THURSDAY, OCTOBER 7, 2021
LOCAL & STATE
MANDATE
OTEC
The Baker City Council has dis-
cussed pursuing a legal challenge to
the governor’s mandates. But during
Continued from A1
their most recent meeting, on Sept.
28, councilors decided to have Cannon
Most of the rest of the city’s share
draft a resolution or ordinance oppos-
of property taxes is used for street
ing the mandates. A legal challenge is
maintenance.
“If people refused to pay their prop- still a possibility.
The Baker County Board of Com-
erty taxes, then obviously that’s our
revenue stream for a lot of the things missioners on Sept. 22 declared a
local emergency, which states that
that we do,” Cannon said. “If there
the mandate could leave some local
were no property taxes coming into
the city, then our budget would be se- agencies unable to respond to traffi c
verely slashed and a lot of the services accidents and other emergencies.
that people have come to expect out of
the city would no longer happen.”
Defying mandates
Baker County mails property tax
Cannon said that even if Baker
bills once a year, during late October, City were to offi cially ignore the
mandate, it has no ability to “protect
so a reduction in payments wouldn’t
have an immediate effect on the city’s anybody in the community,” meaning
employees who are affected by the
operations.
mandate, such as health care work-
Cannon also encouraged prop-
ers, could not expect the city to help
erty owners to consider the potential
them if state offi cials seek to suspend
ramifi cations on themselves before
or cancel their license, if they are
deciding not to pay taxes.
“It’s not just an impact on the city, required to have one.
“There’s nothing that we as a city
it’s an impact on each person,” Cannon
can do to step between that doctor or
said. “I would say that before people
that clinic, that nurse, that nursing
just decide not to pay their property
home, and the state,” Cannon said.
taxes that I would discourage people
If the state voided a license for one
from doing that. I understand that
they may say ‘Look, we want to take a of the city’s fi refi ghter/paramedics,
stand on this’ and they feel like that’s Cannon said, the city could not have
their way of taking a stand. But there that worker go out on emergency
calls.
are a lot of issues that that can open
Defying the governor’s vaccine
up for them personally for their prop-
erties and their homes and whatever mandate could also jeopardize the
it may be that they decide not to pay.” city’s liability insurance coverage
through City-County Insurance Ser-
For property owners who choose
not to pay the full tax bill at once, the vices, Cannon said.
“Our insurance could potentially
fi rst one-third payment is due by Nov.
drop us, it could jeopardize our li-
15, the second one-third by Feb. 15,
censes with the state,” Cannon said.
2022, and the fi nal one-third by May
“I think there’s a lot of liability for
15, 2022.
the city if we just fl at out said ‘We
For property owners who fail to
don’t care, we’re not going to enforce
make at least the fi rst one-third
this vaccination mandate on our own
payment by Nov. 15, interest begins
employees.’ It opens up a host of chal-
to accrue on the bill starting Nov.
lenges.”
16. The interest rate is 1.33% per
City-County Insurance Services
month, and accrues on the 16th of
had not returned a call from the
each month as long as there is an
Herald by press time on Wednesday,
outstanding balance.
The fl ier urges residents to not pay Oct. 6.
The Baker County United website
their property taxes for the “October/
acknowledges the potential effects of
November 2021 period ... until our
local governments defying the vaccine
elected offi cials do their duty and
mandate.
make our community a priority!”
“We do not do this lightly, and are
The fl ier contends that the gover-
aware of the collateral damage this
nor’s requirement that health care
action could have on those around
workers, including fi refi ghters and
us; our friends, family, neighbors and
other emergency responders, be vac-
cinated or have an approved medical potentially even ourselves, have a
or religious exception by Oct. 18, could high likelihood of being impacted by
this movement,” the website states.
result in worker shortages.
“Without our local fi rst responders “As it has become apparent that the
we are a community at risk!” the fl ier local elected offi cials of Baker County
will choose to not conduct themselves
states.
According to the fl ier, the group has as representatives of their constitu-
sent letters to the Baker City Council, ents, it is incumbent upon us to make
change happen for our community.
Baker County commissioners and
Sheriff Travis Ash requesting a “public When local offi cials begin to lose the
funding that they require for the
declaration of county wide mandate
duties in which they were elected, it
defi ance, implementation of a self
will be up to them to recognize that
governance measure, and a warning
that property taxes will be withheld if we are a Government of the People
further action is not taken by these lo- and for the People; or they will remain
cal government bodies to stand for our headstrong and allow the County’s
fi nances to fall to ruin.”
freedoms against these mandates.”
WOLVES
Continued from A1
All the sheep were in the same
pasture. Offi cials estimated the sheep
were attacked the night of Sept. 28.
ODFW employees examined
seven sheep carcasses on Sept. 30,
three on Oct. 1 and two on Oct. 4. All
had pre-mortem wounds, with tissue
trauma up to two inches deep and
tooth scrapes consistent with wolf
attacks on sheep, according to ODFW
reports.
Attack on guard dogs
On the morning of Oct. 1, a sheep
herder found two injured Kangal
guard dogs on an industrial timber-
land grazing allotment. The herder
told ODFW employees that at about
BAKER CITY HERALD — A3
Continued from A1
The topics are relevant for
OTEC employees, because their
jobs require that they often work
in remote and rugged terrain,
said Joseph Hathaway, OTEC’s
communications manager.
“It’s just good basic knowl-
edge to have when you live in
Eastern Oregon,” Hathaway
said. “We have so many miles
of lines in forested areas. This
training is pretty integral to our
safety mission.”
Although the Occupational
Safety and Health Administra-
tion requires OTEC workers to
have basic training in fi rst aid,
the course that Tingelstad and
Langrell put on through the
Baker Technical Institute (BTI)
is more thorough, said Maaike
Schotborgh, OTEC’s safety and
loss control manager.
The scenarios that Tingels-
tad and Langrell demonstrated
— such as stabilizing fractures
and safely transporting injured
people — are applicable to the
types of situations that OTEC
workers could potentially have to
deal with, Schotborgh said.
“These guys are by them-
selves or working in groups of
two or three,” she said. “They
rarely are out of cell service or
radio coverage, but they are
often an hour or more from
emergency services.”
Training center plans
This week’s training is part of
the partnership between OTEC
and BTI that was announced
in July.
The organizations are work-
ing to start a utility training
center in Baker City that would
offer a variety of courses for
people who work for electrical
companies or other utilities,
Hathaway said.
The goal, he said, is to have
the center attract workers from
utilities throughout the North-
west.
Although this week’s training
was mainly for linemen, Hatha-
way said eventually the skills
will be made available to all
OTEC employees.
The two-day course featured a
mixture of classroom instruction
and hands-on training such as
Tingelstad and Langrell’s dem-
onstration of stabilizing a patient
with a broken pelvis. They used
the types of materials that
OTEC workers carry routinely in
their trucks.
Tingelstad told the students
that in the case of, say, a leg
injury, the patient can be safely
taken to a waiting ambulance.
OTEC workers practiced tech-
niques for carrying an injured
person.
But the situation is quite
different, Tingelstad said, with a
pelvic fracture.
The reason, he said, is that
a person with a broken pelvis
might also have a spinal injury
that makes it more dangerous,
not less, to move the patient.
In that situation, Tingelstad
said, the proper procedure, once
the fracture is immobilized, is to
summon help, whether a crew to
put the patient on a backboard to
be carried out, or a helicopter if
that’s possible.
2 a.m. on Oct. 1 he heard an appar-
ent fi ght between his guard dog and
an unknown predator, with barking
and growling.
Biologists examined both guard
dogs. One had a six-inch-long area
of matted blood on its throat and the
left side of its neck that was drip-
ping blood. The dog was agitated
and could not be held for further
examination, according to an ODFW
report.
The second dog had a bite punc-
ture one-quarter inch in diameter on
the inside of its right front leg near
the elbow. The dog also had two other
bite marks, and a two-inch-long tooth
scrape on the inside of its upper right
rear leg. The wounds are consistent
with a predator attack, and similar
to other cases when a wolf attacked a
guard dog, according to ODFW.
Fending off the chill
Once Smart was extricated
from his pelvic splint, the group
returned to the Anthony Lakes
lodge to learn about the dangers
of getting too cold.
Joseph Hathaway/Contributed Photo
Dr. Kaare Tingelstad, top, demonstrates the proper way
to wrap a severely hypothermic person for transport to a
hospital. The “victim” in this case is Al Dockweiler, an Oregon
Trail Electric Cooperative journeyman lineman.
Langrell, who grew up in
Baker City but also has lived
in Alaska and is trained in
wilderness survival, gave a
PowerPoint presentation about
hypothermia.
She pointed out that al-
though humans have a fairly
effective means of cooling
themselves — sweating — we
are much less capable of keeping
ourselves warm.
When a person shivers, that’s
the body’s main way, through
stimulating muscle fi bers to con-
tract rapidly, to generate heat.
“Shivering is your metabolic
engine revving up to redline,”
Tingelstad said.
A person who is shivering,
uncoordinated and confused
likely is suffering from mild
hypothermia, Langrell said.
The much more dangerous
situation is severe hypothermia,
when a person stops shivering
and thus is no longer capable of
warming himself without help.
Langrell said it can actually
hurt a severely hypothermic per-
son by warming him too quickly.
Rubbing the person’s hands,
for instance, can cause chilled
blood to rush from the extremi-
ties to the heart, potentially
causing a heart attack, she said.
The key, Tingelstad said, is
to recognize the early stages of
hypothermia, since that’s when
it’s still possible for a person, or
a friend or co-worker, to reverse
the process.
Tailoring his lesson to his
audience, Tingelstad said one
of the simplest steps could be to
simply “get out of the bucket,”
meaning the elevated perches
that lineman use to access
power lines.
He said he always carries
gummy bear candies, a source of
sugar that, using the analogy of
starting a campfi re, is equiva-
lent to the kindling.
(Proteins and complex
carbohydrates are akin to sticks
that you feed into a small fi re,
Langrell said, and fats are the
logs that sustain the blaze.)
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Tingelstad asked the OTEC
workers if they had ever been
cold on the job.
There were several chuckles,
and every head nodded.
Chris Peppers, a lineman
in Baker County, recounted a
winter day, not far from Anthony
Lakes, when he and a crew were
called out to restore power to the
ski area.
Although it was sunny and
relatively warm at the start, the
weather eventually turned cold
and snowy. And Peppers said he
got sweaty while working to free
the crew’s side-by-side from deep
snow.
He said that although he
knew it was dangerous to be both
damp and cold, he was so anxious
to get the power restored that he
never stopped to build a fi re.
Tingelstad said the crucial
period is when hypothermia is
mild — when it’s still possible for
a person to get warm on his own.
“You can fi x this on the job
site,” he said.
But once hypothermia wors-
ens to the point the person no
longer is shivering, reversing the
process is impossible in the fi eld,
and trying to do so will imperil
the patient even more.
“You can keep them from get-
ting colder, but you can’t save a
severely hypothermic patient in
the fi eld,” Tingelstad said.
The lifesaving procedure must
happen in a hospital, he said, de-
scribing the process — inserting
a needle in one femoral artery to
draw out the chilled blood, warm-
ing it in a machine, and then
replacing it via another needle in
the other femoral artery.
Tingelstad urged the students
to avoid wearing cotton gar-
ments, which absorb moisture
readily, dry slowly, and offer little
insulation.
He said he never ventures
into potentially hypothermic
conditions without wearing
wool — especially merino wool —
which insulates well, even when
it’s wet.
“Cotton does kill,” he said.
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