Wednesday
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PENINSULA DAILY NEWS January 6, 2016 | 75¢
Port Townsend-Jefferson County’s Daily Newspaper
PT City Council elects mayor Stinson selected for top spot; Robinson is deputy inson was unanimously elected deputy mayor.
BY CHARLIE BERMANT PENINSULA DAILY NEWS
PORT TOWNSEND — City Council member Deborah Stinson has been elected by her colleagues on the council to serve as mayor for a two-year period. “It’s a leadership role,” she said Tuesday morning after the unanimous Monday night council vote. “It felt good to have that vote of confidence from my peers.” Councilwoman Catharine Rob-
Making good on promise Recently elected Amy Smith Howard stood out during the swearing-in, topped by a hairdo that fulfilled a promise she had made, she said. Howard said she doesn’t plan to change her nameplate, which currently says “Amy Smith,” anytime soon.
Stinson said she felt comfortable in the position, adding that she’s had experience as chairwoman on other boards. She predicted that 2016 would be a productive year for the city, with the first step being to reexamine the city’s strategic plan and determine if priorities need to be readjusted. “There are a lot of things that aren’t on the list, such as dealing with short-term rentals and dog leash regulations,” she said. “We will re-evaluate the plan and see if we need to add anything to the list.” Port Townsend has a “weak mayor” system in which the role of mayor is largely ceremonial.
CHARLIE BERMANT/PENINSULA DAILY NEWS
From left, Port Townsend City Clerk Joanna Sanders swears in City Council members David Faber, Amy Smith Howard, Robert Gray and Deborah Stinson on Monday night. During the campaign, Howard promised supporters that she would wear her hair as a pineapple to her first TURN TO COUNCIL/A5 meeting if she won the election.
Wooden boat fest to hit 40 Organizers seek photos, original attendees BY CHARLIE BERMANT PENINSULA DAILY NEWS
CHARLIE BERMANT/PENINSULA DAILY NEWS
Port Townsend Wooden Boat Festival Director Barb Trailer inspects some of the art that will be used to promote this year’s event.
PORT TOWNSEND — The sponsors of this fall’s Port Townsend Wooden Boat Festival are looking for stories and photographs to mark the upcoming 40th anniversary. “We started working on our 40th festival a week after last year’s festival ended,” said Barb Trailer, who is entering her fifth year as festival director. “We want to have a big reunion party and want to find people who were at the first one who can tell us stories about what it was like.” This year’s festival is scheduled from Sept. 9-11, the same dates as the first event in 1977. While Trailer wants to gather specific stories and observations, photographs are at a premium. TURN
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Thousands of tremors registered in region Experts: Quake activity is unlikely BY CHRIS MCDANIEL PENINSULA DAILY NEWS
PORT ANGELES — The multitude of slow slip tremors geologists have measured over the past few days in the Pacific Northwest are not unusual and probably don’t portend earthquake activity, experts said. Since New Year’s Day, the Pacific Northwest Seismic Network has registered over 2,000 of the low slip and tremor events beneath the Peninsula, the Strait of Juan de Fuca and Vancouver Island, according to The Outdoor Society — a online magazine celebrating outdoor recreation based in Olympia. The tremors began registering Dec. 19 on Vancouver Island north of Victoria, eventually expanding south across the Strait and into Washington state.
On Tuesday, most registered tremors occurred in eastern Clallam County. Episodic tremor and slip is a seismological phenomenon observed in some subduction zones, including the Cascadia Subduction Zone, which lies beneath the North Olympic Peninsula, according to geologists. The phenomenon occurs in the Pacific Northwest as part of cyclical 14-month spans and is characterized by non-earthquake seismic rumbling, or tremor, and slow slip along the interface separating the Juan de Fuca and North America plates, they said. The phenomenon also has been observed by geologists globally in Japan, Mexico and New Zealand. The recent activity is not nec-
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essarily indicative of an impending earthquake, said John Vidale, Pacific Northwest Seismic Network director, from Seattle. “We don’t think the ongoing tremors [are] dangerous,” he said. “They might trigger an earthquake, but probably it won’t. If it triggers anything, it probably wouldn’t be anything big.” And while geologists have “learned never to say it is never going to happen . . . it is certainly nothing to get alarmed about,” he said.
Rumblings in the deep Beginning at 12:15 a.m. Monday, the Pacific Northwest Seismic Network — headquartered at the University of Washington in Seattle — plotted more than 400 slow slip and tremor episodes registered by seismology equipment installed throughout the Pacific Northwest.
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