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Serving Baker County since 1870 • bakercityherald.com
September 14, 2015
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>N>H>saD>i'>oN: Local • H ome @Living • Sports Monday $ < QUICIC HITS
Payette
Vehicle CrashSaturdaylgnites BlazeThatPrompts EvacuationNotices NearRichland, Halfway
Good Day Wish To A Subscriber A special good day to Herald subscriber Yvonne Riggs of Halfway.
Oregon, 6A PORTLAND — For weeks, rancher Darrel Holliday has rounded up frightened cows and calves off the smoldering hills of the Strawberry Mountain Range, a wilderness area in Eastern Oregon of oldgrowth forest and grass where wildlife and cattle roamed. Holliday's entire federal forest grazing allotment of about 32,000 acres burned last month as a wildfire ravaged the area. The land is now a smoke-filled expanse of blackened tree sticks and ash a foot and half deep.
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By Jayson Jacoby llacoby©bakercityherald.com
After a brief intermission in early September that featured rain and mountain snow,the fire season resumed its historic run through Baker County this weekend. This time the focus is in the eastern part of the county between Richland and Halfway. And the culprit was not lightning, but a crashed vehicle. The results, though, are reminiscent of mid August, ~s V when the lightning-sparked r Cornetand Windy Ridge fires burned together in -«( trs~ southern Baker County. ~ sJ On Sunday, as erratic ~ 4~ winds gusting to 30 mph pushed the 12,000-acre Dry Gulch fire through desiccated I grass and brush, the Baker 'I iF. , 'I County Sherif's 0$ce issued f keip , ) s i variouslevelsofevacuation n , ' r IJr 'r notices forhundreds ofresidents in parts of the Eagle Photo by Jack> Adams and Pine valleys. Smoke from the Dry Gulch fire billows Sunday above Lance and Jacki Adams' vineyard near New Bridge. As of this morning, 137 homes, most in the Halfway area but not including the town itself, were under a Photo by Bonnie Bunyard Level 3 evacuation notice, meaning residents were This Sunday urged to leave their homes, view of the Baker County Commissioner Dry Gulch fire Mark Bennett said. shows swathes Another 270 homes, some of red fire in the Eagle Valley and some retardant laid by in Pine Valley, were under tanker planes. a Level 2 notice, meaning they should be prepared to evacuate. As of this morning no homes had been burned, Bennett said. Firefighters were expecting more favorable weather today. •P
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BRIEFING
Greg Walden visits Baker on Tuesday U.S. Rep. Greg Walden, R-Hood River, will visit Baker City Tuesday morning to talk about the recent wildfires and efforts to prevent such conflagrations. Walden will host a public meeting starting at 8 a.m. at the Sunndge.
Powder River cleanup set for Sept. 19 The fall cleanup ofthe Powder River is scheduled Saturday, Sept. 19. The event, sponsored by the Powder Basin Watershed Council in partnership with SOLVE, will be from 11 a.m.to 2 p.m.,beginning at Geiser-Pollman Park. In addition to the annual cleanup, participants also will work on plant restoration efforts along the Leo Adler Memorial Pathway. To sign up or for more information, email pbwcoutreach@qwestoffice.net or call 541-523-7288.
Tryouts for Haines Rodeo Court Sept. 20 Girls ages 14 to 18 are invited to try out for the Haines Rodeo Court later this month. Tryouts will be Sept. 20 at1 p.m. at the Haines Rodeo Arena. Applicants, who need not live in Baker County, will be judged on horsemanship, interviews and appearance. More information is available by calling Angie Turner at 541-403-2671.
WEATHER
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BaKerCityPolice ChoosesOlicer ToWorKWithllrug-Iletecting Ilog
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By Joshua Dillen ldillen©bakercityherald.com
There's a new canine-handling cop in town. And by the end of October there will be a new drug-detecting dog for him to handle. 0$cer Coleton Smith has been selected as the new drug dog handler for the Baker City Police. Smith will attend a two-week handler's course at Southern Smit h Coast K9 in Florida in mid-October. He said he has always been interested in being the handler for a police dog, but wasn't sure about applying for the new position. "I didn't want to commit, but after talking to my Lieutenant iDustin Newman) and Chief %yn Lohnerl, I became more interestedand excited about it," Smith said. He grew up with dogs and used them for hunting, but didn't con-
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By Jayson Jacoby llacoby©bakercityherald.com
Submitted photo
This photo is from Southern Coast K9 in Florida. The Baker City Police Department is buying its new drug-detecting dog (not the dog in the photo) from the supplier. sider himself a dog person until he was married. "My wife's love of dogs rubbed off on me," Smith said. His family includes a chihuahua, although he made it clear that's his wife's dog. Officer Rand Weaver trained Smith when he joined the police department. Smith said he liked working with Weaver partly because Weaver was the handler
for Turbo, the department's nowretired drug-sni5ng dog. That was when his interest in becomingapolice dog handler was piqued, Smith said. Turbo, who was trained to detect marijuana, was retired two yearsearly because recreational marijuana use is now legal in Oregon.
Barely half of Baker County residents who are 16 or older are working or looking for work, the lowest rate since state economists started tracking the statistic 25 years ago. It's called the labor force participation rate. It measures how many residents who are technically eligible to work are actually either doing so, or are looking for a
job. Baker County's rate in 2014 was 51.6 percent, lowest among Eastern Oregon counties and lower than all but four of Oregon's 35 other counties. Baker County's labor force participation ratedropped from 56.8percentin 2010. That decl ineof5.2 percentage pointsis slightly higher than the drop for Oregon overall during that period.
See DrugDog IPage8A
See Labor/Page 6A
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Issue 55, 20 pages
Calendar....................2A Co m m u n ity News ....3A Ho m e ................1B & 2B Lot t ery Results..........2A Opinion..... Classified.. ...........4B-7B Crossword........5B & BB Horoscope........5B & BB News of Record........2A Sports ....... Comics....................... 3B D e a r Abby ................. BB L e t t ers........................4A Obi t u aries..................2A Weather ....
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