Hermiston herald. (Hermiston, Or.) 1994-current, February 28, 2018, Image 3

Historic Oregon Newspapers

Hermiston herald., February 28, 2018, Page A3, Image 3

Image provided by: University of Oregon Libraries; Eugene, OR

About Hermiston herald. (Hermiston, Or.) 1994-current | View Entire Issue (Feb. 28, 2018)

Prev Page of 16 Next Prev Issue Next Text PDF JP2 (1.4 MB) Clip/Print Image

Return to Top

Prev Page of 16 Next Prev Issue Next

Newspaper Page TextWEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 28, 2018 HERMISTONHERALD.COM • A3 NEWS Dehydration plant catches fire again By JADE MCDOWELL STAFF WRITER STAFF PHOTO BY JADE MCDOWELL Rep. Greg Walden, left, listens to retired Pendleton physician Dan Marier, right, talk about his experience seeing patients with opioid addiction as Carrie Sampson and Amy Ashton- Williams listen. Rep. Walden holds opioid roundtable By JADE MCDOWELL STAFF WRITER Rep. Greg Walden was busy taking notes and ask- ing questions at Good Shepherd Medical Center in Hermiston last week as Eastern Oregon residents on the front lines of the opi- oid crisis shared their ideas for change. “We’re very concerned about the situation locally and nationally,” Good Shepherd CEO Dennis Burke told Walden. The Republican con- gressman from Oregon is the chairman of the Com- mittee on Energy and Com- merce, which begin hear- ings on the opioid addiction epidemic this week. Walden said finding solutions to the crisis is his “top prior- ity” for the committee right now. They plan to start by investigating case studies in West Virginia, where tiny towns have been receiving millions of highly-addic- tive pain pills per year — in total enough for every man, woman and child in the state to have 433 pain pills apiece. “We think that’s been replicated elsewhere, but we can figure out the sys- tem here,” Walden said. The system has failed Oregonians, too, the round- table participants told Walden. Dr. Joel Rice, a psychiatrist who operates the Grande Ronde Recov- ery Center anti-addiction clinic in La Grande and Pendleton, said the highly dangerous fentanyl is “very common in Hermiston now,” and he is seeing more of a problem with another drug called Kratam. Rice said he doesn’t believe any doctors in the area are “pill pushers” who are knowingly profiting off of feeding others’ addic- tions, but instead are sin- cerely trying to help their patients manage pain. “Ninety-five percent of the people they give opioids to don’t have a problem, so they don’t think it’s a big deal, but I’m working with the five percent,” he said. Rice said one thing that would really help in pre- venting overdoses is hav- ing more providers who have a waiver to prescribe Suboxone, an opioid that can help addicts transi- tion away from more harm- ful opioids as they work to get clean. The certifica- tion takes about 10 hours to complete, and would only apply to a small number of patients a provider sees, so Rice said he has seen good success with convinc- ing a Union County hospi- tal to offer a $1,000 incen- tive to get certified. He suggested to Walden that a similar government-spon- sored incentive could be useful nationwide, some- thing Dan Marier, a recent- ly-retired Pendleton physi- cian, agreed with. Walden said he was interested, and would look into it. Marier, Rice, Umatilla County Director of Human Services Amy Ashton-Wil- liams and Bart Murray, a consultant from Baker City, all agreed that a major problem in treating addic- tion is that mental health services, addiction treat- ment and physical health care are all separated out, often with very little com- munication between three different entities working to help the same person. Ashton-Williams said the system was so “silo’ed and segmented” that there are many patients who have physical health problems, mental health issues and an addiction that are all inter- connected and yet they are getting talk therapy with- out medication, or medica- tion without counseling — even though the research is clear that integrated care is “Ninety-five percent of the people they give opioids to don’t have a problem, so they don’t think it’s a big deal, but I’m working with the five percent.” Dr. Joel Rice, Grande Ronde Recovery Center cheaper and more effective. Carrie Sampson, qual- ity director of Yellowhawk Tribal Health Center, said the clinic on the Umatilla Indian Reservation does offer a more integrated care system, and it has been helpful for a physician to be able to walk someone with a mental health prob- lem right next door to a behavioral health specialist instead of giving a referral and hoping the patient fol- lows up. She also said that they don’t prescribe opioids on a longterm basis, and patients given addictive painkill- ers in the short term have to sign a pain management agreement that involves safeguards to make sure they get off the drugs as soon as they can. Short term pain man- agement can morph into a full-blown drug addic- tion, something that Good Shepherd COO Jim Schlen- ker said he knows well. His brother-in-law died of an overdose in a park- ing lot after initially being prescribed painkillers for a knee surgery. “My sister was shocked,” Schlenker said. “She didn’t see anything that was out of the ordinary until after, when she started putting the pieces together, and by then it was too late.” He said patients need more education about the dangers of what they’re being prescribed and more safeguards. He couldn’t speak to exactly how his brother-in-law’s initial pre- scription had been handled, but all the pieces of the sys- tem “didn’t come together right for him.” The group also pointed to a dwindling number of physicians and mental health professionals in parts of Eastern Oregon, low sal- aries for crisis workers and funding/billing structures that don’t allow Rice, for example, to bill the Oregon Health Authority for men- tal health services at his clinic even though he is a psychiatrist. “There is a brain drain in Eastern Oregon because the people with brains can’t get paid,” he said. Walden thanked the group for their stories and suggestions, and at sev- eral points during the meet- ing said he would follow up with what was being pro- posed. He also shared some things he would like to see. That includes closing loop- holes that allow people to sell fentanyl and other syn- thetic drugs legally if they adjust the formula slightly, holding drug companies accountable for their role, developing new non-opi- oid pain management drugs and coming up with better ways to monitor prescrip- tions without sacrificing privacy or the ability to get opioids when they are legit- imately needed. The 3D Idapro Solutions dehydration plant in Stan- field caught fire again on Monday. The fire — one of at least four at the plant in about a year — started in the scrub- ber unit, which is used to mitigate odors. “It was exactly where the fire was last time,” said Scott Stanton, chief of Uma- tilla County Fire District 1. The fire district responded to a call at 11:38 a.m. and personnel were on scene until about 2 p.m. Stanton said the dam- age was mostly kept to the scrubber area and no one was injured. He said the cause was not yet confirmed but was possibly related to some maintenance work taking place on Monday. The plant’s first scrub- ber unit burned up in Feb- ruary 2017. The company brought in a new scrub- ber — which representa- tives later admitted was undersized for the plant — and experienced two more fires in June and July 2017. One worker was injured in the July fire, caused by an explosion in the bag house. 3D Idapro Solutions pur- chased the plant on Hoo- sier Lane in the summer of 2016 to use for dehydrating potato products used in dog food. After the fire last Feb- ruary, Stanfield residents began complaining to the city council that a strong rotten smell, described as “vomit” and “dead flesh” was keeping them indoors and causing them to retch and gag. The company prom- ised to install a new scrub- ber in the fall of 2017 that would better capture odors, and also took other mitiga- tion steps such as re-routing trucks and grading the site so that potato product did not spill out of trucks. The company did not respond to a request for comment on Monday. Weekend fires The fire in Stanfield on Monday added to what had been a busy weekend for UCFD1. On Saturday about 8:40 p.m. the district responded to a house fire in the 300 block of Southeast 9th Street in Hermiston. Stanton said a wood stove chimney caught the roof on fire. While the roof had substantial damage, Stanton said the rest of the home was able to be saved in part because of a fast-act- ing neighbor who called 9-1-1 and the homeowner who used a garden hose on the roof while waiting for fire trucks to arrive. A caller had reported another roof fire earlier in the day, about 3 p.m., but that one turned out to be a false alarm. Stanton said the fire district was con- ducting a flammable liq- uids training in the Herm- iston High School parking lot and someone had mis- taken the “large” flames that were part of the train- ing for a building with its roof on fire. UCFD1 also put out a barn fire in the 33000 block of Punkin Center Road out- side Hermiston Sunday. Stanton said the cause of the fire was still under investigation, but by the time the department was called out at 5:58 a.m. the metal roof of the barn had already collapsed. “It had been going for a while,” he said. The department also responded to four motor vehicle crashes over the weekend, including a semi- truck that tipped over near exit 188 on Interstate 84. SHOP ONLINE 24/7 HERMISTONCDJR.COM NEW 2018 JEEP CHEROKEE LATITUDE 4X4 9 Spd Auto, Sirius Sat Radio, Cold Weather Grp MSRP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . $28,190 Combined Factory Rebate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . -$4,250 Hermiston CDJR Discount . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . -$1,543 $ NEW 2017 RAM 1500 TRADESMAN QUAD CAB 4X4 NEW 2017 RAM 2500 LONGHORN MEGA CAB 4X4 EcoDiesel , 8 Spd Auto, Chrome Pkg, Popular Equip. Grp Diesel , Auto, Laramie, Limited, Leather, NAV, Pwr Sunroof SAVE $9,776 off MSRP SAVE $6,293 off MSRP 22,397 * $ 21,897 * SAVE $11,820 off MSRP MSRP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . $43,265 Combined Factory Rebates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . -$5,250 Hermiston CDJR Discount . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . -$4,026 $ 33,989 * MSRP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . $74,315 Combined Factory Rebate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . -$3,250 Hermiston CDJR Discount . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . -$8,570 Chrysler Capital Bonus Cash . . . . . -$500 1 Chrysler Capital Bonus Cash . . . . . -$500 1 $ STK# T2178T 33,489 * $ 62,495 * STK# T2302 STK# T2128T OVER 600 NEW AND USED VEHICLES 2007 TOYOTA RAV4 2016 CHEVY SPARK ILT 2012 TOYOTA COROLLA 2014 JEEP PATRIOT SPORT 4X4 4 Cyl, Auto 4 Cyl, Auto, 40k Miles 5 Spd, 4 Cyl, 69k Miles Low Miles, Great Condition WE HEAR YOU! $ LOCAL, INDEPENDENT AUDIOLOGIST Working within the community of Pendleton, our clinic provides a variety of hearing healthcare services including hearing assessments and rehabilitation, education, and counseling. CONTRIBUTED PHOTO Umatilla County Fire District 1 responded to multiple fires over the past three days, including this barn fire in the 33000 block of Punkin Center outside Hermiston early Sunday. 4,992 $ 10,348 T5888P T2176TA 2017 CHEVY CRUZE LT 2016 JEEP RENEGADE 4X4 4 Cyl, Auto, 11k Miles Fully Equipped! $ 10,753 $ T5894P 2006 CHEVY SILVERADO 4X4 11,494 T2458A 2017 KIA SPORTAGE LX 4X4 Fully Equipped! Must See! FULL SERVICE CLINIC Our clinic also ﬁ ts and dispenses sophisticated hearing aids and related devices to suit all types of hearing loss and life styles. Renata Anderson is a certiﬁ ed licensed audiologist with over twenty years experience. SERVICE YOU CAN RELY ON! You can trust Renata to provide a complete hearing evaluation and a professional diagnosis of your speciﬁ c hearing loss. Call for an appointment with Renata today and start hearing what you’ve been missing. $ 15,688 $ 16,999 T5841P T5885P Pam Wagenaar, Administrative Assistant 2237 SW Court, Pendleton 541-276-5053 • www.renataanderson.com 17,488 $ T2122TA 17,822 T5884P 2017 JEEP CHEROKEE 4X4 2017 DODGE CHARGER AWD 2006 DODGE RAM 2500 4X4 2014 FORD F-150 4X4 Fully Equipped! Must See! SXT, 26k Miles, Must See! 162k Miles, Auto Leather, SuperCrew, Lariat $ 18,988 T5815P $ 20,988 T5835P (541) 701-3482 Renata Anderson, MA $ $ 23,777 T2139B $ 28,988 T2121A Mon.-Sat. 8am-7pm | Sun. 11am-5pm 81143 N. Hwy 395, Hermiston, OR “WE ARE YOUR NO PROBLEM SALES & SERVICE DEALER” *Only one at this price. HURRY! Rebates expire 2/28/18. 1 Must finance with Chrysler Capital Credit, OAC All photos are for illustrative purposes only. All prices plus license, title and up to $150 doc fee . Full VIN ID number available from dealer upon request. Offers expire 3/2/18.