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About Baker City herald. (Baker City, Or.) 1990-current | View Entire Issue (Aug. 11, 2022)
GO! INSIDE LOCAL A2 BUSINESS B1 What’s happening around N.E. Oregon OSP investigating wolf kill near Halfway Boggans Oasis hopes to open soon Serving Baker County since 1870 • bakercityherald.com IN THIS EDITION: LOCAL • BUSINESS & AG LIFE QUICK HITS ————— Good Day Wish To A Subscriber A special good day to Herald subscriber Jennifer Cikanek of Baker City. BRIEFING ————— Passenger train advocates meeting A group that wants to return passenger train service to Eastern Oregon has scheduled public meetings this week in La Grande and Pendleton. All Aboard Northwest’s Char- lie Hamilton and Dan Bilka will talk about how communities can try to tap state and federal funding to restore passenger rail service, which ended in the region when Amtrak’s Pioneer route was canceled in 1997. The Pendleton meeting is set for Friday, Aug. 12 at 1 p.m. at Hamley’s Steakhouse. The La Grande meeting will be Satur- day, Aug. 13 at 10 a.m. at Cook Memorial Library at Eastern Oregon University. Baker City watershed project open house The Wallowa-Whitman National Forest will have a public open house on Aug. 17 to present information about a proposed project to reduce the wildfi re risk in the Baker City wa- tershed. The Wallowa-Whitman manages the 10,000 acres of public, forested land within the watershed. The proposal calls for thinning trees and lighting prescribed fi res to reduce the amount of fuel in the area. The open house will run from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. at the Baker County Events Center, 2600 East St. WEATHER ————— Today 91/53 Storms possible Friday THURSDAY, AUGUST 11, 2022 • $1.50 Bennett talks about work on fire advisory council As chair of council, he said he expressed concern about reaction to fire risk map that was withdrawn last week BY JAYSON JACOBY jjacoby@bakercityherald.com Baker County Commissioner Mark Bennett fears that Oregon’s effort to protect rural homes from wildfires has been derailed, at least temporarily, by the controversy over a fire risk map that state officials unveiled June 30 and canceled last week. Bennett is directly involved in the campaign to avoid wildfire catastro- phes as chairman of a state advisory Crushing conquest Local mechanic takes 2nd at demolition derby BY IAN CRAWFORD icrawford@bakercityherald.com Imagine you’re a piñata, sewn out of leather, dan- gling at a sugar-loaded kid’s birthday party. And, wouldn’t you know it, the little champ just un- wrapped a Louisville Slug- ger. Karmen O’Dell, a local auto tech and chain-and- bang demolition derby driver, knows that feeling, and like the piñata, from the inside it’s pretty sweet. O’Dell competed in the 2022 Haines Demolition Derby on Saturday, Aug. 6. Hundreds turned out, and by show time the cars were still lined up for half of a mile. O’Dell, though, was fo- cused on only one. His 1978 Chrysler Cor- doba. Or what’s left of it. “Everyone wants this car. It’s a big car, it’s heavy and it can take a beat- ing,” O’Dell said prior to the derby, popping open the doors and hood for preparation. “That’s what you want in a demolition derby.” 94/52 See Crushing / A5 Partly sunny Full forecast on the back of the B section. The space below is for a postage label for issues that are mailed. Karmen O’Dell/Contributed Photo O’Dell, haggard but victori- ous, taking his 2nd place tro- phy and winnings on August 6, 2022. council, although he didn’t contribute to the map that has prompted com- plaints statewide over the past week or so. Property owners and state legisla- tors, including Baker County’s repre- sentatives, Sen. Lynn Findley, R-Vale, and Rep. Mark Owens, R-Crane, have criticized the state for releasing a map that wasn’t based on actual ground surveys of properties and that could affect residents’ homeowner’s insur- ance coverage and cost. “Without doing the ground-truth- ing we’re left with a document (the fire risk map) that is full of chal- lenges,” Bennett said on Tuesday, Aug. 9. He said it’s not clear to him whether insurance companies are actually us- implement changes based ing the withdrawn fire risk on the map,” Peterson wrote. map to make decisions about “The Division of Financial whether they’ll insure a prop- Regulation, which regulates erty, and how much they’ll insurance, has informally charge for premiums. surveyed insurance compa- “We’re trying to sort that out,” Bennett said. nies and all of them indicated Mark Peterson, public in- to date that they do not use Bennett formation and communi- the state wildfire map. Also, cations director for the Oregon De- we don’t have any filings to date that partment of Consumer and Business insurers are using the map as a rate Services, wrote in an email to the factor.” Herald on Wednesday, Aug. 10, that Peterson recommended that resi- there is “a misunderstanding out dents who have concerns about their there that the state wildfire map is insurance call the Division of Finan- causing insurance rates to increase.” cial Regulation’s toll-free consumer “The fact that the map was not fi- advocacy hotline, 888-877-4894. Con- nalized and is still subject to change sumers call also file a complaint on- makes it extremely unlikely that in- line at dfr.oregon.gov. surers could analyze the map, let alone See Bennett / A2 Wildfire threatened home near Sumpter Bunny Bounty BY JAYSON JACOBY jjacoby@bakercityherald.com Brothers Chase and Tyler Myatt see a big future for rabbit meat Clayton Franke/Baker City Herald BY CLAYTON FRANKE cfranke@bakercityherald.com Big Puff’s days as a show rabbit, Chase Myatt and his younger brother Tyler agree, are over. In a small shed on the Myatts’ property in Baker County, surrounded by 35 other rabbits, Big Puff sprawls flat on her stom- ach in her pen, hind legs jutting out. Her furry white coat, which inspired her nickname, features wisps of gray discoloration. “She’s getting kinda old,” Tyler said. She’s four years old, nearly a third of the time Chase, who’s 13, has been alive. Big Puff won’t win top honors this week at the Baker County Fair, where judges pick rabbits based on form and aesthetics. But she can provide — at an impressive rate — something Chase finds even more valuable. A bounty of lean protein. Not by her own flesh, which despite her large size would only yield about six pounds of meat. Rather, by her ability to provide more rabbits. Roughly 80 of them in Chase Myatt with one of the rabbits he and his brother, Tyler, are raising for meat. Fair coverage Saturday See Saturday’s issue for coverage from the Baker County Fair. her lifetime. Their prolific procre- ation is part of the reason Chase is a leader in the meat rabbit production movement in Eastern Or- egon — a market he be- lieves is largely untapped. On Aug. 5, Chase learned that he’d been se- lected to attend the Na- tional FFA convention in Indianapolis in October. His nine-page report about his own rabbit meat production won first prize at the Oregon state con- vention earlier this year. Then he was selected as one of the 10 attendees for his age group — who also won first in their respec- tive state — to attend the national convention. There, he’ll tell judges why he thinks rabbits should be a larger source of protein for Oregonians, and what he’s discovered about the science behind raising the furry creatures for meat. The difference two weeks makes When he was nine, Chase got Big Puff as one of his first four breeding rabbits. He wanted to get into the 4-H program, but at his family’s previ- ous house, neighborhood rules prevented them from having large animals. “We did rabbits because they just go in a cage,” Chase said. But the operation grew quickly. Doe rabbits can have up to a dozen kits per litter and up to six lit- ters per year. Their ges- tation period is just one month. The Myatts have moved since he started, but it’s still a small operation — three dozen rabbits still occupy a mere 15-foot by 15-foot space on the fam- ily’s farm, called Feather Goat Farm. See Rabbits / A6 State Police reverse claim antelope was poached Baker City Herald Oregon State Police, a day after announc- ing that a buck antelope had been poached in Keating Valley, said the animal was legally killed by a hunter who had a special disabled veteran tag. On Tuesday, Aug. 9, OSP issued a press release that stated: “After receiving informa- tion from the public, F&W (fish and wildlife) Troopers were able to determine this was a legal harvest and the meat was removed from the carcass in accordance with the wildlife laws.” “The buck antelope was harvested utilizing a Special Qualified Disabled Veteran Tag.” In a press release on Monday, Aug. 8, OSP announced that a citizen on Aug. 5 had found the antelope carcass on public land between TODAY Issue 39 38 pages Business ...........................B1 Classified ....................B2-B4 Comics ..............................B5 Mother Lode Road and Skinner Lane, about three miles northeast of Keating. OSP troopers found the carcass, which had been butchered, with the head removed. They estimated the antelope was likely killed earlier in August. “In addition to the unlawful take, troopers also determined meat was left to waste,” the press release stated. The release noted that the first controlled hunt for antelope in that area starts Aug. 13. But disabled veterans who have the spe- cial tag can hunt before the controlled season starts. OSP’s public information officer hadn’t re- plied by press time Wednesday, Aug. 10 to an email from the Herald seeking more informa- tion about the incident. Community News.............A2 Crossword ...............B2 & B3 Dear Abby .........................B6 Oregon State Police/Contributed Photo Oregon State Police initially announced that this buck antelope had been poached near Keating, but the agency on Tuesday, Aug. 9, 2022, stated that the animal had been killed legally. Horoscope ..............B2 & B3 Letters to Editor ...............A4 Lottery Results .................A2 News of Record ................A2 Opinion .............................A4 Senior Menus ...................A2 A fire sparked when a tree branch snapped in a wind- storm and landed on a power line briefly threatened a home and garage in a rural subdi- vision in Sumpter Valley on Tuesday evening, Aug. 9. The fire burned within about 100 feet of the struc- tures in Elkhorn Estates, said Steve Meyer, wildland fire supervisor at the Oregon De- partment of Forestry’s Baker City office. Crews contained the fire a little more than an hour after it was reported at 5:51 p.m., according to the Blue Moun- tain Interagency Dispatch Center in La Grande. Elkhorn Estates is north of Highway 7 and about 8 miles east of Sumpter. Wes Morgan, chief of the Powder River Rural Fire Pro- tection District, was the first to respond. Morgan, who lives near Sumpter, said he arrived 9 minutes after a resident in the subdivision reported the blaze. He was driving a fire engine with a 100-gallon water tank. Morgan said no one was in the home when the fire started. He said some of the 22 homes in Elkhorn Estates are part-time residences. Morgan said wind gusts from a nearby thunderstorm buffeted the Sumpter Valley on Tuesday. A wind gauge along High- way 7 near the Sumpter Junc- tion, about 6 miles west of Elkhorn Estates, recorded sev- eral gusts of 25 mph between 4 p.m. and 5 p.m. Morgan said wind snapped one half of a ponderosa pine tree that had a split top. The branch fell on a power feeder line, causing lines to touch and spark. He said the line didn’t snap. Morgan said it was fortu- nate that the gusty winds sub- sided not long after the fire started, which might have spared at least the garage from the flames. “It was close,” he said on Wednesday morning, Aug. 10. A fire engine from the For- estry Department also worked on the fire, which burned in grass, pine needles and brush, Meyer said. He said the forest in the area had been thinned, and much of the grass was still green. Although no rain fell while the fire was burning, there were showers later in the day and overnight, Morgan said. Sudoku..............................B5 Turning Backs ..................A2 Weather ............................B6