL from A1 Series bring lower insurance costs to Cottage Grove. CRS is a FEMA-insti- gated community pro- gram that rewards local floodplain management activities that exceed the minimum standards of the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP). For those in a 100-year flood zone, such insurance is required. With the CRS program, discounts are available based on point scoring. Entering the program at a score of 10, each point downward to 1 awards ev- eryone within a jurisdic- tion five percent off their NFIP flood insurance pol- icy. “Just to come in at a 10 is quite a hurdle,” said Fergu- son. “We came in at a 7 last year. We have the capacity to go down to a 5 as soon as our building depart- ment has been here long enough to get rated.” After meeting that three-year requirement of the building department, a 25 percent discount may be available to those in the area. “There are all sorts of pieces of the puzzle,” Fer- guson said. “When we looked at the community rating system, we realized we didn’t have to change anything we were doing and we would get a really high rate.” With the application ap- proved last year, 2019 bill- ing recipients should see a 15 percent drop in cost. Though incentive re- mains to further raise the standards within Cottage Grove floodplains, much of the waterflow control rests with management of reservoirs by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. “The Coast Fork is 90 percent controlled by the release out of Cottage Grove Lake Reservoir,” Ferguson said. “And the Row River, when it hits Cottage Grove, is about 40 percent controlled by the release out of Dorena.” All things considered, Ferguson believes the city met its disaster challenges admirably this year. “I think it would be an A-minus,” she said. “No- body’s ever perfect.” Other city officials echoed Ferguson’s evalu- ation. “I just feel like we have a really good leadership team here that has experi- ence and the ability to ad- dress critical thinking and how to get through what’s ahead of us,” said Stewart. “Not only thinking about the moment, but thinking about, ‘What’s the future?’” Lessons Learned For all the high marks reported on emergency re- sponsiveness, city officials admit there is always room for improvement. “I would say the first place we learned we lacked was coordination with en- tities within our own com- munity,” said Stewart. Questions remain on whether communication could have been improved in quality and speed with emergency services and the school district. Messages to the public, for example, sometimes provided contrary infor- mation or needed updat- ing. On the county level, communication with the county’s newly formed emergency operations cen- ter was somewhat bare. “Maybe we didn’t com- municate well enough with them as they set up their emergency com- mand center,” Stewart said. “They reached out midway through the process and asked if we needed any- thing, but we were feeling really comfortable about how we were addressing things and didn’t feel like we needed any additional support here.” Winningham speculat- ed that part of that lack of communication was the fact that the county’s emer- gency operations center had previously directed most of its help to the sher- iff ’s office and many were unaware of its new capac- ity. “Now it’s evolving,” she said. “The commissioners have pulled the program out from under the sher- iff ’s office and made it its own program that supports the entire organization and the community, too. That’s where I came on board.” For Stewart, having ac- cess to the proper informa- tion is half the battle and more county-to-city in- formation exchange could prove useful. “It’s like everything: knowing the resources that are out there and plugging into them,” he said. During a post-disas- ter debriefing by Cottage Grove Police Chief Scott Shepherd, city officials also learned of an overlooked segment of the population. “We have a pretty vul- nerable population when power is out for a while,” Stewart said. Refilling oxygen tanks and getting access to med- ication can be critical con- cerns for some in these conditions. During the snowstorm’s power outage, the Peace- Health Cottage Grove Community Medical Cen- ter provided aid, food and rest for people in the area seeking help and oxygen. “When we had the de- brief, that’s another area I think we could really help each other,” said Stewart, “is having a better commu- nications system with the hospital.” Meanwhile, the city’s Wi-Fi hut ran into its own snag. “We did discover some weaknesses regarding fu- eling our generators,” said Ferguson. Getting fuel to the city’s Wi-Fi propane generators during the snowstorm was a challenge due to the danger on the road posed to the provider. Also, oth- er companies refused to touch it as they weren’t certified. “So, we need to diversify our fuel source,” Ferguson said. “And that’s a good thing to learn.” ‘It Boils Down to the Individual’ While the city devised and implemented its own disaster response, house- holds in and out of the city STIHL CHAIN SAW $179.95 Proud Sponsor for the Kids Reading Stock# MS 170 Program Free Extra Chain and Horner's Baseball Cap with purchase. dealt with struggles of their own. Stories of neighborly rescues and assistance be- gan to emerge before the snow had stopped falling, many coming from the ru- ral roads where hundreds of downed trees had cre- ated scenes evocative of a post-apocalyptic world. In one case, Gene Hursh, a Harrisburg grass seed farmer with acreage in the Cottage Grove area, cruised the roads around Dorena with his nephews, looking for people to help. April Klein of Sallee Road was one of the lucky recipients of Hursh’s kind- ness. “We were buried,” Klein said. “You couldn’t even get out of your driveway to get to the store, to go to work, to go into town to get water if you needed it – nothing.” Klein estimated about 17 to 20 people were trapped on the road, but after flag- ging Hursh down, “It freed everybody,” she said. “It was just such a nice thing.” Hursh said he cleared the road for “about a dozen or more” houses all togeth- er, working for two days to help people as far as Pleas- ant Hill. One family in particular, Hursh remem- bered, had no electricity or even a wood heating system. “They were really cold,” he said. “They were very grateful to be able to get out of there and get back into town.” For those in a rural setting, such values of self-sufficiency and com- munity reliance become exceedingly evident during a disaster. “I think a lot of these Ed & Kori Sowa Independent Owner-Operators facebook.com/CottageGroveGroceryOutlet SAVE 40-70% ON GROCERIES. BEAUTIFUL, HUH? Dentistry is our profession, people are our focus. Birch Avenue Dental 1325 Birch Ave. 541-942-2471 • General Dentistry • Implants • Sedation • Financing 1325 Birch Ave. Cottage Grove birchavenuedental.com 541-942-2471 Tammy L. McClung DDS • Park W. McClung DDS Congratulations! to our Residents of the Month Jack and Betty Dodson Employee of the Month Nancy Hawks For the month of July, 2019 COTTAGE GROVE: 6th & Gibbs Church of Christ 195 N. 6th St. • 541-942-3822 10:00am Christian Education: Pre-K through 5th www.6thandgibbs.com First Presbyterian Church 3rd and Adams St 541-942-4479 Rev.: Karen Hill Worship: 10:00am Sunday School: 10:00am fpcgrove.com Calvary Baptist Church 77873 S 6th St • 541-942-4290 Pastor: Riley Hendricks Sunday School: 9:45am Worship: 11:00am The Journey: Sunday 5:00pm Praying Thru Life: Wednesday 6:00pm Hope Fellowship United Pentecostal Church 100 S. Gateway Blvd. 541-942-2061 Pastor: Dave Bragg Worship: 11:00am Sunday Bible Study: 7:00pm Wednesday www.hopefellowshipupc.com “FINDING HOPE IN YOUR LIFE” Cottage Grove Faith Center 33761 Row River Rd. 541-942-4851 Lead Pastor: Kevin Pruett www.cg4.tv Full Childrenʼs Ministry available Services: 9:00am & 10:45am Delight Valley Church of Christ 33087 Saginaw Rd. East 541-942-7711 • Pastor: Bob Friend Two Services: 9am - Classic in the Chapel 10:30am - Contemporary in the Auditorium Dentistry is our profession, people are our focus. Birch Avenue Dental See PREP 11A Worship Directory Cottage Grove Bible Church 1200 East Quincy Avenue 541-942-4771 Pastor:Bob Singer Worship 11am Sunday School:9:45am AWANA age 3-8th Grade, Wednesdays Sept-May, 6:30pm www.cgbible.org 200 Gateway Blvd. Cottage Grove, OR 97424 4 (541) 942-5400 Mon. - Sat. 8am - 9pm Sun. 9am - 8pm Evidence of a lack of readiness became apparent during this year’s snow- storm and flooding as sev- eral requests for aid to the city and county could not be met due to resource constraints. In a state of emergency, many natural- ly assume a hierarchy of emergency management is capable of addressing everything within its juris- diction. “You should flip that hi- erarchy,” Ferguson said. “It needs to be individual and then city and then county and state and fed.” As more individuals are prepared, systems on other levels are free to address more severe problems which have overloaded more local resources. “And that’s true about each level of government,” said Ferguson. “So that means the more the city can handle its own stuff, that gives the county the flexibility of dealing with the areas outside of the cities where people aren’t being addressed.” 1425 Daugherty Ave. • Cottage Grove • 541-942-0054 Church of Christ 420 Monroe St • 541-942-8565 Sunday Service: 10:30am Cottage Grove rural communities have figured out that they’re on their own and its neigh- bors helping neighbors,” said Winningham. “Com- munities do come together in the face of disaster and they help each other.” Among the projects on Winningham’s radar is the empowerment of more in- dividuals, particularly the rural areas. “Because the more pre- pared they are, the less likely they’re going to need me or the first respond- ers,” she said. “Ask what you learned from the snow and what have you done to fix the problem. How have you mitigated that prob- lem so it doesn’t happen again?” Meyers, too, believes the power to respond ef- fectively rests largely with citizen readiness. “I think it boils down to the individual,” he said. “We can be as prepared as we can possibly be. A neighbor could be as pre- pared as they could possi- bly be. But none of that’s going to work if the indi- viduals aren’t ready.” First Baptist Church 301 S. 6th st • 541-942-8242 Pastor: David Chhangte Sunday School 9:30am Worship Service 10:30am Youth Wednesday 6:30pm cgfi rstbaptist.com St. Philip Benizi, Creswell 552 Holbrook Lane Sunday 8:30 AM St. Andrews Episcopal Church 1301 W. Main • 541-767-9050 Rev. Lawrence Crumb “Church with the fl ags.” Worship: Sunday 10:30am All Welcome Seventh-day Adventist Church 820 South 10th Street 541-942-5213 Pastor: Kevin Miller Bible Study: Saturday, 9:15 am Worship Service: Saturday, 10:40 Mid-week Service: Wednesday, 1:00 Living Faith Assembly 467 S. 10th St. • 541-942-2612 Trinity Lutheran Church Worship Services Sundays: 9a & 11a 6th & Quincy • 541-942-2373 Youth Worship Sundays: 11a (all Pastor: James L. Markus ages welcome) Sunday School & Adult Education Mondays: 5:30p (6th-12th grades) 9:15am Sunday Worship 10:30 am Non-Denominational Comm. Kitchen Free Meal Tue & Thur Church of Christ 5:00pm TLC Groups 1041 Pennoyer Ave tlccg.com 541-942-8928 Preacher: Tony Martin United Methodist Church Sunday Bible Study:10:00am 334 Washington 541-942-3033 Sunday Worship:10:50am & 5:30pm New Pastor Craig Pesti- Strobel www.pennoyeravecoc.com Worship 10:30am umcgrove.org Old Time Gospel Fellowship 103 S. 5th St. • 541-942-4999 “VICTORY” Country Church Pastor: Jim Edwards 913 S. 6th Street • 541-942-5913 Sunday Service: 10:00am Pastor: Barbara Dockery Join in Traditional Christian Worship Worship Service: 10:00am Message: “WE BELIEVE IN Our Lady of Perpetual Help MIRACLES” and St. Philip Benizi Catholic Churches 1025. N. 19th St. 541-942-3420 Father John J. Boyle Holy Mass: Saturday Vigil – 5:30 PM Sunday – 10:30 PM For weekday and Holy Day of Obligation schedule see website OLPHCG.net Confession: 4 PM to 5 PM Saturdays or by appointment CRESWELL: Creswell Presbyterian Church 75 S 4th S • 541-895-3419 Rev. Seth Wheeler Adult Sunday School 9:15am Sunday Worship Service 10:30 am website www.creswellpres.org Our Worship Directory is a weekly feature in this newspaper. If your congregation would like to be a part of this directory, contact us today! S entinel C ottage G rove 541-942-3325 116 N. 6th Street Cottage Grove, OR
