THURSDAY, APRIL 15, 2021
Baker City, Oregon
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EDITORIAL
Preventing
a tragedy
The most important part of the episode earlier this
week in eastern Baker County is what didn’t happen.
No one was hurt.
The three members of a Beaverton family were
rescued after their sedan got mired in spring snow on
Sunday afternoon, April 11, along the Wallowa Moun-
tain Loop Road northeast of Halfway.
Three members of the Baker County Sheriff’s Offi ce
search and rescue team rode a pair of side-by-side
all-terrain vehicles to the site, about nine miles north of
Highway 86, early Monday after Jason Brunson, 52, of
Beaverton, called 911 on his cellphone.
Although the situation ended well, Baker County
Sheriff Travis Ash fears another predicament of this
sort will not.
The sheriff — who has himself twice rescued trav-
elers in similar circumstances on that same Forest
Service road — is right to be concerned.
The factors leading to a potential tragedy are present.
Most of Baker County is relatively remote. The spot
on the Loop Road — Forest Road 39 — where the
Brunson family got stuck is, as mentioned, nine miles
from the nearest highway. Their destination, the
Hells Canyon Overlook, is more than a dozen miles
farther into the backcountry.
Cellphone service is sketchy or nonexistent in parts
of the county. Ash said Monday he was surprised that
Brunson was able to make his call where he did.
And in any season except summer — and even
then, at times — temperatures can dip low enough
to pose a danger of hypothermia to travelers who are
ill-prepared.
Road 39 isn’t the only route where these factors can
coalesce into a dangerous mixture. Another example
is the Elkhorn Drive Scenic Byway north of Granite.
But Road 39 recently has had a disproportionate
share of situations that result in rescues.
The road is paved, for one thing — a rarity in these
parts once you leave behind offi cial highways. It’s
also widely publicized, being part of the Hells Canyon
National Scenic Byway. Road 39 is the only direct
route, accessible to passenger cars, between eastern
Baker County and the popular attractions of Wallowa
County including Joseph and Wallowa Lake.
In recognition of the road’s lure, even when it’s not
passable to cars, and prompted by multiple rescues of
stranded motorists this year, the Wallowa-Whitman
National Forest this winter installed a barricade
across Road 39 near Highway 86. The barricade was
intended to dissuade drivers but allow snowmobiles
and other over-snow vehicles to travel the road, which
is an offi cial snowmobile route.
In a March 11 press release, the Wallowa-Whitman
announced that later in the spring it would move the
barricades farther up the road as the snow recedes, to
accommodate hunters and others. Peter Fargo, public
affairs offi cer for the Wallowa-Whitman, wrote in an
email to the Herald on Monday that forest workers
removed the barricade recently. “At the time, there
was a clear snow line beyond which most vehicles
would not be able to venture far,” Fargo wrote.
A sign remains noting that the road is not main-
tained during winter and early spring, but Ash said
he doesn’t think the sign is a suffi cient deterrent.
Travelers must, of course, bear responsibility. A par-
ticular problem with snowmobile routes such as Road
39 is that even if the snow is feet deep, the machines
compact it such that the surface will, sometimes for
miles, hold the weight of a car — so long as it stays in
the relatively narrow packed down area. But turning
around on such roads without getting stuck is all but
impossible.
No sign is foolproof, to be sure. But the county and
the Forest Service could install larger signs, perhaps
ones with solar-powered fl ashing lights. And the For-
est Service should consider leaving some form of bar-
ricade in place that would allow hunters to proceed
but serve as an additional warning to drivers who
might not realize that their intended driving route is
not a feasible one. Or, more vitally, a safe one.
— Jayson Jacoby, Baker City Herald editor
Leaving pandemic purgatory
Julie Bulitt and David Bulitt
Who for the last year has not been
spending more than a little too much
time roaming around in pajamas? We
planned to get out of ours one morn-
ing, but after some thought, it just
seemed like such a waste. Why should
we dirty up laundry just to go from the
bedroom to the kitchen to the home
offi ce and around again? Put on some
pants or a dress? Shirt and tie? And
what about shoes? Real shoes — not
sneakers, slippers or Birkenstocks.
No thanks. In our PJs we would stay.
Happy, content and comfy.
If most of us knew a year ago what
we know now — that we would be un-
der some degree of house arrest for an
entire year — there would have been
plenty of “get out of heres” and “no
ways” and “you are full of its.” Most of
us would have had more than a little
diffi culty getting our arms around a
year of “nos.” No family. No friends. No
trips. No movies. No, no, no. Yet, here
we are. Thankfully, not at the begin-
ning, but closer to the end.
Both of us tell our clients, for obvi-
ous different reasons and with varying
purposes, that there is an end in sight.
In David’s practice as a divorce lawyer,
many unhappy couples have found
themselves in an unrelenting relation-
ship purgatory — somewhere between
“I am stuck” and “I need to get out.”
For many of Julie’s family therapy
clients, the idea of transitioning back
to “normal” is particularly stressful.
It’s apprehension overload.
For those who struggle with inter-
personal relationships and social anxi-
ety, in particular, the last 12 months
have provided a consoling blanket of
comfort. Nervous around crowds or
strangers? Don’t like interacting with
peers or co-workers? No problem. Stay
home. Stay close. Stay in your PJs.
But what now? The weather is
turning warmer. Vaccines are becom-
ing easier to come by. Stores and
restaurants are reopening, workers
are heading back to their offi ces, and
many people are looking to travel
more. To just get out and do.
Many others are not all that hip to
returning into a world that requires
us to face people again, with masks
or without. Make no mistake, social
anxiety is real and has metastasized;
it affects children and adults of all
ages and backgrounds. It does not
discriminate among gender, race or
vocation. It can be depressing, oppres-
sive and overwhelming. The anxiety is
multifaceted and comes from a myriad
directions. Can I shake hands? Hug
someone? How close can I be when I
am talking with a friend? What about
crowds? Don’t even try talking about
concerts and parties and sporting
events. To borrow from the “Star Wars”
movies, those seem to exist on some
other planet that is far, far away.
Simple everyday human contact
has, for all intents and purposes, been
put on hold by a COVID-induced
pause button. People’s social skills
have gotten rusty or in some cases
stalled completely. There is a very pal-
pable trepidation over what reentry
will look and feel like, and whether we
will ever again be able to have normal
relationships with others.
So, what are we to do? Stay in,
cover up and stay planted in our self-
contained cocoons? We don’t think so.
Readying yourself for any new journey
calls for courage. Put one foot in front
of the other, breathe and take that
fi rst step. And please, put away the
PJs.
Our community is blessed with caring
citizens that came out in force to make
this happen, from retired nurses and
doctors to our law enforcement offi cers.
I want to personally thank Jerry Yen-
copal, Jason Yencopal, Ashley McClay,
Bruce Nichols, Carrie Folkman, Mary
Miller, and numerous others I was not
able to identify by just their eyes in
helping to make this vaccination clinic
a success. I also want to thank Mark
Bennett, Nancy Staten, and Eric Lamb
for their excellent work in managing
the county’s COVID-19 response and
interacting with our state government
to develop guidelines and argue for
how we should be treated under OHA
rules. I encourage everyone to go to
bakercountycovid19.com and sign up
to receive a vaccination shot as soon as
possible. The quicker we can protect our
community from this virus the quicker
our schools, businesses, and industries
can get back to normal.
Loran Joseph
Baker City
Julie and David Bulitt, respectively a
licensed clinical social worker and divorce
lawyer, have been married for 34 years
and are the parents of four daughters.
They are the authors of “The 5 Core
Conversations for Couples” and can be
reached at www.thebulitts.com.
Your views
Gratifi ed to get my fi rst dose
of a COVID-19 vaccine
I had the pleasure (and fortuity) of
getting my fi rst dose of the Moderna
vaccine on Friday, April 9 at the Baker
County Health Department’s drive-thru
clinic at BHS. The number of volunteers
and county staff that have been coming
together in order to inoculate our citi-
zens quickly, safely, and effi ciently is in-
credible. At every step of the procedure
I was greeted by a friendly pair of eyes
and guided to the next part effortlessly.
OTHER VIEWS
Curbing community violence
Editorial from Los Angeles Times:
When President Joe Biden an-
nounced his executive action last week
to deal with the nation’s surging vio-
lence, most attention understandably
went to his plans to stop the prolifera-
tion of so-called ghost guns — fi rearms
that can be hastily assembled from
untraceable kits.
But let’s not overlook the importance
of the community violence preven-
tion and intervention aid that Biden
is offering concurrently with his gun
control plans. They represent welcome
and desperately needed federal support
for local programs that treat violence
much as we treat infectious disease
— as public health problems that can
be diagnosed and treated before they
become epidemics, or even inoculated
against altogether. With some effort
and creativity, cities and counties can
use the opportunity presented by
Biden’s program to turn the tide of not
just violence but its underlying causes
to boot, such as poverty and inequity.
Los Angeles at fi rst adopted the pub-
lic health approach to violence in dribs
and drabs, generally choosing instead
to respond to violent crime with hard-
er-hitting policing and mass incarcera-
tion. That was a policy decision made
here and in jurisdictions around the
country in the 1980s in response to the
profusion of crack cocaine. It ravaged
communities of color. We suffer today
from the policy failures of the 1980s
and 1990s. Biden’s program represents
a sort of do-over, already in progress at
the local level.
LA’s violence prevention strategy has
so far focused mostly on gang crime,
and it fl oundered for a decade as a suc-
cession of programs — Hope in Youth,
L.A. Bridges — failed to demonstrate
or document any positive impact on
violence. The situation improved in
2009 with the creation of GRYD, the
Mayor’s Offi ce of Gang Reduction and
Youth Development, which combines
long-standing summer and after-school
activities (to counter the infl uence of
youth gangs) with peer peacemakers
who keep their fi nger on the pulse of
communities and intervene to prevent
outbreaks of retaliatory gang killings.
But much of the deadly violence
that began last year and is continu-
ing unabated is not gang-related, and
addressing it goes beyond the scope of
GRYD’s reach.
Los Angeles County, meanwhile, in
2019 established an Offi ce of Violence
Prevention within the Public Health
Department, incorporating mental
health, youth justice and poverty pro-
grams. The county’s ambition is com-
mendable, but implementation lags.
Biden included $5 billion for violence
prevention in his infrastructure pro-
posal, but it’s in Congress’ hands and
is hardly assured of passage. Still, the
executive actions he announced Thurs-
day make already available funding
more accessible and fl exible, and would
support the public health approach
to violence that LA and the nation
desperately need.