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About Baker City herald. (Baker City, Or.) 1990-current | View Entire Issue (May 3, 2022)
SPORTS A5 SPORTS A6 Baker track athletes compete in 3 meets Bulldog baseball, softball teams both sweep Mac-Hi IN THIS EDITION: LOCAL • HOME & LIVING • SPORTS A special good day to Herald subscribers Tony and Benita Britt of Baker City. Baker Early Learning Cen- ter, 2725 Seventh St., will have an art show, art sale, live music and open house on Friday, May 6, from 4:30 p.m. to 7 p.m. A free family meal and cookies will be available until 6:30 p.m. This event is sponsored by the BELC Advisory Coun- cil. Proceeds from the art sale will support child care scholarships. This coincides with the First Friday art walk in Baker City. Other participating plac- es are Crossroads Carnegie Art Center, Royal Artisan, Churchill School, Sweet Wife Baking, Sunn Juice + Decor, White House Art and Design, Ruffl ed Feathers Boutique and Cody’s General Store. City begins testing fi re hydrants The Baker City Public Works Department started its annual fi re hydrant test- ing and water line fl ushing Monday, April 25, and the campaign will continue for about two to three weeks. This can make water run cloudy temporarily. If that happens in your home or business, turn on a cold water faucet outside and let it run until the water is clear. If your water continues to be cloudy, call the city water de- partment at 541-523-6541. WEATHER ————— Today 59/33 Mostly sunny Wednesday 67/44 Increasing clouds Full forecast on the back of the B section. The space below is for a postage label for issues that are mailed. TUESDAY, MAY 3, 2022 • $1.50 Pandemic delayed retirement plans QUICK HITS ————— Good Day Wish To A Subscriber BRIEFING ————— Art show, open house May 6 at Baker Early Learning Center Serving Baker County since 1870 • bakercityherald.com Nancy Staten, Baker County Health Department director, reflects on her final two years The term “social distanc- ing” shoved its way into the he telephone call that lexicon. changed Nancy Stat- For the first time in a cen- en’s life — and indi- tury, an infectious disease rectly, pretty much every- was the dominant force in body else’s in Baker County America. — happened on a Friday. “Things exploded,” Staten She remembers that part said. “It was becoming more clearly, even if so much that apparent that this was going was to come in the ensuing to be a big deal.” two years passed, as she puts And suddenly the last it, “in a blur.” stanza of her career, with re- The date was Jan. 24, 2020. tirement actually conceivable, Staten had been working for turned into an ordeal Staten the Baker County Health De- couldn’t have imagined. partment for 34 years, and as its director for almost three years. A Baker County native The topic of the phone call Staten, now 62, was born from the Oregon Health Au- and raised in Baker City. A thority was something un- member of the Colton fam- familiar to almost everyone ily, she graduated from Baker who isn’t an virologist. High School in 1977. A novel coronavirus, first She attended a business detected in Wuhan, China, school in Phoenix, Arizona, was beginning to worry public and earned an associate’s de- health officials across the globe. gree. She didn’t envision a ca- Including in Oregon. reer in public health. Staten was curious but not But in 1986, Beth Baggerly, terribly concerned. then director of the Baker The first U.S. case had County Health Department, been confirmed in Washing- offered Staten a job, one day ton state four days earlier. a week, in the WIC program, There were none as yet in which helps buy nutritious Oregon. food for Women, Infants and The concept that a pan- Children. demic could affect Baker Staten and her husband, County was not completely Chuck, had two children. farfetched, to be sure. Their son, Jason, was four, Staten remembered the and their daughter, Kari, swine flu outbreak in 2009. wasn’t yet two. The Baker County Health “I was a stay-at-home Department had distributed mom,” Staten said. vaccines, but the outbreak She enjoyed the part-time was relatively short-lived. job, though. About two weeks later, in And when it expanded to early February 2020, Staten three days per week, adding participated in another call front desk duties to her work with state health officials. with the WIC program, This call was different. Staten accepted the offer. The novel coronavirus was In 1991 she started work- spreading. ing at the school-based What was to become the health center at Baker High COVID-19 pandemic was School. She became a certi- underway, even if most peo- fied nursing assistant, and ple didn’t realize it. stayed with the school-based “I remember that sinking clinic, which was operated by feeling,” Staten said. the health department, until In March her trepidation February 2008. would be justified. She worked at the health Schools closed. So did department’s front desk until businesses. she was named interim direc- COVID cases remain low April had 13 cases, after 14 in March BY JAYSON JACOBY jjacoby@bakercityherald.com T BY JAYSON JACOBY jjacoby@bakercityherald.com Ian Crawford/Baker City Herald Nancy Staten talks about her hectic final two years as director of the Baker County Health Department. Staten’s final day was May 2, 2022, ending a 36-year career with the department. tor in late 2016, dropping the interim from the title in the spring of 2017. For the first two and a half years the job was busy but predictable. Until that fateful phone call. A pandemic begins The first phase of the pan- demic was in some ways the most hectic, Staten said. “There was so much we didn’t know,” she said. Schools closed before spring break and then didn’t reopen. Restaurants, prohibited from having indoor dining, shifted to takeout. And as the number of confirmed cases rose in Or- egon, Baker County awaited its first. It took longer than most. The health department announced the county’s first positive test on May 6. During those initial weeks, Staten said, her tasks, and that of the health department staff, included preparing for what Dr. Eric Lamb, the county’s public health officer, described as the inevitable arrival of the virus. Indeed, Staten said she wonders — and she knows many county residents share her curiosity — whether COVID-19 was here well before May 6, 2020. “There were a lot of ill people around here in Janu- ary and February,” she said, noting that other viruses, including influenza, could have been responsible. Regardless, even before the May 6 announcement, Baker County, like the rest of Oregon, was engulfed in the pandemic and its effects. Staten said her life be- came a series of phone and video conference calls. With officials from the Oregon Health Authority. With other county leaders. With representatives from the county’s four school dis- tricts. The 6:30 a.m. calls with school officials, for instance, became something of a ritual. See, Staten/Page A3 Baker County’s rate of COVID-19 cases remains at its lowest level since early in the pandemic. April’s total of 13 cases fol- lowed March’s 14. Both numbers are lower than any month since June 2020. Baker County’s first con- firmed case was reported on May 6, 2020. There were no additional cases until July 2020. July’s total was 28 cases, and there were at least 20 cases in each month from July 2020 through February 2022. See, COVID/Page A3 Idaho Power gains access for surveys, withdraws lawsuits Surveys are part of Boardman-to- Hemingway project BY JAYSON JACOBY jjacoby@bakercityherald.com Idaho Power Company has withdrawn all of the 10 lawsuits it filed this winter against Baker County land- owners seeking access to their property to do surveys re- lated to the proposed Board- man-to-Hemingway transmis- sion line project. Attorneys for the company filed the civil petitions between mid December 2021 and early February 2022. See, Power/Page A3 Search training goes on despite soggy Saturday Grant, Harney, Morrow and Wheeler, constitute the Eastern Mannequins, fortunately, don’t Oregon Search and Rescue group. Participants spent the weekend mind getting soaked. at Union Creek campground, on They’re immune to hypother- the north side of Phillips Reser- mia, too. voir about 17 miles southwest of Those attributes helped keep a Baker City. major search and rescue training The initial plan was to have a exercise going last weekend despite heavy rain on Saturday afternoon ground search, involving a live and evening, April 30, in the forest “victim,” as well as a rope rescue, involving a mannequin, both on near Phillips Reservoir. Saturday, followed by a second About 50 search and rescue ground search on Sunday, May 1, team members from six Eastern Oregon counties gathered for the McClay said. But with rain forecast, orga- annual training, said Ashley Mc- Clay, public information officer for nizers decided to replace the live the event’s host, the Baker County subject of the search with a pair of mannequins, simulating a father Sheriff’s Office. and son who failed to return from Baker County search and res- cue members were joined by their a trip to the woods, McClay said. counterparts from Union, Wal- “We didn’t want to have some- lowa, Malheur, Gilliam and Uma- one sitting out in the cold and wet tilla counties, McClay said. for several hours,” she said. Those six counties, along with The rain also delayed the rope BY JAYSON JACOBY jjacoby@bakercityherald.com TODAY Issue 149 14 pages Classified ....................B2-B4 Comics ..............................B7 Community News.............A2 Crossword ...............B3 & B5 Dear Abby .........................B8 Home & Living ............B1-B3 rescue since the showers made the rock cliff slick. Instead, searchers, after finding the two mannequins during the ground search Saturday in the Old Auburn Road and California Gulch area, north of Highway 7, returned to the campground and welcome meals provided by retired Baker County Sheriff Terry Speelman. On Sunday, with the skies hav- ing cleared, the rope rescue ex- ercise took place, but the second planned ground search was can- celed, McClay said. In addition to the ground searchers, teams from Umatilla and Malheur counties brought aerial drones to participate in the training. The annual exercise shifts Genie Ogg/Contributed Photo among the 10 counties in the re- Rope teams pull a mannequin, strapped to a litter, up a gion. This was the first time Baker cliff near California Gulch during a training exercise on County has played host since 2015. Sunday, May 1, 2022. Horoscope ..............B4 & B5 Lottery Results .................A2 News of Record ................A2 Opinion .............................A4 Senior Menus ...................A2 Sports ..................... A5 & A6 Sudoku..............................B7 Turning Backs ..................A2 Weather ............................B8