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,
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Phone 567-6487
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any business can look like a
Fortune 500 company
Thats why US WEST is investing
more than $140 million annually
for communications system
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Conference Calling, Call Waiting,
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These new service improvements
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but they'll also foster growth
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|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.
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