NEWS/OPINION
A6 • HERMISTONHERALD.COM
WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 12, 2020
COLUMN
Community offers a ﬂ ood of support
By JADE MCDOWELL
NEWS EDITOR
When a natural disaster
the size of last week’s ﬂ ood
hits, the information comes
ﬂ ooding in as fast as the
water.
It started slowly on
Thursday morning, with my
Pendleton colleagues cover-
ing two rescue efforts out-
side of town. East Orego-
nian editor Andrew Cutler
called to let me know that
our planned front page cen-
terpiece — the home-based
business story in today’s
Hermiston Herald — would
likely be pushed off the front
page by dramatic photos of
a boat rescuing a homeless
man who had been stranded
with his dog on an island in
the Umatilla River.
He also let me know that
since one Pendleton reporter
was on vacation and another
was out sick, he would
Staﬀ photo by Jade McDowell
A truck drives through ﬂ ood water at the intersection of
Hoosier Road and Stanﬁ eld Meadows Road in Stanﬁ eld.
need to borrow Hermiston
reporter Jessica Pollard for
the afternoon.
By Thursday night, the
emails and Facebook updates
were coming faster than we
could type — road closures,
evacuation notices, safety
warnings, shelters opening
and more. Staff were running
around photographing col-
lapsing bridges and homes
sitting in feet of water, inter-
viewing people who had
escaped the destruction and
using their phones to ﬁ re off
social media updates from
the ﬁ eld.
About 9 p.m., as I mon-
itored and shared updates
online, a coworker tweeted
that the levee behind the
EO’s Pendleton ofﬁ ce had
sprung a hole, and the paper’s
parking lot was ﬁ lling with
water. I texted Andrew, ask-
ing if they needed help, and
he told me it would be “all
hands on deck” in Pendleton
by 8 a.m. the next morning.
When the next morning
dawned, however, it quickly
became clear that we would
need one hand to stay on
deck in Hermiston, as the
ﬂ ooding had reached this
side of the county. I threw on
a pair of boots and went to
work for the next 11 hours.
My parents in The Dalles,
who have the Hermiston
Herald liked on Facebook,
texted to make me promise
I wouldn’t take my Corolla
through any ﬂ ood waters,
so I did a lot of parking
and walking. And every-
Manslaughter defendant
denied bail reduction
HERMISTON HERALD
A Hermiston woman
charged with ﬁ rst-degree
manslaughter and ﬁ ve other
counts related to a fatal car
crash in December 2019
was denied a bail reduction
this week.
Attorneys for Michelle
Fry, 45, requested the court
consider a $50,000 reduc-
tion in bail to the minimum
amount required for Mea-
sure 11 crimes like ﬁ rst-de-
gree manslaughter. Accord-
ing to the motion issued
on the topic, Fry said she
believed her family could
raise the $5,000 bail needed
to be conditionally released
in order to return to her
job in Stanﬁ eld and spend
time with her children and
grandchildren.
The motion was denied
on Monday.
Police arrested Fry in
December after she was
traveling northbound on
Highway 395 in Hermiston
and failed to stop at a red
light at the intersection of
East Punkin Center Road.
Fry was reportedly driv-
ing from the Panda Inn
restaurant when she crashed
into a vehicle driven by Eli-
dio Salas De La Paz, 77, of
Hermiston.
His wife Alicia Salas,
75, also of Hermiston, was
a passenger in the vehicle
and died at the hospital. Fry
was reportedly under the
inﬂ uence of alcohol at the
time of the accident.
The district attorney’s
ofﬁ ce obtained medical
records for Alicia Salas and
Elidio Salas de La Paz in
connection with the case.
In December, the court
also approved a motion from
Deputy District Attorney
Daniel Pachico to subpoena
21 different witnesses.
The witnesses include
emergency
responders
who provided aid during
the incident, a doctor who
provided care to Salas, an
employee at the Panda Inn
who reportedly asked Fry
not to drive and the man-
ager, as well as a woman
whose car was allegedly
damaged by Fry’s driv-
ing in the parking lot of the
A Umatilla County
woman reported missing on
Saturday was found dead
Sunday, according to a press
release from the Umatilla
County Sheriff’s Ofﬁ ce.
Janet Tobkin Conley,
62, was located on Sun-
day morning on the Bar M
Ranch property by search-
ers and neighbors from the
area. It appears she was
swept away by rush-
Volunteers from
ing water, the release
the Umatilla County
said.
Search and Rescue,
“Our sympathies
as well as resources
go out to the family
from the Oregon
and friends of Ms.
Air National Guard,
Conley in this difﬁ -
began searching the
Conley
cult time,” said Sgt.
area for Conley on
Dwight
Johnson,
Saturday.
Umatilla County Sheriff’s
Conley was reported
Ofﬁ ce incident commander. missing from Bobsled Lane
Her death is the only in the Bar M Ranch area
reported fatality associated of rural Umatilla County.
with the ﬂ ooding.
She last seen around 7 p.m.
HERMISTON HERALD
restaurant that night.
A pre-trial conference
hearing for the case will be
held next Tuesday.
Fry waived her right to
a trial within 60 days of
arrest in mid-January. The
twelve-person jury trial was
originally scheduled for the
end of that month.
First-degree manslaugh-
ter and second-degree man-
slaughter are Measure 11
crimes, and carry manda-
tory minimums of 10 years
and more than 6 years
respectively. Fry is accused
of one count of each,
as well as third-degree
assault, reckless driving,
DUII (alcohol) and inabil-
ity to perform the duties of
a driver.
Thursday in the Bar M
Ranch area. Neighbors dis-
covered she was miss-
ing Friday morning around
7 a.m. and she was reported
missing to UCSO on Satur-
day morning.
Damage to transpor-
tation systems hindered
many east Umatilla County
residents’ ability to evacu-
ate, and dozens were pulled
out by helicopter over the
weekend.
Drotzmann endorses partnership on PERS
By JADE MCDOWELL
NEWS EDITOR
Hermiston Mayor David
Drotzmann is voicing sup-
port for a proposed pub-
lic-private
partnership
that will help local lead-
ers around Oregon develop
solutions for the state’s bud-
get shortfalls.
According to a news
release, the Oregon Funders’
Fiscal Health & Equity Cir-
cle was formed to “foster the
civic knowledge and capac-
ity to address Oregon’s ﬁ s-
cal realities in ways that
cultivate trust in civic insti-
tutions, build bridges across
cultural divides, and lead
to equitable solutions sup-
ported by data.”
The participating founda-
tions include Meyer Memo-
rial Trust, North Star Civic
Foundation,
Northwest
Health Foundation, United
Way of the Columbia Wil-
lamette and The Wom-
en’s Foundation for Ore-
gon. They have invested
$300,000 in the past two
years to fund research and
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engagement with commu-
nity leaders. They hope
to raise $200,000 more in
donations and are also ask-
ing the state for $500,000
for the effort.
They are proposing a part-
nership with the state of Ore-
gon to create nine regional
workgroups that would
work to create solutions and
deliver proposals to the Leg-
islature in 2021. Those pro-
posals would address the
difﬁ culties faced by cities,
counties and local govern-
ments facing constraints on
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Hermiston School Dis-
trict has hired BBT Archi-
tects of Bend to be its
architectural ﬁ rm for proj-
ects paid for by the $82.7
million bond passed by
voters in November.
The ﬁ rm was chosen by
the school board on Mon-
day out of a pool of 11 pro-
posals from ﬁ rms across
the Paciﬁ c Northwest.
According to a news
release from the district,
BBT Architects has “exten-
sive experience working
with early childhood cen-
ters, elementary, middle
and high schools.” The
were the ﬁ rm that designed
the Pendleton Early Learn-
ing Center, Sherwood
Heights and Washington
Elementary Schools, Pend-
leton High School, Irrigon
and Boardman elementary
schools and the Confeder-
ated Tribes of the Umatilla
Indian Reservation Educa-
tion Center.
The ﬁ rm will work with
the Wenaha Group out of
Pendleton, which the dis-
trict has hired as its con-
struction manager.
“We are very fortunate
that 11 ﬁ rms submitted a
proposal to help build our
schools, and were all top
notch,” board chair Karen
Sherman said in a state-
ment. “BBT Architects was
selected because during
the interview process they
demonstrated
commit-
ment to teamwork, fos-
tering relationships, and
innovation.”
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their ability to increase their
revenue in the face of rising
costs of the Public Employ-
ees Retirement System.
Drotzmann said it has
“become clear that the ﬁ scal
challenges facing rural com-
munities cannot be solved
only in Salem. We must
engage leaders from local
governments, school districts,
Tribal communities, and cul-
turally speciﬁ c organizations
to collectively develop the
tools necessary to avoid 20
years of budget crisis. Our
future depends on it.”
BEST OF HAWAII
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or bringing in donations
unprompted.
It mirrored the response
across the region over the
past few days — a refrain of
“How can I help? What can I
donate? Where should I sign
up to volunteer?” Our staff
may have spent their week-
end and evenings putting
in hours of overtime in the
past week, but other mem-
bers of the community have
given just as many hours of
their time for free as res-
cue, reporting and cleanup
efforts have unrolled.
Kudos to everyone who
has responded to calls for
assistance. We’ve tried to
keep up on reporting oppor-
tunities to help as they come
in, but I’m sure there are
efforts we’re not aware of
yet. As recovering efforts
continue, I’d echo the sen-
timents of the rest of the
county: Let us know how we
can help.
School district selects architects
Flooding kills woman in Umatilla County
HERMISTON HERALD
where I walked I saw water
— brown, muddy water
stretching as far as the eye
could see over what used to
be ﬁ elds and roads.
Seeing muddy water rush-
ing into your home or wash-
ing away your RV would
not be easy. And yet nobody
I approached was any-
thing less than friendly and
upbeat, whether they were
telling me about how high
the water was when they
left their home or carting
belongings through thigh-
high water. It was clear they
had been through a rough
time, but they weren’t going
to take it out on anyone else.
I spent most of my time
in Echo, ﬁ rst on Friday and
then returning again on Sat-
urday, and the community
pulled together in a magnif-
icent way. People gathered
at the church and the school
and the ﬁ re station, asking
what they could do to help
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