The Columbia Press
1
Clatsop County’s Independent Weekly
www.thecolumbiapress.com
Vol. 5, Issue 1
January 1, 2021
A look back before kicking 2020 to the curb
By Cindy Yingst
The Columbia Press
Congratulations. You’ve made it
through a year like no other.
2020 will go down in history for
its mix of devastation and hard-
fought social change.
The year began with the revela-
tion that a new and deadly virus
was headed our way. It ended with
82.3 million infected worldwide
and 1.8 million deaths.
Early in the year, the unrest build-
ing over months – years – of bias
against people of color erupted into
protests that would last all year and
the destruction of statues honor-
ing historical figures. Anarchists
and others took advantage of the
upheaval to set off bombs, damage
government buildings, vandalize
museum pieces, and set fire to the
homes of politicians.
Polarization was the watchword
of 2020. Never have so many taken
such deeply divergent stands.
Black Lives Matter. All Lives Mat-
ter. Police Lives Matter.
Hoax. Dempanic. Worst world
crisis since AIDS.
The mask – or lack thereof – be-
See ‘2020’ on Page 4
A group of civic leaders, homeowners
and outdoors enthusiasts have a plan
for dealing with the local elk problem.
Their elk “Declaration of Collabora-
tion” is 18 months in the making and
involved everyone from the Gover-
nor’s Office to Fish and Wildlife to the
Oregon Hunter’s Association to local
governments.
Their mission was to come up with
solutions to the Clatsop Plains herd
Woman killed
in burglary,
stand-off
The Columbia Press
Oregon Army National Guard
Above: Members of the
Oregon National Guard
and hospital employees
work to set up tents for
potential COVID-19 pa-
tients outside Providence
Seaside Hospital in the
spring.
Right: Principal Rod
Heyen welcomes students
back to Warrenton Grade
School in September. A
few weeks later, children
returned to all-distance
learning.
Sara Gingrich/For The Columbia Press
Group: Elk culling a necessary practice in Clatsop County
By Cindy Yingst
The Columbia Press
50 ¢
– and other herds –
whose populations are
exploding.
Council members in
Gearhart, where one
doesn’t need to search
far to find an elk, held
a work session Tues-
day night to review the
Atwood
work of the Clatsop
Plains Elk Collaborative.
“What we’ve seen in the past decade
is exponential growth. We would ex-
pect that,” said Paul Atwood, an elk
specialist with the Oregon Depart-
ment of Fish and Wildlife. “The reason
we’re all around the table with this is
because … we can’t manage them in
a traditional sense as we would elk in
the forest. Many of our tools don’t fit
nicely in urban settings.”
ODFW counted 149 elk in the Gear-
hart herd during a flyover inventory in
February. And that was before spring,
when calves are born. Generally, a
herd of 40 to 60 has been the tradition
in Northwest Clatsop County, Atwood
See ‘Elk’ on Page 6
A woman who broke into an occu-
pied home near Sunset Beach was
shot and killed Monday afternoon
when she threatened police and
others with a firearm found in the
residence, according to the Clatsop
County Sheriff’s Office.
Officers went to the home in the
33100 block of Oregon Lane, just
south of Warrenton, about 1:40 p.m.
after receiving a report of a burglary
in progress.
The resident told dispatchers that
a woman he didn’t know had broken
into his unlocked home and barri-
caded herself in one of the rooms, ac-
cording to the sheriff’s report. Unfor-
tunately, there were several firearms
in the room and she found one.
As deputies arrived, they tried to
negotiate with the woman and de-es-
calate the situation, the report says.
The woman was identified as Alaina
Burns, 31, of Astoria.
“Crisis intervention-trained and
crisis negotiation-trained deputies
communicated with Burns for close
to an hour, during which time Burns
discharged a firearm inside the res-
idence,” according to the report.
“ De-escalation and negotiation con-
tinued nearly 40 minutes after the dis-
charge of the firearm.”
Ultimately, their efforts weren’t
successful and she climbed onto a
second-floor balcony and then the
roof with the firearm and threatened
officers with it, according to the sher-
iff’s office.
An Oregon State Police trooper fired
at Burns and she was struck.
She could not be revived by para-
medics, who’d been called to stand by
See ‘Stand-off’ on Page 2