Business AgLife
B
Thursday, October 29, 2020
The Observer & Baker City Herald
Wildfires
scorch
logging
companies
By Alex Paul
Capital Press
other hand, if you’re dependent
on foot traffic coming in and
sitting down ... you’ve obvi-
ously seen negative impacts.”
Smith, who also is a state
representative, said struggling
businesses have to adapt to new
economic conditions.
“The economy in 2020 has
changed and the way people
do business has dramatically
changed,” he said. “The old
economy is gone.”
Smith added brick-and-
mortar businesses may need
to “reinvent themselves” and
modernize, suggesting transi-
tioning to an online business or
communication model.
Find Your Why has made
progress in that direction.
According to LeBold, she’s
done a great deal more business
via email during the pandemic.
While LeBold said her local
clients sometimes travel to
Alaska and Hawaii, her per-
sonal preference would be to
MARCOLA— Sweet Home
native Lucas Hufford, 39, is a
fourth-generation logger.
His family owns Timber-
line Logging and although they
weren’t among the community’s
founders, the clan has been in the
Sweet Home area long enough to
claim a geographic namesake —
Hufford Ridge east of town.
His grandfather, Tom Hufford,
drove log trucks until he was 88
years old and founded the pop-
ular Grampa Tom’s Car Show that
attracted hundreds of custom cars
every summer for many years.
His father, Ted Hufford, was a
key figure in the timber wars of
the 1990s.
Lucas Hufford has experienced
the highs and lows of the profes-
sion all of his life.
But the 173,000-acre Holiday
Farm Fire that started Labor Day
evening and is contained but still
burning threatened more than just
Hufford’s livelihood. The blaze
also destroyed more than $2 mil-
lion in logging equipment while
coming within a mile of the home
he and his wife, Jessica, occupy a
few miles south of the Linn-Lane
county line off Marcola Road.
“I got a phone call about 5 a.m.
Tuesday (Sept. 8) from Jeremy
Norby of Guistina Resources,”
Hufford said. “He said, ‘Don’t
be a hero! This thing is moving
really fast.’”
Two hours later, Hufford
learned that his logging equip-
ment had been destroyed, except a
1,000-gallon fire truck, which he
moved to a friend’s property near
Sweet Home.
Hufford said he was surprised
by the call. Employees had con-
tacted him on Labor Day and told
him high winds were buffeting
the area.
“It was completely calm here,”
Hufford said. “I took a video to
show them how nice it was.”
“I called Jess at work and told
her to not come home because
I knew the fire had to be close
to our home,” Hufford said. “I
started putting important stuff
like pictures, paperwork and guns
into my truck because I didn’t
know if we would have anything
See, Travel/Page 3B
See, Logging/Page 2B
Kaleb Lay/The Observer
Alegre Travel in downtown La Grande is going through a rebranding to become Find Your Why Travel. Owner Samantha LeBold said the
change reflects why she got into the travel business.
A CHANGE OF DIRECTION
As travel industry suffers, local business adjusts image
By Kaleb Lay
The Observer
LA GRANDE — A La
Grande-based travel agency
and longtime local business
is seeking to rebrand itself in
the midst of the coronavirus
pandemic.
Alegre Travel, a brick-and-
mortar mainstay in downtown
La Grande, is set to become
Find Your Why Travel.
“I’ve changed the name to
reflect what travel means to
me,” said owner Samantha
LeBold. “Traveling — it’s
taken me on a journey. I’ve
learned a lot about myself, and
that’s something people who
don’t travel really don’t get. …
I’ve found my ‘why’ and we’d
love to help other people find
theirs.”
LeBold, who bought the
business in 2015, said she is
eager to help her customers
“find their why.” She also said
it has proven difficult to find —
and keep — those customers
during the ongoing pandemic.
“COVID is horrible and what it’s doing to
our tourism industry is a nightmare. Every
single trip we had on the books for 2021 was
canceled. It’s heartbreaking.”
Samantha LeBold, owner of Alegre Travel in La Grande. The business
is soon to become Find Your Why Travel
“COVID is horrible and
what it’s doing to our tourism
industry is a nightmare,”
LeBold said. “Every single
trip we had on the books
for 2021 was canceled. It’s
heartbreaking.”
Before the pandemic struck,
travel was a multibillion-dollar
industry in Oregon. According
to a report prepared for the
Oregon Tourism Commission
in April, the statewide industry
accounted for nearly $13 billion
in spending in 2019.
That same report found
travel and tourism were partic-
ularly important to rural Ore-
gonian communities, gener-
ating roughly $18 million in
tax revenue and 6,200 jobs in
Eastern Oregon alone.
Then came 2020, and the
coronavirus with it.
Greg Smith, director of the
Small Business Development
Center at Eastern Oregon Uni-
versity, La Grande, said while
some essential businesses have
thrived during the coronavirus
pandemic, others are “hanging
on by a thread.”
“The impact is manifold
in that you have real winners
and real losers,” Smith said.
“[For] example, if you’re run-
ning a liquor store you’re doing
extraordinarily well. On the
Community Kindness of
Northeast Oregon expands
Nonprofit acquires
space next door and
opens online shop
Big burns under consideration for forests in Baker
and Union counties
By Ronald Bond
Wallowa County Chieftain
By Sabrina Thompson
The Observer
LA GRANDE — Com-
munity Kindness of Eastern
Oregon, a nonprofit thrift store
at 1315 Adams Ave., La Grande,
is expanding its digital and
physical footprint.
The store launched an online
shopping option Monday, Oct.
26, and owners Liz and Grant
Meyer are taking over the
store space next door, formerly
housed by Attitudes Dance
Academy.
“We hope our customers
enjoy and embrace this new
option of thrift store shopping.
We will continue to offer quality
items to our customers both
online and in our store,” Grant
Meyer said.
Liz Meyer said the physical
expansion will give the store
more space to sell some of its
larger donations, including more
furniture. The owners anticipate
the expanded space to be open
in a few weeks.
The second-hand store added
an online purchasing option
Forest Service considers
regions for prescribed burns
Liz Meyer/ Contributed Photo
Grant Meyer, co-owner of Community Kindness of Eastern Oregon
in downtown La Grande, works Tuesday, Oct. 27, 2020, renovating
the space next door, which the nonprofit thrift store acquired.
after seeing the effect the coro-
navirus has had on online
shopping.
“We decided to be sure and
capitalize on this trend,” Grant
Meyer said. “We wanted to
increase sales without (having
to) increase showroom space.”
The items at ckthriftstore.
com are exclusively available
See, Store/Page 2B
WALLOWA COUNTY —
More than 11,000 acres in the Wal-
lowa Fire Zone and more than
20,000 total acres within the Wal-
lowa-Whitman National Forest
are under consideration for a pre-
scribed burn in the coming days
and weeks should the weather
allow it.
But it’s unlikely that much land
will end up seeing flames before
snow flies.
“Between now and the snow-
fall when the conditions are appro-
priate,” said Peter Fargo, public
affairs officer with U.S. Forest Ser-
vice, regarding the window for
burns. “We’re looking at fuel con-
ditions, weather conditions, and
this year in particular we’re pri-
oritizing burn units farther away
from populated areas and down-
wind from populated areas.”
The prescribed fires are a
method of forest management used
to clear underbrush, dead fuel or
down fuel. A burn “allows fire to
play its natural role on the land-
scape under controlled conditions,”
according to a press release.
Just five units in the Wallowa
Fire Zone are under consider-
ation for a prescribed burn, but
the combined size of those sec-
tors is 11,481 acres, and each could
see more than 1,500 acres burned.
The largest prescribed areas are
the Puderbaugh burn unit, south-
east of Joseph, at 3,293 acres, and
the Muddy Sled burn unit, north of
Enterprise, at 2,367 acres.
About 5,000 acres are being
considered for the Whitman
Ranger District, largely based in
Baker County, and another 4,000
could be burned in the Grande
Ronde Fire District, most of which
is in Union County.
Mark Moeller, assistant fire
management officer for the Forest
Service, said in an email the fed-
eral department is assigned a
fuels-reduction target each year.
“This target includes all fuels
reduction treatments, and does not
specify how many acres of each
type of treatment must be accom-
plished,” he explained. “When the
forest receives this target, we set
goals for how many acres of each
treatment we would like to accom-
plish in order to reach that target
number.”
So far, pile burns are all that
have been conducted in the Wal-
lowa Fire Zone, and that was
See, Burns/Page 2B