SATURDAY
BAKER CITY MAN LEADING EFFORT ON NATION’S BIGGEST FIRE: PG. A3
In STATE, A6
Serving Baker County since 1870 • bakercityherald.com
July 24, 2021
IN THIS EDITION:
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Good Day Wish
To A Subscriber
A special good day to
Herald subscriber Patti Hall
of Baker City.
Local, A2
Phoebe Wachtel is ex-
pecting hundreds of people
for dinner on Tuesday, Aug.
3. Her projection is based
on experience — every
August, as many as 700
people spend a few hours
in Geiser-Pollman Park for
Community Night Out.
Local • Health & Fitness • Outdoors • TV
$1.50
Offi cials Concerned That Fire Season, Which Started Much Earlier Than Usual,
Will Persist Throughout Summer, And Even Beyond
‘90-Day August’
COVID
cases
surging
Wolves
injure
steer
near
Durkee
By Jayson Jacoby
jjacoby@bakercityherald.com
Wolves from the Lookout
Mountain pack in eastern
Baker County have attacked
cattle in the Manning Creek
area northeast of Durkee for
the second time in a week.
In the most recent case,
unlike the previous incident,
the livestock survived.
On the evening of Tuesday,
July 20, a rancher, while
checking cattle, found an
injured steer on a 2,500-acre
private land pasture, ac-
cording to a report from the
Oregon Department of Fish
and Wildlife (ODFW).
The 950-pound steer is
about a year and a half old.
Local, A3
An 18-year-old Haines
man was treated and re-
leased from a Boise hospital
after the pickup truck he was
driving near Haines struck
a fl atbed trailer parked on
the side of Shurtleff Road
Wednesday evening, July
21. Eric Newman was taken
by LifeFlight helicopter to
Saint Alphonsus Hospital in
Boise, where he was treated
and released.
WEATHER
Today
See Wolves/Page A3
92 / 49
Sunny
Sunday
95 / 54
Umatilla National Forest/Contributed Photo
The Elbow Creek fi re burns on July 16 along the Grande Ronde River in northern Wallowa County. The
blaze, which has burned about 20,000 acres, is the largest in Northeastern Oregon this summer.
Sunny
Monday
96 / 60
Sunny
Clarifi cation: A story
in the Thursday, July 22
issue about the attorney
for murder suspect Shawn
Quentin Greenwood
seeking to have the
charges dismissed
didn’t make clear that
the attorney’s allegation
that law enforcement
offi cers listened to
phone conversations
between Greenwood
and his attorney involved
the Baker City Police
Department, not the Baker
County Sheriff’s Offi ce.
The space below is for
a postage label for issues
that are mailed.
By Jayson Jacoby
jjacoby@bakercityherald.com
Noel Livingston slides the cursor
across the charts on his computer
screen and what he sees, lurking
behind the zig-zagging lines and the
multiple colors, is trouble.
Wildfi re trouble, to be specifi c.
Livingston, who is the fi re manage-
ment offi cer for the Wallowa-Whitman
National Forest, focuses on two lines
in particular — a pair of lines for each
of six regions on the forest, ranging
from different types of forests to the
grasslands of Hells Canyon.
One line, rendered appropriately in
bright fl ame red, depicts the highest
daily measurements, from 2010-19 on
the Wallowa-Whitman, of a statistic
known as the energy release compo-
nent. A computer model considers
the moisture level in wildfi re fuels, as
well as temperature and humidity, to
project how much energy a fi re would
release — in effect, how rapidly fl ames
would spread on a given day.
Fireworks suspected in
fi re near Huntington
Firefi ghters from multiple
agencies quickly doused a grass
fi re late Wednesday, July 21 near
Huntington, a blaze that might have
been sparked by the illegal use of
fi reworks.
The fi re, which started on the
north side of the Durbin Creek Road
just west of Interstate 84, burned an
estimated 10 acres, said Al Crouch,
fi re mitigation specialist with the
Bureau of Land Management’s Vale
District.
Multiple drivers on the freeway
reported the fi re just after 10 p.m.,
Crouch said. The blaze was about a
quarter-mile west of the freeway.
Firefi ghters from the Huntington
Fire Department, the Burnt River
Rangeland Fire Protection Asso-
ciation and the BLM worked on the
blaze.
Crouch said the fi refi ghters cor-
ralled the fi re just before a stretch of
gusty winds that could have caused
the fl ames to spread quickly through
the dry grass in the area.
The fi re was contained at 1:50 a.m.
on Thursday, July 22.
Crouch said Oregon State Police is
investigating the fi re, with assistance
from BLM.
He said investigators have identi-
fi ed a person who might have been
lighting fi reworks in the area.
Fireworks are illegal on public land
managed by the BLM. Crouch said
the fi re started near the boundary
between BLM and private property.
— Jayson Jacoby
See Danger/Page A3
Car
crashes,
ignites
small
wildfire
By Jayson Jacoby
jjacoby@bakercityherald.com
The driver and lone pas-
senger were both fl own to a
Boise hospital early Friday
morning, July 23, after their
car crashed into a tree along
Highway 7 near Sumpter.
The impact started a fi re
that engulfed the car and
spread a short distance into
the forest, said Wes Morgan,
chief of the Powder River
Rural Fire Protection District,
who arrived fi rst at the scene.
The driver and passen-
ger are both men, but their
names weren’t available by
press time.
See Crash/Page A5
Baker Sanitary opens composting facility
By Joanna Mann
jmann@bakercityherald.com
Baker County’s fi rst large-scale
composting facility has been oper-
ating for about a month at Baker
Sanitary Service’s landfi ll south-
east of Baker City.
David Henry, president of Baker
Sanitary Service, said the operation
started composting its initial batch
of yard debris about four weeks
ago.
It takes about eight weeks to
complete a batch, and Henry said
the composting process is some-
what of a “pilot program” right now
until he fi gures out the right combi-
nation of organic material, weather
and temperature to produce the
desired composted mulch.
“When you think of how many
chances you get to tweak the
TODAY
Issue 32, 12 pages
process, you’re not getting a ton of
chances,” Henry said. “I expect for
the fi rst year or two, there’ll be a lot
of learning what works and what
doesn’t and taking the time to get
to where we get the product that
we really want.”
Tree trimming services, yard
cleaning services and the general
public can bring brush, leaves and
limbs to the landfi ll.
A worker combines the debris
with organic materials and covers
it with a tarp for about a month.
The batch is then completely
turned over in order to remix the
material and make it more homog-
enous. It sits for two weeks like
Joanna Mann/Baker City Herald
that with the tarp, and then two
From left, Garrett Virtue, landfi ll manager, David Henry, Baker Sanitary
more weeks without the tarp.
Classified ............. B2-B4
Comics ....................... B5
Community News ....A3
See Compost/Page A2
Crossword ........B2 & B4
Dear Abby ................. B6
Health & Fitness ....... B2
Service president, and Stephen Henry stand in front of the initial batch
of compost, which is covered by a tarp.
Horoscope ........B3 & B4
Jayson Jacoby ..........A4
News of Record ........A2
Obituaries ..................A2
Opinion ......................A4
Outdoors ..........B1 & B6
Senior Menus ...........A2
Turning Backs ...........A2
Weather ..................... B6
TUESDAY — SAINT ALPHONSUS SAFE SLEEP PROGRAM RECERTIFIED