NEWS
Wednesday, February 16, 2022
HerMIsTOnHeraLd.COM • A7
Units in Eastern Oregon prisons still quarantined
Miles said EOCI offers
vaccines to the adult in cus-
tody population, as well as
offering vaccine booster
clinics from time to time
for prisoners to keep up to
date with the COVID-19
vaccines.
By ALEX WITTWER
eO Media Group
Eastern Oregon Correc-
tional Institution and Two
Rivers Correctional Institu-
tion in Umatilla County still
have housing units in quaran-
tine due to the spread of the
COVID-19 virus throughout
their facilities, according to
prison officials.
According to the Oregon
Department of Corrections
COVID-19 tracker, seven
out of the 15 prisons in Ore-
gon as of Feb. 8 had units
under quarantine.
Overall,
case
num-
ber increased dramatically
through January, peaking at
286 cases for Two Rivers on
Jan. 20. In December, those
numbers were in the sin-
gle digits. As of Feb. 8, Two
Rivers had just one active
case of COVID-19.
As a percentage of total
cases during the entire pan-
demic against the number
of beds at each facility, Two
Rivers ranked the highest by
a wide margin. The case-to-
bed rate was at 68%, while
the average across all pris-
ons in Oregon was 33.3%.
Critic blames prison staff for
virus spread
Corrections
officials
wouldn’t say whether or
not the COVID-19 cases
that spurred a large spike
at Two Rivers was due to a
staff member, but case num-
bers and dates shared with
EO Media Group show staff
at Two Rivers had tested
positive on Dec. 29, just 10
days before members of the
prison population showed a
spike in positive tests.
“There is no way of
knowing exactly how each
positive case originates or
is spread,” said Betty Bernt,
communications manager
for DOC. “When an indi-
vidual comes into our intake
unit, our current process is to
test all adults in custody.”
Juan Chavez, project
director and attorney with
the Oregon Justice Resource
Center, disagrees.
“There’s only one way
for the virus to get in, and
that’s through the staff,” he
said. “It’s abundantly clear
that mask wearing has been
scant in particular with cor-
rectional officers. They hav-
en’t been enforcing the mask
wearing policy, they just let
it slide. They’re more afraid
of losing staff than they are
of killing people, in my
mind.”
Chavez noted because
intake goes through Coffee
Creek Correctional Facil-
ity — DOC’s intake facility
in Wilsonville where adults
in custody are tested, iso-
lated and quarantined before
being transferred to other
parts of the state — the pos-
sibility of an inmate bring-
TRCI tops prisons for
COVID-19 deaths
Ben Lonergan/Hermiston Herald
Two Rivers Correctional Institution, Umatilla, and other prisons in Eastern Oregon, saw a resurgence of COVID-19 cases in
January with TRCI reporting a peak of 286 active cases on Jan. 20, 2022.
ing the virus into a different
prison is remote.
The Oregon Justice
Resource Center is involved
in a class action lawsuit
against the Department of
Corrections due to condi-
tions at the prisons regarding
COVID-19 safety. The law-
suit was filed in April 2020.
“I think the (COVID-19)
situation shakes the entire
foundation,” Chavez said,
“What we were asking for
only sounds extraordinary if
we weren’t in extraordinary
times, and so we needed
something grander. And that
didn’t happen. A lot of peo-
ple got hurt.”
Two Rivers in litigation
spotlight
Two Rivers has been
especially
problematic,
according to prison attorney
Tara Herivel, who led a legal
campaign that resulted in
hundreds of lawsuits against
the Oregon Department of
Corrections since the start
of the pandemic. Herivel
said approximately 80% of
her cases are against Two
Rivers, but the prison is not
afraid enough to change.
“The conversation I have
a lot with my clients and
people I work with is why?”
Herivel said. “Why is it so
horrible? Why don’t they
learn? They’ve been sued so
many times, and I just don’t
think they’ve been sued
enough. I think they don’t
have real consequences,
and they can brush away
these individual suits like
the kinds I do pretty easily.
They just don’t follow court
orders.”
Herivel said in addi-
tion to filing a majority of
her prison cases against
Two Rivers, she has had
contempt of court motions
against the prison’s medical
department for failing to fol-
low the court’s orders, lead-
ing to the release of an adult
in custody 11 years before
their sentence expired.
‘We learned the hard way’
Positive cases in staff
members at Eastern Ore-
gon prisons preceded every
spike of COVID-19 among
inmates in January. The cor-
rectional facilities handle
medical cases through their
own health care settings,
according to Bernt.
In Ontario, Dr. Garth
Gullick, the chief medical
officer for the Snake River
Correctional Institution, tes-
tified that a fever was not a
symptom of COVID-19, that
testing for the disease was
“harmful” and said it “can
be the enemy,” according
to reporting from the Mal-
heur Enterprise. The report-
ing also indicated Dr. War-
ren Roberts, Correction’s top
medical advisor, had been
ordered to stop performing
surgeries and had a history
of malpractice.
A spokesperson for Two
Rivers declined to com-
ment on the COVID-19 sit-
uation at the facility, citing a
need to go through the Ore-
gon Department of Correc-
tions for a unified response.
Two Rivers officials did not
respond to an emailed list of
detailed questions about the
outbreak at the facility.
EOCI saw a milder out-
break than it had at the start
of the pandemic, according
to Ron Miles, supervising
executive assistant.
“In addition to masking,
we’ve done our best abil-
ity to maintain social dis-
tance or maintain 6 feet of
distance between everybody,
but the challenge with that is
putting 1,700 people into a
15.2 acre location,” he said.
“So social distancing is not
going to be easy, that’s just a
fact of prison life.”
EOCI saw one case
among its staff on Dec. 23,
2021, according to the DOC
data. Six days later, the
facility saw its first cases
among its adults in custody
population, before it peaked
to 47 positive cases among
the adults in custody and
nine cases among the staff
on Jan. 12. In October 2020,
EOCI had more than 350
active cases.
Miles credited previous
experience with the pan-
demic as a key factor for con-
trolling the recent outbreak.
“Part of it is vaccina-
tions, part of its precautions
we’ve taken since the very
beginning and some of it is
experience with the COVID
pandemic,” Miles said.
“No institution, no prison
anywhere in the world is
equipped for a pandemic, so
when one hits, you have to
learn what you don’t know.
We went through that pro-
cess and learned what we
didn’t know and the second
time around we were better
prepared for that, and vacci-
nations played a big role in
that.”
As of Feb. 8, EOCI had
zero active COVID-19
cases, according to the DOC
COVID-19 website.
“We learned the hard
way, but we did learn,”
Miles said.
Two Rivers, though,
had nearly 15% of its adult
population test positive for
COVID-19 on Jan. 23.
As of Feb. 8, 10 employ-
ees at the Two Rivers had not
yet started either their vacci-
nation or exemption status.
Powder River Correctional
Facility, Baker City, had just
two, and EOCI had six. Out
of the 5,306 DOC employ-
ees reported to have been
under the vaccination com-
pliance executive order in
2021, nearly 20% had filed
and received a medical or
religious exemption, accord-
ing to DOC data from Octo-
ber 2021.
The number of in-cus-
tody deaths across the state
also appears to be increas-
ing, with four deaths within
five days between Jan. 27
and 31, though none of those
deaths cited COVID-19 as
the cause. Since the start of
the pandemic, 45 adults in
custody have died after test-
ing positive for COVID-
19, according to DOC data,
while 17 of those deaths are
from adults in custody at
Two Rivers. That’s the high-
est out of any of the other
prisons in Oregon, despite
being the state’s third larg-
est prison. EOCI, which has
a similar prison population,
had four deaths throughout
the pandemic, while Powder
River had none.
The Department of Cor-
rections keeps a spread-
sheet of positive tests for
COVID-19 on its website,
but that database has not
been updated since Nov. 12,
2021. Corrections officials
said staffing issues and the
tediousness of entering the
data by hand had made the
task too resource intensive.
Daily COVID-19 statistics
and active cases are on the
Oregon Department of Cor-
rections website through its
COVID-19 tracker at www.
oregon.gov/doc/covid19/
Pages/covid19-tracking.
aspx.
RECYCLE!
CARDBOARD • NEWSPAPER • GLASS • TIN • ALUMINUM
EIGHT LOCATIONS TO SERVE YOU!
1.
2.
3.
4.
Hermiston - 220 W. Harper Rd.
Stanfield - W. Wood (by Grange Hall)
Echo - 321 W. Main St. (next to Fire Hall)
Umatilla - Hwy 730
(next to Columbia Harvest Foods)
5. Umatilla County - Hwy 395 N.
Eastern Oregon,
We’re Here for You.
More than 130 years ago, we started with core values that will never go out of
style: listen, learn, and help our clients reach their financial goals. Despite what’s
happening throughout the world today, you can trust that our focus remains helping
you dream big and achieve more.
Let’s create tomorrow, together.
(next to transfer station)
6. Umatilla County - 81144 N. Hwy 395
7. Irrigon - 198 W. Columbia Lane
8. Boardman - NW Columbia Ave.
Contact Steve at 541-278-7220
Contact Stacy and Juliann at 541-564-4208
REMEMBER:
CONTAMINATION TURNS
RECYCLABLES INTO TRASH!
Pictured above (l to r): Stacy Hunter, Associate Commercial
Relationsip Manager; Juliann Dodd, SVP/Commercial Banking Team
Leader; Steve Campbell, VP/ Senior Commercial Relationship Manager
Sanitary Disposal, Inc.
Hermiston/McNary Hwy • Hermiston
541-567-8842
bannerbank.com
Member FDIC