SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 12, 2020
Baker City, Oregon
4A
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EDITORIAL
Reckless
burning
On the worst day imaginable to be reckless with
fi re, at least two people were.
Both incidents happened Wednesday. Fortunately,
both ended without mishap.
Around noon the Blue Mountain Interagency
Dispatch Center at Union County Airport near La
Grande received a report from a citizen about an
abandoned campfi re.
The place was what the Forest Service calls a
“dispersed campsite,” of which there are several along
Road 77 in the Eagle Creek canyon north of Richland.
The caller had found both trash and a campfi re that
hadn’t been doused, said Peter Fargo, public affairs
offi cer for the Wallowa-Whitman National Forest. The
good Samaritans extinguished the fi re. The Dispatch
Center sent fi refi ghters to make sure all was well.
Wednesday evening a very similar situation played
out, this one in the Eagle Cap Wilderness about 6
miles south of Wallowa Lake.
Whoever started the Eagle Creek fi re was reck-
less in two ways. Campfi res have been banned in
dispersed campsites since mid-August. Worse still,
almost any kid who recognizes Smokey Bear knows
you never leave an active campfi re.
(The Eagle Cap Wilderness fi re was legal. How-
ever, starting today campfi res are banned across the
Wallowa-Whitman, including in the Wilderness.)
These two acts of indiscretion would have been
troubling on an ordinary day. But they didn’t happen
on an ordinary day. They happened on the day when
the most destructive wildfi res in Oregon history were
ravaging much of the state west of the Cascades.
Although the fi re danger is comparatively lower
in our area, it is still high and, in places, extreme.
Moreover, with fi res devastating populated areas
in Oregon, Washington and California, fi refi ghting
resources are limited. If a blaze starts here, local crews
probably won’t be able to summon help if it’s needed.
Northeastern Oregon has fared far better than most
regions this summer. And we’re fortunate that light-
ning, which starts a majority of the blazes here most
years, is not in the immediate forecast. But warmer
temperatures, possibly nearing record highs this
weekend, are predicted. The fi re season is not over.
With summer weather continuing, lots of people
will be visiting the forests again, as they did during
the Labor Day weekend. If we’re all diligent we will
get through safely, albeit with the reminder, from the
drifting smoke of distant fi res smudging our skies, the
danger that continues to lurk.
Your views
Democrats well-represented
in slavery, segregation
Of the 10 U.S. presidents listed by
Gary Dielman in his opinion piece
“The White House and slavery” (Baker
City Herald, Sept. 8) three were mem-
bers of the Democrat Party. They were
Andrew Jackson (seventh president),
Martin van Buren (eighth president),
and James K. Polk (11th president).
All other presidents listed were of
political parties which no longer exist.
Please note that none of the 10 listed
were members of the Republican
party. Also, it should be noted that the
great emancipator of the slaves was
Abraham Lincoln, a Republican party
member.
Other noteworthy Democrats in re-
gards to slavery and civil rights were:
1. Jefferson Davis, Democrat, and
president of the Confederacy. A slave
owner and slavery advocate.
2. Nathan Bedford Forrest, Demo-
crat and Civil War cavalry general was
the fi rst grand wizard of the Ku Klux
Klan.
3. Woodrow Wilson, Democrat and
28th president of the United States,
imposed segregation on the federal
civil service system
4. Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Demo-
crat and 32nd president of the United
— Jayson Jacoby, Baker City Herald editor
Letters to the editor
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not knowingly print false or
misleading claims. However,
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States placed 120,000 United States
citizens in internment camps during
World War II based only on their Japa-
nese heritage.
5. Theophilus “Bull” Connor, Demo-
crat and commissioner of public safety
in Birmingham, Alabama, in the 1960s
and is known for the notorious use of
attack dogs and fi re hoses on Black
civil rights marchers.
6. Orval Faubus, Democrat and gov-
ernor of Arkansas refused to comply
with the landmark decision “Brown
versus Board of Education” which
decreed segregation of public schools
unconstitutional. He used the National
Guard to prevent Black students from
attending Little Rock Central High
School.
7. Robert Byrd, Democrat and U.S.
senator for 51 years ending in 2010.
He was an exalted cyclops of the Ku
Klux Klan and helped the KKK’s
return to West Virginia.
So, since Dielman points to centuries
old history and slavery it is obvious
what is the common denominator.
Neal Jacobson
Baker City
Let’s be inclusive in our
blessings of people
Black Lives Matter is a phrase that
of all statements in letters to the
editor.
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every 15 days.
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rubs some folks the wrong way. The
response is often All Lives Matter, and
locally, an All Lives Matter billboard.
Black Lives Matter attempts to raise
awareness of a long history of killing
and devaluing the lives of Blacks, from
slavery to lynching to you-can’t-vote
to terrible schools to don’t-use-white-
drinking-fountains to don’t-touch-a-
white to redlining real estate to job
discrimination to biased imprisonment
to immoral harassment and killing by
police.
Yet Black Lives Matter still bugs
some people who say we shouldn’t
single out Blacks. What about White
Lives? BLM is just not right! A phrase
so exclusive of most people is plain
wrong!
For those who feel this way, I recom-
mend you never say God Bless America
again — it obviously singles out a cer-
tain people. What about Canada? What
about Norway? What about Botswana?
Why exclude most of the good, God-
fearing people throughout the world?
That’s just not right! A phrase so exclu-
sive of most people is plain wrong!
If you wish to request a blessing
from God, I recommend Tiny Tim —
“God bless us, every one.”
Charles Jones
La Grande
• Letters will be edited for brevity,
grammar, taste and legal reasons
Mail: To the Editor, Baker City
Herald, P.O. Box 807, Baker City,
OR 97814
Email: news@bakercityherald.
com
Waking up to a world transformed by fire
I’ve written dozens of stories over
the years about wildfi res but until
one moment, just before dawn on
a recent morning, the topic seemed
to me professional rather than
personal.
Then I rolled out of bed on Tues-
day, Sept. 8.
(Almost literally; I am no longer
limber enough to exit a bed with
anything resembling grace. The
daily maneuver would be more
correctly described as a barely
controlled fall.)
I checked my cellphone.
After perusing the weather
forecast and my email I pulled up
Facebook (which ought to give you
an idea of where social media ranks
among my priorities).
The fi rst thing I saw was a post
from Alison DeRenzo, the younger
of my two sisters.
The post was accompanied by a
horrifi c photograph showing the
entire sky glowing a dull red-or-
ange, like something you might see
inside a foundry were you so reck-
less as to thrust your head inside.
Alison’s husband, Jonathan, had
taken the photograph.
JAYSON
JACOBY
Still a trifl e groggy, a condition
that usually lingers at least until
I’ve gotten through half of my
fi rst mug of coffee, I couldn’t make
sense of this. I had no reason to
believe my brother-in-law would be
anywhere near what was obviously
a major wildfi re.
But as I swiped my fi nger down
the screen and read further, I real-
ized that Jonathan had taken the
picture while standing in the front
yard of his home in Mill City.
This deepened my sense of confu-
sion and unease.
Mill City, a town of about 1,900
in the North Santiam River canyon
30 miles east of Salem, is also
where my parents live.
Something awful had happened
while I slept.
The rest of that day was the sort
of experience people often describe
later as having passed in a “blur.”
It is an apt metaphor.
The word blur conveys the way
that the onslaught of information
can leave you befuddled, as though
you had just ridden a particularly
contorted rollercoaster, or stepped
from a vessel that has plied rough
seas.
These days, of course, the data
generally arrive in the form of texts
and Facebook posts rather than by
phone.
But having grown up when
phones were still tethered by a
springy coil of vinyl-coated cable,
my fi rst inclination was to call
rather than text.
My dad answered his cell and
said he and my mom were sitting
in their car in a parking lot in
Stayton.
That’s the town, between Mill
City and Salem, where I lived until
I was 18 and went off to college.
They told me they had fl ed late
the previous night.
They feared for their home,
which stands on the south bank of
the North Santiam River.
The outlook was even more dire
for Alison and Jonathan’s house. It
lacks the fi reproof barrier of a major
river on one side. And when Jona-
than, who works for Mill City’s public
works department, had evacuated
early that morning, homes on the
next block were engulfed.
I went to work, where I struggled
to focus on the screen in front of
me and the words I was typing or
reading.
I had heretofore understood, in
the dim and unimportant way that a
person understands the world’s real
but rare dangers, that Mill City, lying
in a relatively narrow canyon with
Douglas-fi r forests in places crowding
the highway that parallels the river,
was potentially at risk from wildfi re.
But the threat seemed to me
remote.
The forests of the Cascade foothills
are quite different, fi re wise, from
much of the Blue Mountains. The
Cascade forests don’t burn often. And
the confl agrations that destroyed
hundreds of homes this week, from
near Portland to the California bor-
der, are without precedent in Oregon.
My parents’ home survived. So did
my sister’s.
But a century-old home several
miles east of Mill City, the home
where my other sister, Julie Pen-
nick, and her family lived for sev-
eral years, and where her husband,
Bill, died suddenly at age 41 in
2015, did not.
Many landmarks from my child-
hood were also destroyed. A cafe in
Detroit where I once had breakfast
with my grandpa, who died when I
was 9. A meat market in Mehama
that packaged the hamburger I
still remember, stacked in rows of
white butcher-papered chunks in
the freezer in our garage. Homes
and businesses I have driven past
dozens, no hundreds, of times.
I have seen fi rsthand how fl ames
can transform familiar forests, have
hiked among the black skeletons.
But I have not had this experi-
ence when the remnants aren’t
charred trees but the concrete foun-
dations of homes, the ashy detritus
of so many dreams.
I hope to make the drive west
this fall to see. It is a prospect that
both fascinates and repels.
Jayson Jacoby is editor
of the Baker City Herald.