Seaside signal. (Seaside, Or.) 1905-current, November 01, 2019, Image 4

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Newspaper Page TextA4 • Friday, November 1, 2019 | Seaside Signal | SeasideSignal.com SignalViewpoints THE BREATH OF LIFE SEEN FROM SEASIDE R.J. MARX L ast year the Gearhart Fire Depart- ment’s annual fundraiser sought to raise funds to replace aging ﬁ reﬁ ghter safety apparatus. In September, they did bet- ter than that: along with money raised from local donors, they received this letter in late September from the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s Assistance to Fire- ﬁ ghters Grant. The grant will bring more than $145,000 for operations and safety. An additional grant for wildland ﬁ reﬁ ght- ing was also received by the ﬁ re department, with $8,000 from the Oregon Department of Forestry to be used for radios and turn- out gear. Grant money will be matched by the city with an additional $7,250 raised from dona- tions, and will bring self-contained breath- ing apparatus to ﬁ reﬁ ghters. We talked to Chief Eddy shortly after the grant was announced.    Q: Tell me about the grant. Eddy: The federal share is $145,000. Our share is $7,200 and change. This is the third year in a row we’ve applied for the grant. Q: What was different this time around? Eddy: We did a lot of research, talked to the departments that were successful in grants, and got some of their insight, what they thought helped in their grants. It was a good collaboration between myself, (executive administrator) Krysti (Ficker) up front and (City Administrator) Chad (Sweet), all three. Q: What is the cost of the self-contained breathing apparatus? Eddy: Each is $6,800 per unit from FEMA. That includes the SCBA pack, two (oxygen) bottles and a facepiece. We wrote the grant for 22 SCBAs. Since we do have two stations we have to make sure we have enough units at each station. Each truck has six, so for just the two trucks alone, that’s 12. And some of our other support rigs have to have SCBAs as well. With the new reg- ulations, it’s nice to have everybody have a mask to put on. Q: How do the masks work? Eddy: All the new SBCAs require what you call “positive pressure.” That means there’s always air going into the masks. Even if you break your seal on the side, you’re not going to be sucking in the nasty, because you have more pressure inside the mask than out, so it’s going to push out instead of suck in. Q: Do you have to train people to use these? Eddy: We train with them all the time. At least one or two drills a month. We’ll use them in a training scenario where we smoke up a room. Especially for new peo- ple, that’s one of the big things, how to use the SCBAs. Q: Do you often use them? R.J. Marx Chief Bill Eddy shows an old self-contained breathing apparatus, near the end of its useful life. Eddy: Anytime there’s a ﬁ re. There are so many carcinogens out there. It could be a hazardous material spill. Q: How long will an air tank last? Eddy: We use 45-minute bottles. That’s pretty much the industry standard. Q: You keep replacements on hand? Eddy: Our standards, which are pretty much the norm right now, are that once you’ve gone through two bottles on a ﬁ re scene, you go to rehab. Q: What is that? Eddy: Rehabilitation. That’s where you go take your pack off, your coat off, cool down, have some water. Once you’ve spent an amount of time in rehab, then you may be able to go back for another bottle or so. Q: How much do the air packs weigh? Are they heavy? Eddy: The packs average around 25 pounds. They ﬁ gure a ﬁ reﬁ ghter, when he goes in, is usually packing around 45 pounds — sometimes more. So with an airpack, extin- guisher or hose, you’re carrying a lot of weight. Q: Are these SCBAs different than the old ones? Eddy: They’re a little more advanced. The ergonomics are a little easier on your body. Q: When do you expect delivery? Eddy: The vendor says they will be delivered in 30 to 45 days. We’re really happy about that considering our bottles are out of date in December. We’ve already made arrangements if we don’t get SCBAs by December, we can get some other used bottles and use them in the transition. Q: I also see you got a wildland ﬁ reﬁ ght- ing grant? Eddy: We got a VFA grant through the Oregon Department of Forestry, a volunteer ﬁ re assistance grant. The grant was for $8,904, a 50-50 match. Gearhart put in $4,452, the state $4,452 from the grant. Q: What will the funds cover? Eddy: We put in a grant for what they call BK (Bendix King) radios. It’s the type of radio they use on the wildland scene. The state uses them. All the federal people use them. Q: They’re different than a walkie-talkie? Eddy: They’re the same thing, but a certain type of radio that can be ﬁ eld pro- grammed. They use regular AA batteries instead of rechargeable. They’re the stan- dard of the Oregon Department of Forestry. Q: Analog or digital? Eddy: They’re a combination of both. You can get either one. I think we’re getting two of each, for four wildland radios. Q: Is this to ﬁ ght ﬁ res at Saddle Moun- tain and local surrounding areas, or long-dis- tance ﬁ res? Eddy: Both. Oregon Department of For- estry used them when we had the ﬁ re down at Short Sands. Luckily it was small enough at that time that we were still able to use our radios to communicate with Oregon Depart- ment of Forestry. But if it had gotten bigger, they would have had to bring some of those radios in and use them. The other part of the grant was for sets of wildland gear for the female ﬁ reﬁ ghters. Their cuts are totally different. I know a lot of them were complaining, “These pants don’t ﬁ t right.” Q: Any other grants in the works? Eddy: Not at this time. We’re hoping to get the ﬁ rehouse on the ballot in May. Q: The National Assistance to Fireﬁ ght- ers program offers grants of $750 million. Do you see any grants for Gearhart ﬁ re- house construction on the horizon this time around? Eddy: You may think $750 million is a lot of money, but a ﬁ rehouse ranges any- where from $3 million to $25 million for a ﬁ rehouse, depending on where you’re at. That money doesn’t go far, especially with the amount of need that’s out there. Q: Can the state contribute? Eddy: The state doesn’t have a lot for new buildings. If this ﬁ re hall was large enough and new enough, we could apply for an earthquake grant to bring it up to current earthquake standards. But the ﬁ re hall is so old and hollow block that we actually had an inspector come in and laugh: “There’s no way you’re going to rebuild this building.” The best thing is to tear it down, if we were going to do it here. Q: Will the city need to factor in the new state rule change loosening building rules in tsunami inundation zones? Eddy: It wasn’t really a rule before that you couldn’t do it. It was just frowned on big-time. You couldn’t get any state money for it. They relaxed that. In Gearhart we don’t have a lot of options to build outside the great big huge one that may happen every 10,000 years. Where they have it picked now (North Marion), there hasn’t been a tsunami that breached those dunes in 5,000 years. Q: So whether a spot outside the tsunami zone is impossible, you’re trying to ﬁ nd the safest of the options? Eddy: We’re trying to ﬁ nd the safest spot possible. At this spot here (670 Paciﬁ c Way), we’re at 12 feet. It’s not going to cut it. The other location is a little bit better than 50. I can’t look in my crystal ball and tell you what (size tsunami) we’re going to get, but talking to (geologist) Tom Horning and seeing the latest information, that location should be ﬁ ne. Q: Are you optimistic? Eddy: The people in Gearhart are smart enough to get the information and say, “This is reasonable. I understand why.” It comes down to the day of the vote. A lot of times people vote their pocketbooks. As long as they’re honest with themselves, if they get the facts — it’s their choice. Q: Is there anything else you would like to add? Eddy: This grant for SCBAs is huge. We were really struggling how we were going to do it. We’ve gotten donations from peo- ple to put a Band-Aid on it. Now we’ll be able to use those donations to enhance that grant. How incarcerated kids beneﬁ t from therapeutic poetry VIEW FROM THE PORCH EVE MARX A s a person who taught creative writ- ing for seven years in both medium- and maximum-security prisons for women, I was very interested to attend a talk last week at the Seaside Public Library given by Mindy Hardwick, author of mul- tiple books, many of them romantic ﬁ ction, and speciﬁ cally author of a memoir, “Kids in Orange: Voice from Juvenile Detention.” In a midlife career change as Hardwick transitioned from teacher to writer, she volunteered to facilitate a weekly poetry workshop in a juvenile detention cen- ter in Everett, Washington. Most of the teens she worked with were in for drug-re- lated charges. Many, if not most of them, returned to the facility multiple times over the 10-year period Hartwick ran the work- shop. Their stories and their voices became very familiar. Hartwick holds an MFA degree in writ- ing for children and young adults from Ver- PUBLISHER EDITOR Kari Borgen R.J. Marx mont College. She currently lives in Can- non Beach where she can be seen walking her cocker spaniel, Sunny. She is an advo- cate of the Pongo Method of teen writing, inspired by the work of Richard Gold, Pon- go’s executive director. The Pongo Publishing Teen Writing Project is a nonproﬁ t, volunteer-based effort working with Seattle teens who are incar- cerated, on the streets, or leading difﬁ cult lives. Traumas from their childhood have made them depressed, angry, and prone to substance abuse and other destructive behaviors. But the writing process, speciﬁ cally poetry writing, has made a difference. At the library, Hartwick read from her own book a passage about entering the juvenile facility. It was a detailed descrip- tion of storing personal items in her locked car and passing through detention security, knowing exactly what she needed to do — and not do — to avoid getting “wanded.” Despite the facility’s clearly delineated rules about not engaging with others, which would include even looking at the faces of strangers, she couldn’t help but read the looks on the faces of other people waiting in line to get in — most of them the incar- cerated teens’ own family members. She CIRCULATION MANAGER Jeremy Feldman ADVERTISING SALES MANAGER Sarah Silver-Tecza MULTIMEDIA ADVERTISING REPRESENTATIVE Kim McCaw PRODUCTION MANAGER John D. Bruijn SYSTEMS MANAGER Carl Earl CONTRIBUTING WRITERS Skyler Archibald Darren Gooch Joshua Heineman Rain Jordan Katherine Lacaze Eve Marx Cara Mico Esther Moberg Eve Marx Mindy Hardwick is the author of “Kids in Orange: Voices from Juvenile Detention,” a memoir created from her ten year sojourn volunteering at a juvenile detention center. could see how they stared at her, sometimes with hostility, wondering how she was able to move so swiftly through the procedures, what made her so special. Allowing that she is by nature a person who often breaks rules, Hartwick relayed how she spoke to one child’s distraught mother, ﬁ bbing, actu- ally, when she said she knew the child. It wasn’t really a falsehood, as Hartwick had been working with incarcerated teens for years. In the way that is particular and per- haps only understandable to those who work with that population, if you knew one, you knew them all. Before the talk was over, Hartwick read several of the teens’ poems. One poem, entitled “Somehow,” seemed to summarize the lives of them all: “Somehow I will ﬁ nd a way to get out of this cage,” the teen wrote. “The cage that keeps me locked up.” Hartwick sadly related that while she doesn’t keep in touch with her former stu- dents, she knows some are likely still caged. After aging out of juvenile detention, many went on to prison. “They get clean inside but after they’re back home or on the street, many go back to their old habits,” she said. This, of course, is just another tragedy of the ongoing opi- oid crisis. The power of therapeutic poetry writing is that it has the ability to heal. As an honest expression of emotion, poetry transcends stigmas and stereotypes to embody feel- ings and resilience that are universal, empa- thetic, and admirable. Hartwick no longer works with juve- nile offenders, but she is running writing workshops. For more information, log on to www.mindyhartwick.com. Seaside Signal Letter policy Subscriptions The Seaside Signal is published every other week by EO Media Group, 1555 N. Roosevelt, Seaside, OR 97138. 503-738-5561 seasidesignal.com Copyright © 2019 Seaside Signal. Nothing can be reprinted or copied without consent of the owners. The Seaside Signal welcomes letters to the editor. The deadline is noon Monday prior to publication. Letters must be 400 words or less and must be signed by the author and include a phone number for veriﬁ cation. We also request that submissions be limited to one letter per month. Send to 1555 N. Roosevelt Drive, Seaside, OR 97138, drop them oﬀ at 1555 N. Roosevelt Drive or fax to 503-738-9285, or email rmarx@seasidesignal.com Annually: $40.50 in county • $58.00 in and out of county • e-Edition: only $30.00 POSTMASTER: Send address changes to Seaside Signal, P.O. Box 210, Astoria, OR 97103. Postage Paid at Seaside, OR, 97138 and at additional mailing oﬃ ces. Copyright © 2019 by the Seaside Signal. 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