THE BULLETIN • SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 14, 2021 A3
TODAY
It’s Sunday, Feb. 14, the 45th day
of 2021. There are 320 days left
in the year. This is Valentine’s Day.
Today’s Highlight in History:
In 2018, a gunman identified
as a former student opened
fire with a semi-automatic rifle
at Marjory Stoneman Douglas
High School near Fort Lauder-
dale, Florida, killing 17 people
in the nation’s deadliest school
shooting since the attack in
Newtown, Connecticut, more
than five years earlier.
In 1778, the American ship
Ranger carried the recently
adopted Stars and Stripes to a
foreign port for the first time as
it arrived in France.
In 1876, inventors Alexander
Graham Bell and Elisha Gray ap-
plied separately for patents re-
lated to the telephone. The U.S.
Supreme Court eventually ruled
Bell the rightful inventor.
In 1912, Arizona became the
48th state of the Union as Presi-
dent William Howard Taft signed
a proclamation.
In 1920, the League of Women
Voters was founded in Chicago;
its first president was Maud
Wood Park.
In 1929, the “St. Valentine’s
Day Massacre” took place in a
Chicago garage as seven rivals of
Al Capone’s gang were gunned
down.
In 1945, during World War II,
British and Canadian forces
reached the Rhine River in Ger-
many.
In 1967, Aretha Franklin record-
ed her cover of Otis Redding’s
“Respect” at Atlantic Records in
New York.
In 1979, Adolph Dubs, the U.S.
ambassador to Afghanistan,
was kidnapped in Kabul by
Muslim extremists and killed in a
shootout between his abductors
and police.
In 1984, 6-year-old Stormie
Jones became the world’s first
heart-liver transplant recipient
when the surgery was per-
formed at Children’s Hospital
of Pittsburgh; she lived until
November 1990.
In 1989, Iran’s Ayatollah Kho-
meini called on Muslims to kill
Salman Rushdie, author of “The
Satanic Verses,” a novel con-
demned as blasphemous.
In 2013, American Airlines
and US Airways announced an
$11 billion merger that turned
American into the world’s big-
gest airline.
In 2019, William Barr was sworn
in for his second stint as the
nation’s attorney general; he
succeeded Jeff Sessions, who’d
been pushed out of office by
President Donald Trump after
Trump denounced Sessions’
decision to recuse himself from
the Russia investigation.
Ten years ago: President Barack
Obama unveiled a $3.7 trillion
budget plan that would freeze
or reduce some safety-net pro-
grams for the nation’s poor but
turn aside Republican demands
for more drastic cuts to shrink
the government to where it was
before he took office. The TV
game show “Jeopardy!” began
airing the first of three episodes
pitting human players Brad Rut-
ter and Ken Jennings against an
IBM computer named “Watson.”
Watson ended up winning with
a cumulative total of $77,147
versus $24,000 for Jennings and
$21,600 for Rutter.
Five years ago: Pope Francis
condemned the drug trade’s
“dealers of death” and urged
Mexicans to shun the devil’s
lust for money as he led a huge
open-air Mass for more than
300,000 people in the poverty-
stricken Mexico City suburb of
Ecatepec.
One year ago: A Chinese health
official said more than 1,700
medical workers had been
infected by the coronavirus, and
six had died. Egypt confirmed its
first case of the new virus, which
had infected more than 64,000
people globally.
Today’s Birthdays: Actor
Andrew Prine is 85. Former
New York City Mayor Michael
Bloomberg is 79. Jazz musician
Maceo Parker is 78. Journalist
Carl Bernstein is 77. TV person-
ality Pat O’Brien is 73. Magician
Teller (Penn and Teller) is 73.
Cajun singer-musician Michael
Doucet (Beausoleil) is 70. Actor
Ken Wahl is 64. Opera singer
Renee Fleming is 62. Actor Meg
Tilly is 61. Pro Football Hall of
Famer Jim Kelly is 61. Singer-pro-
ducer Dwayne Wiggins is 60.
Actor Zach Galligan is 57. Actor
Valente Rodriguez is 57. Former
tennis player Manuela Maleeva
is 54. Actor Simon Pegg is 51.
Rock singer Rob Thomas is 49.
Former NFL quarterback Drew
Bledsoe is 49. Actor Danai Gurira
is 43. Actor Tiffany Thornton is
35. Actor Brett Dier is 31. Actor
Freddie Highmore is 29.
— Associated Press
LOCAL, STATE & REGION
PACIFIC NORTHWEST | ICE STORM
Outages could last through weekend
BY GILLIAN FLACCUS
AND REBECCA BOONE
The Associated Press
LAKE OSWEGO — A win-
ter storm blanketed the Pacific
Northwest with ice and snow
on Saturday, leaving hundreds
of thousands of people without
power and disrupting travel
across the region.
Freezing rain left roads,
power lines and trees coated
in ice in the Portland region,
and by Saturday morning more
than 270,000 people were with-
out power.
The outages could extend
throughout the weekend for
some, said Elizabeth Lattanner,
a spokeswoman for PGE, one
of the major electricity provid-
ers in the region.
“In storms like these, resto-
ration takes time given all of
the challenges our crews face
in getting to restoration sites
and repairing those outages,”
Lattanner said.
“We have more than 600
PGE and contract personnel
responding to the storm — it’s
all hands on deck.”
Many ice-laden trees
snapped under the weight, fall-
ing on power lines and causing
some transformers to blow out
in showers of blue and orange
sparks. By noon on Saturday,
more than 1,200 PGE power
lines were down, Lattanner
said.
The ice and snowfall caused
treacherous driving conditions,
forcing Oregon transportation
Greg Lehman/Walla Walla Union-Bulletin via AP
Samuel Braun, 6, let his dad, Dave, take the brunt of the frozen powder while sledding in the snowfall Friday
in Walla Walla, Washington. Both came up smiling.
Brooke Herbert/The Oregonian via AP
An aerial view of the Morrison Bridge and downtown Portland is seen
Friday during a snowstorm.
officials to close Interstate 84
in the Columbia River Gorge,
and the regional transit agency
TriMet suspended all bus and
train service in the region.
TriMet spokesperson Tia
York asked people to avoid all
travel unless it’s an emergency.
“It is too dangerous out
there,” York wrote in a pre-
pared statement.
Police in Salem also warned
residents in Marion and Polk
counties to watch for downed
power lines and falling tree
limbs, and the Oregon State
Police said fallen trees blocked
several roads across the region.
Some Washington state res-
idents were also socked in by
the weather, with snow falling
throughout the Seattle region
on Saturday morning and
freezing rain falling along the
coast in Grays Harbor County.
The city of Seattle activated its
Emergency Operations Center
Saturday morning to coordi-
nate the city’s winter storm re-
sponse.
Heavy snowfall also led to
dangerous driving conditions
in parts of Eastern Oregon and
southwestern Idaho, with Mal-
heur County and Boise, Idaho,
expected to get as much as 6
inches of snow by Saturday af-
ternoon.
The National Weather Ser-
vice said all three states should
brace for another surge of win-
ter moisture to hit the North-
west Sunday night, potentially
leading to more heavy snowfall
through Monday.
The “unsettled winter con-
ditions” would likely continue
throughout the week, the Na-
tional Weather Service said
Saturday morning.
Western Washington was ex-
pected to get an additional 3 to
6 inches of snow on Saturday,
with another 2 inches possible
on Sunday and Monday. Rain
falling on accumulated snow
raised the possibility of urban
flooding happening Sunday
night or Monday in some ar-
eas, according to the National
Weather Service.
The heavy snow made for
dangerous avalanche condi-
tions in the many areas across
the Olympics and Cascades
mountain ranges, with large
avalanches possible.
Officials with the Payette
Avalanche Center in west-cen-
tral Idaho also warned of in-
creasing avalanche risk in the
days ahead.
Bill would expand cropland
firefighting options in state
BY MATEUSZ PERKOWSKI
Capital Press
Cropland owners in Oregon
would be eligible to join range-
land fire protection associa-
tions under a bill that seeks to
improve their access to equip-
ment and training.
Areas that produce dryland
wheat are prone to wildfire
— as seen in the 2018 Substa-
tion Fire, which burned 78,000
acres in Wasco and Sherman
counties — but currently can-
not be included in rangeland
fire associations.
“During harvest time, ripe
grain crops are a tinder box. A
lightning strike, a spark of any
kind or chaff falling on a hot
engine can cause a crop fire,”
said Sen. Bill Hansell, R-Ath-
ena, during a recent legislative
hearing.
Hansell has introduced legis-
lation that would allow range-
land fire protection associa-
tions to be organized on “land
used for cultivating crops” in
addition to rangeland and un-
developed areas. Supporters
Courtesy of Molly Belshe/via Capital Press
The Substation Fire burns
through standing wheat in Sher-
man County.
say Senate Bill 590 will en-
hance firefighting resources in
rural communities.
“Wildfire does not adhere to
boundaries, it does not stop at
fence lines or changes in land-
ownership, or rangeland or
cropland,” said Amanda Hoey,
CEO of the Oregon Wheat
Growers League.
By forming or joining an as-
sociation, farmers could better
coordinate with state agencies,
such as the Oregon Depart-
ment of Forestry on firefight-
ing and acquire surplus fire-
fighting equipment from the
federal government, Hoey said.
Roger Beyer, a lobbyist for
the Oregon Small Woodlands
Association, said the financial
impacts on the state’s Depart-
ment of Forestry must be con-
sidered as part of the discus-
sion about SB 590.
While the bill’s benefits out-
weigh any of these concerns,
the legislation should provide
added funding to the forestry
department, Beyer said.
Without adequate funding,
the heavier workload could de-
tract from the agency’s existing
firefighting duties, he said.
The department currently
has three full-time employees
who support 23 rangeland fire
protection associations that
cover about 15 million acres. In
the past, the agency estimated
that expanding associations
to include cropland would re-
quire an additional three em-
ployees at a cost of more than
$700,000 per biennium.
Two classes on Feb. 19,
9:00 am and 12:00 pm
Bend Country Inn
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Multi-State: $80.00
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