Image provided by: Morrow County Museum; Heppner, OR
About Heppner gazette-times. (Heppner, Or.) 1925-current | View Entire Issue (Jan. 22, 1992)
SIX- Heppner Gazette-Times, Heppner, Oregon Wednesday, January 22, 1992 Vandals bring town to a costly standstill P U B L IC NOTICE NOTICE OF ELECTION On May 19, 1992, an election will be held for the purpose of electing board members to fill the positions and terms for the following district. Morrow Coun ty, Oregon. PROPOSED OREGON TRAIL LIBRARY DISTRICT - Position 1: Director - At-large position for one year term ending June 30, 1993 ' Position 2: Director - Board- man position for three year term ending June 30. 1995 Position 3: Director - Board- man position for one year term ending June 30, 1993 Position 4: Director - Heppner position for three year term en ding June 30, 1995 Position 5: Director - Heppner position for one year term ending June 30, 1993 Each candidate for the offices listed above must file a declara tion of candidacy or petition for nomination with the Morrow County Clerk's Office in Hepp ner, Oregon, not later than 5:00 p.m. on March 10, 1992. Barbara Bloodsworth Morrow County Clerk Published: January 22, 29; and February 5, 1992____________ BMCC knitting class to begin Wearable socks will be the sub ject of a Blue Mountain Com munity College knitting class taught by Sandra Van Liew. The class starts Jan. 27 at the St. Patrick’s Senior Center and will run from 7 to 9 p.m. for six weeks. Other knitting projects are welcome and patterns are available from the instructor. Students need to bring four double-pointed needles size three and four. Van Liew also has wool sock yam for sale and encourages students to call ahead for availability. Registration is $20. For more information contact Van Liew at 676-5050 or Sue Warren at 422-7040. Students should file for financial aid types of funding that is available. College bound students are also encouraged to check into scholar ship information. At Blue Moun tain Community College there are over 60 scholarships available. Some general scholarships are available to any BMCC student, others are specific to a depart ment. Students should keep in mind that not all scholarships are tied to grade point average and academic performance. Federal financial aid forms and Imagine you’re a 72-year-old scholarship inform ation is grandmother living alone in a available through local high mobile home. During the dead of school counseling offices, as well winter, you sit next to the elec as the BMCC Financial Aid trical wall heater because just out Office. side your barely insulated walls, howling desert winds freeze the thermometer below zero. Then just for fun, some pranksters knock out your electricity for four hours. That’s what Wilma Mabe of Heppner had experienced one January day in 1990. Or imagine working in a Over the years some things never lumber mill hoping to get over time because you still have to pay change at a quality dealership for Christmas. Then somewhere out in the desert vandals cut the pow er lines to the mill. Everything stops. You and 139 co-workers are sent home, Doing business for over 45 years without pay. That day still costs the company about $25,000 and in the same old fashioned way the plant safety manager is glad the high-pressure boiler on the co-generator didn’t explode. That’s exactly what happened at Kinzua Lumber Mill two miles north of Heppner at the same time Mabe’s power went out. That same day, Dixie Verstop- pen couldn’t make pizzas in her electric oven at Kate’s Pizza and Hermiston, Oregon Pastry in Heppner and John Bristow at Bristow's Market in lone had to tape the doors to his 22 freezers and coolers shut so customers wouldn’t open them and let out the cold. He also had to watch for theft in the dark store. And without heat and lights. Morrow County Schools had to be closed, costing tax payers just under $15,000. Business phone systems in Hepp ner went dead, including “ 911” - -until a police officer started the emergency generator. Imagine what happened to all those com puters at the Forest Service and other businesses. Even the critical monitoring instruments at the chemical waste disposal facility at Arlington couldn't operate. The entire area is dependent on electricity. Altogether, power to 2,450 customers - residences and businesses - went dead that day, darkening an area about 60 by 80 miles in Morrow and Gilliam Counties. The cause for the outage: two 17-year-olds having fun with their Anyone interested in attending college next fall should file for financial aid as soon as possible, according to Jaime Shea with Blue Mt. Community College Financial Aid Office. Current and potential college students are en couraged to get the 1992 Federal Financial Aid Form sent in before April 15 to ensure that they will be considered for all available financial aid. The FAF is a national form us ed to determine student eligibili ty for financial aid. Even students who think they may not qualify for financial aid shoud submit a FAF-they may be surprised the Wilma Mabe enjoys the luxury of electricity after a power outage caused by vandals. /CHEVROLET, HONESTY-INTEGRITY-RESPONSIBILITY-SERVICE 1 1 1 mmmm 1Parts SHERRELL CHEVROLET Phone 567-6487 Now US WEST is helping more Oregonians do big business in small towns. Who says you have to be in a big city to do big business’ Over the right communications system, any business can look like a Fortune 500 company Thats why US WEST is investing more than $140 million annually for communications system improvements in Oregon By expanding and adding copper wires, fiber optics and microwave transmission, we're providing helpful services like US WEST Conference Calling, Call Waiting, Call Forwarding and FAX capabilities* These new service improvements will not only provide added conve nience for individual customers, but they'll also foster growth in businesses and communities throughout Oregon No matter how big they are Or, more impor tantly, how big they want to be |I£WEST Making tha moat of your lima.' .22 rifles. Apparently they couldn’t find enough rabbits and birds as targets, so they started shooting at ceramic insulators holding power lines on the poles. The boys shattered nine in sulators, causing 69,000 volts of electricity to “ flash over” --or short out. As a result, the Bon neville Power Administration’s transmission line supplying the area went dead. “ The total repair bill to Colum bia Basin Electric Cooperative was approximately $2,000,“ ac cording to Fred Toom bs, manager of the local utility sup plied by the BPA line. BPA ex perienced additional costs. But Toombs was more concerned about the effects of the outage. “ The city water pumps didn't work,” he said, “ so if we had a serious fire, we couldn’t fight it.” In fact. Heppner did have a disastrous fire a short time after the vandalism. If the outage had occurred on the day of that fire, firemen with empty hoses would have had to watch the town bum Not only is shooting at transmission lines costly and Redmond. A helicopter, at potentially hazardous, it’s $500/hour, and BPA crews, in dangerous to the vandals cluding one flown in from The themselves. Dalles, worked for seven hours “ They could have been kill in freezing rain to restore service. ed,” Monty Ward, an assistant The line over 6,000-foot-wide line foreman for BPA said. He Spar Canyon near Challis, Idaho, recalled an incident where two took nearly a full day to repair. teenagers were shooting at a The lines feeds a molybdenum power line. “ The two boys were mine which lost $10,000 per leaning on the car to steady their hour. rifles. They must have been When two men shot 28 in shooting straight up because the sulators, the line “ flashed” , star line fell down right on the car. ting a brush fire and knocking out Killed both of them instantly,” power to Carson and Stevenson, the veteran lineman said. “ Even Washington. sadder, there were two girls in About 4,000 Skamania Coun side the car. One tried to jump ty residents lost power when a out, but as soon as she touched line was shot out for the third the door, she was killed. The time. other stayed in the car and sur A line near Lakewood was out vived.” Imagine the horror of for more than 24 hours when two watching your friends “ fried” strings of insulators were shot with enough electricity to light a out. city. It took a truck load of insulators “ A downed transmission line to replace the 500 shot out near could also fall on a fence, elec Grizzly substation in Oregon. trocuting someone quite a And the damage isn’t confined distance away,” Marv Wohlman, to BPA lines. Don Lang, chief transmission line maintenance engineer at Central Electric Utili superintendent for BPA’s Snake ty in Redmond reports an outage River Area said. Simply standing this past summer caused by an on the ground near a downed line 18-year-old shooting at in could be dangerous. “ Often sulators. Some 5,000 customers underground wires are attached to in the Bend area lost power, in the poles to dissipate the energy cluding medical clinics and a from lightning s trik e s,’’ hospital. Doctors were perform Wohlman said. “ Anyone stan ing open-heart surgery at the ding near one of these buried hospital at the time. Fortunately wires could be killed when a emergency generators kicked in. Unlike Heppner and Bend in power line goes down.” Besides the danger of elec cidents, most transmission line trocution, the weight of the cable vandals aren’t caught. The and tension on the cable could shooting usually happens in also be lethal. A section of the remote areas, often requiring two cable that stretches from one or three hours of searching by transmission tower to the next helicopter before the problem site might weigh 6,000 pounds. Ten is even located. Many longtime sion on a broken cable causes it BPA linemen report that the to act like a whip violently strik worst times are during hunting season -when frustrated hunters ing nearby objects. “ If you’re in the right-of-way, need to shoot something-and just you’re in danger,” Wohlman after Christmas-when guns from said. That’s usually between 30 Santa Claus need to be tested. to 50 feet out from the center of “ And it isn’t just the kids doing the line, depending on the amount it,” Oregon state trooper Carl Martin, who caught the two of voltage on the line. juveniles responsible for the The gunshot-caused outage in the Heppner area is only one of Heppner outage said, “ the adults hundreds, perhaps thousands of are just as bad.” Regardless of who does it, the such incidents each year. BPA operates more that 14,000 miles price tag is high. Repair work for of transmission lines which supp vandalism costs BPA between ly local utilities. These utilities in $500,000 and $1 million per turn have thousands of miles of year, according to Marv Wohlman. That doesn’t include their own lines. Throughout the entire system, damage to local utility lines. To supervisors and line foremen calculate lost revenues to BPA report gunshot incidents. Orion during outages is difficult, but Albro, operations superintendent Wohlman figures that some lines at BPA’s Snake River area office, carry about $60,000 of electrici estimates that in his region alone ty per hour. Someone’s got to pay there are 25 to 30 gunshot these costs. If the vandals are damage incidents each year. And caught they are liable for it’s worse in the more populated damages, but usually they get away. areas. Off to one side of his desk BPA will soon implement a are a stack of vandalism reports. Some of the documents he started reward program to encourage reading at random made the citizens to report vandalism. This Heppner incident look like child’s program will be an attempt to educate the general public about play. Someone shot out 177 in the problem and give them an op sulators on a line northeast of portunity to stop incidents like those described in this article. 1991 4-H horse judging slated The 4-H Horse judging divi Awards will be given. All clubs sion II for the 1991 fair year will are invited to attend a horse judg be held Feb. 8. The time and ing review on Sunday, Jan. 26 at place will be announced at a later the fairgrounds in Heppner at 2 date. p.m. This will give members a All m em bers that were chance to review what will take registered in horse for the place at the horse judging on Feb. 1990-91 year are eligible to enter. 8, said a spokesperson. - 4 '• * • *
