THE WEST
SATURDAY, JULY 3, 2021
BAKER CITY HERALD — A5
Search and Rescue teams from
Baker, other counties hone skills
■ About 60 volunteers participated in training June 24-27 in Wallowa County
East Oregonian
ENTERPRISE — Search
and Rescue team members
from Wallowa, Union, Baker
and Umatilla counties honed
their skills in the Salt Creek
Summit area of Wallowa
County.
About 60 SAR volunteers
and instructors from the
four counties participated
June 24-27 in the multi-day
training, which was hosted by
Wallowa County Search and
Rescue volunteers.
“Our numbers were down
a little from what we ex-
pected, but it’s a little late in
the season,” Paige Sully, the
event coordinator for Wallowa
County SAR, said. “But all in
all I think it was great.”
Training included swift-
water rescue, tactical fast
tracking, advanced incident
command, hasty-team and
K-9 land searches, rescuing
injured hikers from remote
locations and coordination
with Civil Air Patrol aircraft.
“It was a very good train-
ing,” said Jim Akenson, who
serves as a WCSAR incident
commander and participated
in the incident command
training. “It was fundamental
and advanced all rolled into
one. As an incident com-
mander, it’s good to see more
and more people coming on
who can take leadership
roles. Everybody I observed
did really well.”
June 26 was devoted to
classes, most with hands-on
fi eld experience.
Tactical tracking, taught by
Clifford Pease and Leon Ker-
shaw, proved one of the more
popular classes. Both men
track suspects and escaped
prisoners for the Umatilla
County Sheriff’s Offi ce and
other law enforcement agen-
cies. Their “fast tracking”
techniques have allowed
them to follow and apprehend
escaped convicts more than
40 miles in three days.
“It’s important to pay atten-
tion to the small things that
people leave along their path,
HEAT
Ellen Morris Bishop/Contributed Photo
Umatilla County Sheriff’s Offi ce tracker Cliff Pease points out the details of track inter-
pretation Saturday, June 26, 2021, in the Salt Creek Summit area of Wallowa County
to search and rescue volunteers in a tracking class.
Swiftwater rescue training,
led by a team of instructors
from Wallowa County, took
place in the pond near Salt
Creek Summit. Volunteers
fi ne-tuned skills that included
accurately throwing rescue
ropes.
Search and rescue hasty,
medical and K-9 teams coor-
dinated by incident command
and SAR members from mul-
tiple counties spread out in a
mock search and rescue exer-
cise June 27 in the Salt Creek
Summit area. Civil Air Patrol
Ellen Morris Bishop/Contributed Photo brought in two aircraft — one
Umatilla County Sheriff’s Offi ce tracker Leon Kershaw,
from Boise and another from
center, shows search and rescue volunteers Miles Mc-
Redmond — to aid in search-
Fall, left, and Heather Howard how to interpret a “fl ag”
ing for several “lost hikers,”
or track Saturday, June 26, 2021, in the Salt Creek Sum- some of whom were “injured.”
mit area of Wallowa County.
The search and rescue efforts
all were successful within the
including actual tracks as
two tracking K-9 teams —
three hours allotted for the
well as bent twigs, scuffs and Heather Howard and her
exercise.
other (sign),” Pease said. “It’s dog Gracie, and Edward
“Learning to work with and
often possible to determine a “Vern” Vernarsky and his dog practicing with our neighbor-
general path and send a team Trooper.
ing counties for mutual aide
ahead along that line to pick
“I really thought the
just makes us more ready
up (tracks) farther ahead and tracking class was great,”
when we have a big search
close the time-distance gap.
said Holly Akenson, Wallowa and we all need to work
You can fi nd the lost person
County Search and Rescue
together,” Akenson said. “This
quicker that way.”
K-9 team leader. “There were way we all know each other,
The trackers also worked
a lot of really good on-the-
we’ve worked together, and I
with Wallowa County’s
ground things.”
think that’s really benefi cial.”
Ixcan, Guatemala. He had turned 38
the day before he died.
Continued from Page A3
Lucas, who is cousins with the
Among the dead was a farm
labor contractor, was summoned
laborer who collapsed Saturday,
to the scene. But by the time he
June 26 and was found by fellow
arrived, his uncle was unconscious
workers at a nursery in rural St.
and dying. An ambulance crew tried
Paul, Oregon. The workers had
to revive him but failed. Lucas said
been moving irrigation lines, said
Perez was used to working in the
Aaron Corvin, spokesman for the
heat and that the family is awaiting
state’s worker safety agency, Oregon an autopsy report.
Occupational Safety and Health, or
Reyna Lopez, executive director
Oregon OSHA.
of a northwest farmworkers’ union,
Oregon OSHA, whose database
known by its Spanish-language
listed the death as heat-related, is
initials, PCUN, called the death
investigating labor contractor An-
“shameful” and faulted both Oregon
dres Pablo Lucas and Ernst Nursery OSHA for not adopting emergency
and Farms, which did not respond to rules ahead of the heat wave, and
a request for comment. Pablo Lucas the nursery.
declined to comment Thursday.
Corvin said Oregon OSHA is
Farm worker Pedro Lucas said
“exploring adopting emergency
the man who died was his uncle,
requirements, and we continue to
Sebastian Francisco Perez, from
engage in discussions with labor
and employer stakeholders.”
He added that employers are
obligated to provide ample water,
shade, additional breaks and train-
ing about heat hazards.
An executive order issued in
March 2020 by Oregon Gov. Kate
Brown would formalize protecting
workers from heat, but it is coming
too late for the dead farmworker.
Brown’s order focuses on reducing
greenhouse gas emissions and also
tells the Oregon Health Authority
and Oregon OSHA to jointly pro-
pose standards to protect workers
from excessive heat and wildfi re
smoke.
They had until June 30 to submit
the proposals, but due to the coro-
navirus pandemic, the two agencies
requested the deadline be pushed
back to September.
In Bend, Oregon, a scenic town
O REGON B RIEFING
Brown declares state of emergency
due to severe wildfi re threat
SALEM (AP) — Oregon Gov. Kate Brown has declared
a state of emergency because of the imminent threat of
wildfi res across the state.
Brown said Wednesday, June 30, that
much of the state is in high or extreme fi re
danger with red fl ag warnings in effect,
KOIN reported.
In the past week, a historic heatwave
rolled through the Pacifi c Northwest,
Brown
bringing high temperatures and worsening
already dry conditions. There is no rain in
the extended forecast.
Nineteen Oregon counties are already in declared
drought emergencies.
“Oregon is still recovering from the devastation of last
year’s wildfi res, which resulted in nine Oregonians los-
ing their lives and thousands more losing their homes,”
Brown said. “I issued this emergency declaration to
ensure every resource is made available for fi refi ghting
efforts and to the crews striving to protect our state.”
She said with fi re seasons increasingly starting earlier
and lasting longer, it is up to everyone to do their part
to prevent human-caused wildfi res and be prepared for
fi res if they occur.
The emergency declaration authorizes the Oregon De-
partment of Forestry and the Oregon Offi ce of the State
Fire Marsha to use personnel, equipment and facilities
from other state agencies for wildfi re emergencies.
It also allows agencies to temporarily suspend any
rules that impair the response to wildfi res and to request
assistance from other states.
This declaration comes as a fi re south of The Dalles
near Dufur has grown to about 10,000 acres, according to
offi cials.
Low-income seniors fi le suit against
properly management company
TIGARD (AP) — A group of low-income Oregon
seniors is suing their out-of-state property management
company, alleging the company deliberately misled them
by renting apartments that would soon jump in price.
The class-action suit was fi led in Multnomah County
Circuit Court Tuesday, June 29 against Denver-based
Mission Rock Residential, Oregon Public Broadcasting
reported. The company manages Woodspring Apart-
ments, a federally subsidized building in Tigard.
This January, residents of Woodspring were told that
the owner would soon bring the building’s 172 units to
market-rate rent.
The suit argues that when San Francisco real estate
fi rm Hamilton Zanze bought the property fi ve years ago,
the property managers knew of the plan to raise rent.
The lawsuit alleges the property management company
intentionally withheld that information and continued to
market the units to people as a retirement option.
Michael Fuller, the lead attorney for the plaintiffs, says
a judge should consider this a form of false advertising
and deem it an “unlawful trade practice.”
The suit names one plaintiff: Cheyenne, who began
leasing an apartment in Woodspring in July 2020. Ac-
cording to the suit, Cheyenne, whose last name is not giv-
en in the legal documents, rented the apartment with the
expectation that she would be able to stay for decades.
Fuller said he’s asking a judge to issue an injunction
ordering the property manager to maintain apartment
rents at a rate that is affordable for older people on a
fi xed income.
next to the snowy Cascade Range,
the bodies of two men were found
Sunday on a road where dozens of
homeless people stay in trailers and
tents.
Volunteer Luke Richter said he
stepped into the trailer where one of
the men, Alonzo “Lonnie” Board-
man, was found.
“It was very obviously too late. It
was basically a microwave in there,”
Richter told Oregon Public Broad-
casting.
Cooling stations had been set up
at the campsite on Saturday, with
water, sports drinks and ice avail-
able.
Weather experts say the number
of heat waves are only likely to rise
in the Pacifi c Northwest, a region
normally known for cool, rainy
weather, with a few hot, sunny days
mixed in, and where many people
don’t have air conditioning.
“I think the community has to be
realistic that we are going to be hav-
ing this as a more usual occurrence
and not a one-off, and that we need
to be preparing as a community,”
said Dr. Steven Mitchell of Seattle’s
Harborview Medical Center, which
treated an unprecedented number
of severe heat-related cases.
This week’s heat wave was
caused by what meteorologists de-
scribed as a dome of high pressure
over the Northwest and worsened
by human-caused climate change,
which is making such extreme
weather events more likely and
more intense.
Seattle, Portland and many other
cities broke all-time heat records,
with temperatures in some places
reaching above 115 degrees Fahr-
enheit.