NEWS
WEDNESDAY, APRIL 28, 2021
HERMISTONHERALD.COM • A3
Local demand for COVID-19
vaccine dropping ‘dramatically’
By JADE MCDOWELL
NEWS EDITOR
Jade McDowell/Hermiston Herald
A fi refi ghter from Umatilla County Fire District 1 battles a fi re along the Oxbow Trail on March
26, 2021.
Fire district bond would pay for
equipment, vehicles, facilities
By JADE MCDOWELL
NEWS EDITOR
In addition to races for
board and commissions, vot-
ers in the May 18 election
who live in Umatilla County
Fire District 1’s boundaries
will have a choice on back-
ing a $13.1 million bond.
The bond would assess
up to 23 cents per $1,000
of assessed value on prop-
erties for the next 20 years.
The money would be used
on equipment, vehicles and
facility upgrades for the fi re
district.
Fire Chief Scott Stan-
ton said the projects focus
on improving fi refi ghter and
EMT/paramedic safety. One
of the fi rst purchases if the
bond passed would be new
turnouts, which are the pro-
tective, fi re-resistant suits
fi refi ghters wear.
“They’re only supposed
to be good for fi ve years
and we have folks wearing
eight- to nine-year-old turn-
outs,” Stanton said.
The district would pur-
chase additional radios, to
improve
communication
and coordination on the
scene of large fi res, Stan-
ton said. It would also pur-
chase new loading systems
for ambulances, designed to
not only help load patients
into the ambulance faster but
also to reduce incidences of
back injuries for those doing
the loading. Another project,
which includes expanded
vehicle bays and upgraded
engine exhaust systems,
would reduce staff ’s expo-
sure to diesel exhaust
carcinogens.
The department would
also replace or refurbish
old vehicles, including a
31-year-old brush truck and
25-year-old ladder truck,
and replace aging equip-
ment used to extract patients
from vehicles at the scene of
a crash. New cardiac moni-
tors for emergency medical
services are also on the list,
which includes a variety of
other items.
“Some of the equipment
we’re looking at is very
expensive but also very crit-
ical to our mission,” Stanton
said.
UCFD1 is also plan-
ning to spend some of the
bond money on upgrades to
its buildings. Two stations
have leaking roofs that need
replaced, Stanton said. The
district wants to add living
quarters to the Stanfi eld sta-
tion, add new bays to the sta-
tion on Westland Road and
create a separate living quar-
ters for female personnel at
the main station in down-
town Hermiston.
Stanton said the bond will
off er an opportunity to refi -
nance old debt service the
district carries, saving more
than $200,000 a year, and he
hopes to use the bond dollars
to help leverage state grants
to work on seismic upgrades
to the district’s stations.
The UCFD board already
created a bond oversight
committee that would over-
see spending of the bond
dollars, and Josh Burns, who
sits on the committee, said
as he has spent time with
UCFD personnel and in the
district’s facilities he has
been impressed by the need
for better living conditions
and better safety equipment
for fi refi ghters and other per-
sonnel. He said the area has
seen “tremendous growth”
since the district was fi rst
formed, and funding has
not kept up with it. He also
pointed out that outdated
equipment can reduce a fi re
district’s ISO rating, which
aff ects home insurance rates.
“I think this is proba-
bly the most common sense
bond measure I have ever
seen,” he said.
Voters
will
choose
whether to fund the 20-year
bond by voting on Mea-
sure 30-148. At 23 cents per
$1,000, the bond would cost
the owner of a home valued
at $250,000 about $57.50
per year.
As Umatilla County is
headed back into the “high
risk” category for COVID-
19, Umatilla and Morrow
counties are turning away
vaccine allocations from
the state because supply has
outpaced demand.
Umatilla County Pub-
lic Health Director Joe Fiu-
mara said the county told
the state it could send last
week’s allocation for Uma-
tilla County to a county
with higher demand, and
will likely do so again this
week.
“Our demand level is
dropping dramatically,” he
said.
Fiumara said Umatilla
County Public Health cur-
rently has about 6,000 vac-
cine doses on hand, but is
hearing from partners in the
county that they don’t need
more doses yet. Last week,
the county itself adminis-
tered less than 500 doses
total, and most of those
were second doses. At some
points during their most
recent free clinic, Fiumara
said, staff were just sitting
and waiting around for any-
one to arrive — a stark dif-
ference from the long lines a
few weeks ago.
According to Oregon
Health Authority’s vac-
cine dashboard, Umatilla
County is the least vacci-
nated county in the state,
with just 23% of its popula-
tion at least partially vacci-
nated, compared with 41%
statewide.
The dashboard shows
an incomplete picture,
however. Some Umatilla
County residents have been
vaccinated through federal
vaccine allocations directly
to the Confederated Tribes
of the Umatilla Indian Res-
ervation, and information
about those doses goes to
the federal government
before making its way to the
state. Others have received
the OHA database.
Fiumara said from the
information he has been
given, it appears the CTUIR
has administered about
5,000 doses of the two-dose
Pfi zer vaccine so far, and
yet only 2,819 Pfi zer doses
given to Umatilla County
residents are listed on
OHA’s website, suggesting
that some data from CTUIR
clinics has yet to make its
way to the state. Fiumara
also noted, however, that the
CTUIR opened up its latest
clinic to all of its ceded ter-
ritories across 11 counties,
meaning not everyone vac-
cinated by the Tribes is a
Umatilla County resident.
“We think our rate is
higher, but we don’t know
how much higher,” he said.
In Morrow County, the
OHA dashboard shows
29% of county residents
have been vaccinated.
As area health depart-
ments, hospitals, medi-
cal clinics and pharmacies
work to increase the local
vaccination rate, they did
get some good news over
the weekend — Oregon
counties were once again
cleared to begin administer-
ing the Johnson & Johnson
version of the vaccine.
The vaccine was paused
temporarily in the United
States after six women out
of nearly 7 million peo-
ple vaccinated experienced
dangerous blood clots.
Since then, panels of experts
at the state and federal level
has determined the benefi ts
of continuing with the vac-
cine far outweigh the risks.
Fiumara pointed out
that many over-the-counter
medications sold in grocery
stores have higher risks of
serious side eff ects.
“It’s still, relatively
speaking, a very safe vac-
cine,” he said.
Before the pause, he
said, the county heard from
many Umatilla County
workers, particularly in
agriculture and food pro-
county has about 800 doses
of the vaccine on hand now,
and Fiumara said it remains
to be seen whether the
demand has changed at all.
During the county’s Fri-
day, April 30, clinic at 2260
S.W. Court Ave. in Pendle-
ton, Umatilla County Pub-
lic Health will have all
three vaccine options —
Pfi zer, Moderna and John-
son & Johnson — available
for anyone ages 16 and up
(the Pfi zer shot is the only
version available to people
ages 16 and 17).
“We’re hoping that will
generate some additional
demand, but we’re very
nervous that the pause (on
Johnson & Johnson) may
have impacted the way peo-
ple see the vaccine,” he
said.
In Morrow County,
Commissioner
Melissa
Lindsay said the county
is also struggling to fi nd
people to get vaccinated,
although she hopes that
resuming the Johnson &
Johnson shot will help.
“We’ve defi nitely seen
demand dropping,” she
said. “It used to be we had a
long list we could call when
we had an extra dose in a
vial, and now we are strug-
gling to fi nd someone.”
She said the county cur-
rently has about 1,400 John-
son & Johnson doses, 300
Pfi zer and 240 Moderna.
They are planning on doing
some targeted eff orts to
use those doses, including
working to get students ages
16 and 17 vaccinated with
the Pfi zer. Lindsay said that
eff ort could make a big dif-
ference in preventing out-
breaks as schools attempt to
start indoor sports.
If the county can’t fi nd
enough local residents to
get vaccinated, she said,
they have discussed invit-
ing people from metro areas
who are still struggling to
get an appointment to come
and get vaccinated in Mor-
row County.
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