A2 BAKER CITY HERALD • SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 12, 2022
Local
TURNING BACK THE PAGES
50 YEARS AGO
from the Democrat-Herald
February 12, 1972
Citing refusal by the Baker County Court to appropriate
funds for juvenile services, Ed Barnette, Juvenile Court
director and Family Services administrator, submitted his
resignation Wednesday to Circuit Court Judge Lyle R. Wolff.
25 YEARS AGO
from the Baker City Herald
February 12, 1997
ENTERPRISE — The Wallowa-Whitman National Forest
is considering lighting a series of prescribed fi res in the
Eagle Cap Wilderness over the next fi ve to 10 years.
Employees from the Eagle Cap Ranger District are
studying the effects of burning about 20,000 acres in
the Minam River drainage at the northwest corner of the
358,000-acre wilderness area.
10 YEARS AGO
from the Baker City Herald
February 13, 2012
A Canadian fi rm has bought one of Baker County’s
more renowned gold mines, and plans to start exploratory
work there this spring.
The Bonanza Mine is in western Baker County, about
10 miles southwest of Sumpter.
Marathon Gold Corp. of Toronto bought the Bonanza
in December from Gazelle Land and Timber LLC of
Canyon City.
A spokesperson for Marathon could not be reached for
comment in time for this story.
ONE YEAR AGO
from the Baker City Herald
February 13, 2021
Despite snow showers and temperatures hovering
around 20 degrees, 300 Baker County residents, most
of them age 80 or older, received their fi rst dose of a
COVID-19 vaccine Friday morning, Feb. 12, at Baker High
School.
The mass vaccination clinic was the largest in the
county since the fi rst doses arrived in mid-December.
“I think the testing site was a good training exercise,
because we kind of got a feel for at least the outside part,”
Baker County Commissioner Mark Bennett said.
About 50 people — 25 from the county and 25
volunteers — helped guide residents through the process.
Starting Monday, Feb. 8, the county used a call center
and its website to schedule appointments for people 80
and older, who became eligible for their fi rst dose on Feb.
8 based on state priority guidelines.
Bennett, who has served as the county’s incident
commander throughout the pandemic, said people started
arriving at BHS at 8 a.m. on Friday.
“They want the shots,” he said.
The city-owned Quail Ridge Golf Course, which is
managed by Anthony Lakes, donated the use of nine golf
carts for the event, allowing staff and volunteers to drive
people from their vehicles in the BHS parking lot to the
entrance.
Once inside, people had an escort to help them through
the process.
“It’s kind of complex,” Bennett said.
Because of the size of the event, employees from
multiple county departments, including the watermaster’s
offi ce, assisted, he said.
LeAnne Bourne, offi ce manager at the Baker County
Health Department, said employees entered patient
information into the state’s immunization site.
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SENIOR MENUS
MONDAY (Feb. 14): Chicken cordon bleu, rice, broccoli, rolls,
green salad, pudding
TUESDAY (Feb. 15): Roast turkey, stuffi ng with gravy, carrots,
rolls, green salad, apple crisp
WEDNESDAY (Feb. 16): Hot beef sandwich, mashed potatoes,
peas, broccoli-and-bacon salad, cake
THURSDAY (Feb. 17): Orange-glazed chicken strips, rice,
Oriental vegetables, rolls, green salad, apple crisp
FRIDAY (Feb. 18): Barbecued ribs, scalloped potatoes, mixed
vegetables, Jell-O with fruit salad, tapioca
Public luncheon at the Senior Center, 2810 Cedar St., from
11:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.; $5 donation (60 and older), $7.50
for those under 60.
CONTACT THE HERALD
2005 Washington Ave., Suite 101
Open Monday through Friday
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Telephone: 541-523-3673
Fax: 541-833-6414
Publisher
Karrine Brogoitti
kbrogoitti@lagrandeobserver.com
Jayson Jacoby, editor
jjacoby@bakercityherald.com
Advertising email
ads@bakercityherald.com
Classifi ed email
classifi ed@bakercityherald.com
Circulation email
circ@bakercityherald.com
ISSN-8756-6419
Serving Baker County since 1870
Published Tuesdays, Thursdays and
Saturdays except Christmas Day by the
Baker Publishing Co., a part of EO Media
Group, at 2005 Washington Ave., Suite 101
(P.O. Box 807), Baker City, OR 97814.
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Postmaster: Send address changes to
the Baker City Herald, P.O. Box 807, Baker
City, OR 97814.
Periodicals Postage Paid
at Pendleton, Oregon 97801
Copyright © 2022
Prisons still dealing with COVID
Numerous Eastern
Oregon prisons
quarantined
following COVID
outbreaks
BY ALEX WITTWER
EO Media Group
Eastern Oregon Correc-
tional Institution and Two
Rivers Correctional Institu-
tion in Umatilla County still
have housing units in quaran-
tine due to the spread of the
COVID-19 virus throughout
their facilities, according to
prison officials.
Powder River Correctional
Facility in Baker County is
in a heightened state of alert
and testing according to the
Oregon Department of Cor-
rections COVID-19 tracker,
as cases rose among the staff
and prisoner population at
the end of January. Seven out
of the 15 prisons in Oregon
as of Tuesday, Feb. 8, had
units under quarantine.
Overall, case numbers
had increased dramatically
through January, peaking at
286 active cases for Two Riv-
ers on Jan. 20. In December,
those numbers were in the
single digits.
Those case numbers fell
throughout the week. As of
Feb. 8, Two Rivers had just
one active case of COVID-19.
As a percentage of total
cases during the entire pan-
demic against the number of
beds at each facility, Two Riv-
ers ranked the highest by a
wide margin. The case-to-bed
rate was at 68%, while the av-
erage across all prisons in Or-
egon was 33.3%.
Critic blames prison staff for
virus spread
Corrections officials
wouldn’t say whether or not
the COVID-19 cases that
spurred a large spike at Two
Rivers was due to a staff
member, but case numbers
and dates shared with EO
Media Group show staff at
Two Rivers had tested posi-
tive on Dec. 29, just 10 days
before members of the prison
population showed a spike in
positive tests.
“There is no way of knowing
exactly how each positive case
originates or is spread,” said
Betty Bernt, communications
manager for DOC. “When an
individual comes into our in-
take unit, our current process
is to test all adults in custody.”
Juan Chavez, project direc-
tor and attorney with the Or-
egon Justice Resource Center,
disagrees.
“There’s only one way for
the virus to get in, and that’s
through the staff,” he said. “It’s
abundantly clear that mask
wearing has been scant in
particular with correctional
officers. They haven’t been
enforcing the mask wearing
policy, they just let it slide.
They’re more afraid of losing
staff than they are of killing
people, in my mind.”
Chavez noted because intake
goes through Coffee Creek
Correctional Facility — DOC’s
intake facility in Wilsonville
where adults in custody are
tested, isolated and quaran-
tined before being transferred
to other parts of the state —
the possibility of an inmate
bringing the virus into a differ-
ent prison is remote.
The Oregon Justice Re-
source Center is involved in
a class action lawsuit against
the Department of Correc-
tions due to conditions at the
prisons regarding COVID-19
safety. That lawsuit is ex-
pected to go before a judge on
Feb. 14 for certification.
Chavez said the lawsuit,
filed in April 2020, asked
only the bare minimum from
Corrections regarding safety
News of
Record
DEATHS
Ramona Creighton: 73, of Baker City,
died Feb. 10, 2022, at Settler’s Park
Assisted Living. To leave an online
condolence for Ramona’s family, go to
www.grayswestco.com.
POLICE LOG
Baker County Sheriff’s Office
Arrests, citations
OUT-OF-COUNTY WARRANT: Chad
Allen Ficek, 32, North Powder, 1:32 p.m.
Thursday, Feb. 10, at the Baker County
Courthouse; cited and released.
Alex Wittwer/EO Media Group
Comparing the number of beds to the total number of cases during the length of the pandemic, Two
Rivers Correctional Institution has more than doubled the average number of cases than other prisons
in Oregon.
procedures in combating the
spread of COVID-19. Those
measures included mandatory
masking for correctional offi-
cers and implementing social
distancing requirements.
Those requirements, ac-
cording to the lawsuit, were
widely ignored.
In the lawsuit, one plaintiff
described an interaction with
staff that conveyed DOC’s
reactionary nature to out-
breaks: “I was complaining
that it was hypocritical we
had to wear masks but offi-
cers didn’t; that officer said to
me ‘(expletive) it, we’ll deal
with it when it comes.’”
The lawsuit also described
practices where correctional
officers would move from a
quarantined unit to an unin-
fected unit without a mask,
likely due to overtime and
staffing shortages at the fa-
cilities.
“I think the (COVID-19)
situation shakes the entire
foundation,” Chavez said,
“What we were asking for
only sounds extraordinary
if we weren’t in extraordi-
nary times, and so we needed
something grander. And that
didn’t happen. A lot of people
got hurt.”
Two Rivers in litigation
spotlight
Two Rivers has been espe-
cially problematic, according
to prison attorney Tara He-
rivel, who has litigated hun-
dreds of cases against the
Department of Corrections.
Herivel said approximately
80% of her cases are against
Two Rivers. According to He-
rivel, despite the litigation
and sea of lawsuits, Two Riv-
ers in particular is “not afraid
enough to change.”
“The conversation I have a
lot with my clients and people
I work with is why?” Harivel
said. “Why is it so horrible?
Why don’t they learn? They’ve
been sued so many times, and
I just don’t think they’ve been
sued enough. I think they
don’t have real consequences,
and they can brush away these
individual suits like the kinds
I do pretty easily. They just
don’t follow court orders.”
Herivel said in addition to
filing a majority of her prison
cases against Two Rivers, she
has had contempt of court
motions against the prison’s
medical department for fail-
ing to follow the court’s or-
ders, leading to the release of
an adult in custody 11 years
before their sentence expired.
‘We learned the hard way’
Positive cases in staff mem-
bers at Eastern Oregon pris-
ons preceded every spike of
COVID-19 among inmates
in January.
The correctional facilities
handle medical cases through
their own health care settings,
according to Bernt.
In Ontario, Dr. Garth Gul-
lick, the chief medical officer
at Snake River, testified that
a fever was not a symptom of
COVID-19, that COVID-19
testing was “harmful” and
said it “can be the enemy,”
according to reporting from
the Malheur Enterprise. The
reporting also indicated Dr.
Warren Roberts, Correc-
tion’s top medical advisor,
had been ordered to stop per-
forming surgeries and had a
history of malpractice.
“Cases are handled inter-
nally to the extent possible
through our Health Services
units and infirmaries,” Bernt
said. “If an individual’s symp-
toms surpass our ability to
care for them, they are trans-
ferred to a hospital for care.”
A spokesperson for Two
Rivers declined to comment
on the COVID-19 situation
at the facility, citing a need to
go through the Oregon De-
partment of Corrections for a
unified response. Two Rivers
officials did not respond to an
emailed list of detailed ques-
tions about the outbreak at
the facility.
EOCI saw a milder out-
break than it had at the start
of the pandemic, according to
Ron Miles, supervising execu-
tive assistant.
“In addition to masking,
we’ve done our best ability to
maintain social distance or
maintain 6 feet of distance
between everybody, but the
challenge with that is put-
ting 1,700 people into a 15.2
acre location,” he said. “So
social distancing is not going
to be easy, that’s a just fact of
prison life.”
EOCI saw one case among
its staff on Dec. 23, 2021, ac-
cording to the DOC data. Six
days later, the facility saw its
first cases among its adults in
custody population, before
it peaked to 47 positive cases
among the adults in custody
and nine cases among the staff
on Jan. 12. In October 2020,
EOCI had more than 350 ac-
tive cases.
Miles credited previous ex-
perience with the pandemic as
a key factor for controlling the
recent outbreak.
“Part of it is vaccinations,
part of it’s precautions we’ve
taken since the very beginning
and some of it is experience
with the COVID pandemic,”
Miles said. “No institution, no
prison anywhere in the world
is equipped for a pandemic,
so when one hits, you have to
learn what you don’t know. We
went through that process and
learned what we didn’t know
and the second time around
we were better prepared for
that, and vaccinations played a
big role in that.”
As of Feb. 8, EOCI had
zero active COVID-19
cases, according to the DOC
COVID-19 website.
“We learned the hard way,
but we did learn,” Miles said.
Powder River, in Baker
City, saw an outbreak of 21
cases by Jan. 29, which fell to
eight cases on Feb. 8. Herivel
said Powder River was one
of the best prisons in East-
ern Oregon when it came to
COVID-19 safety.
On the other hand, Two
Rivers had nearly 15% of its
adult population test positive
for COVID-19 on Jan. 23.
Miles said EOCI offers vac-
cines to the adult in custody
population, as well as offering
vaccine booster clinics from
time to time for prisoners
to keep up to date with the
COVID-19 vaccines.
TRCI tops prisons for
COVID-19 deaths
Previous reporting by the
East Oregonian through nu-
merous interviews with law-
yers representing clients at
Two Rivers, as well as inmates
themselves, had shown a lax
regard for COVID-19 safety
at Two Rivers. Inmates cited
improper mask wearing by
staff members and mixing of
COVID-19 positive inmates
with the general population
for work.
According to previous re-
porting by Oregon Public
Broadcasting, Two Rivers saw
a spike in infections during
December 2020 after two
staff members tested positive,
and the facility transferred
10 positive individuals from
Deer Ridge Correctional In-
stitution in Madras. The same
day the facility transferred
adults in custody from Deer
Ridge, it began seeing a spike
in cases; with 85 cases on Dec.
21, 2020.
As of Feb. 8, 10 employ-
ees at Two Rivers had not
yet started either their vacci-
nation or exemption status.
Powder River had just two,
and EOCI had six. Out of the
5,306 DOC employees re-
ported to have been under the
vaccination compliance ex-
ecutive order in 2021, nearly
20% had filed and received a
medical or religious exemp-
tion, according to DOC data
from October 2021.
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