OPENING CEREMONIES
PANTHERS WIN
Sochi Olympics ‘officially’ begin, B1
Gold Beach stops Reedsport, B1
SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 8, 2014
Serving Oregon’s South Coast Since 1878
theworldlink.com
■
$1.50
World File Photo, Lou Sennick
U.S. Navy demolition experts set off explosives on Feb. 11, 1999, in the second attempt to breach the New Carissa’s fuel tanks and burn off around 400,000 gallons of diesel and bunker oil aboard when it ran aground on Feb. 4.
The New Carissa — 15 years later Valentine to a memorable Carissa BY TIM NOVOTNY The World
World File Photo, Lou Sennick
A helicopter with a drip torch, usually used for starting back fires in fighting forest fires, was used to reignite the fuel a couple days after the explosives were set off.
World File Photo, Lou Sennick
Feb. 1999: As the bow section of the New Carissa is pulled by a towboat off the sand bars, the ballast tanks are filled with air and the remaining water in the tanks spills out of the shattered end. See the New Carissa photo gallery online at theworldlink.com/gallery
COOS BAY — Some historic events just stand out in a person’s memory. There are the larger events that are shared across time zones, such as assassinations and natural disasters, then there are others that stick around only in the minds of more directly impacted. Looking back those Such has been the case with On the 15th the wreck of the New Carissa. anniversary of It has been 15 years since the grounding of the wood-chip freighter ran the New Carissa, aground during a storm, off reporter T im the north spit of Coos Bay, on Novotny offers a Feb. 4, 1999. None of the 23 journalists’ men on board was injured, but remembrance of the vessel would soon belong the story that to the ages. turned into a It would be a year before I decade-long first started covering the New event. Carissa as a regular story, for the local CBS television station, but in a bit of real life foreshadowing, I remember where I was when I first heard about the wreck the day after it happened. I was in a breakroom in a Madison, Wis., cable company explaining to my co-workers where exactly it was that I was moving to when I happened to glance down at the table and see the New Carissa pictured on the front page of the Wisconsin State Journal. “I’m going there,” I said. However, I was initially going “there” to try my hand at running a business in the downtown area, having left media for a few years. Some of my co-workers here at The World were not so lucky.
World File Photo, Susan Chambers
Titan Salvage workers Eric "Rabbit" Hickey, top right; salvage superintendent Dave Grecho, second from right; Eric Woelfel, standing; and Yuri "Tarantula" Mayani,far left,continue cutting the engine foundation and crankshaft portion of the New Carissa engine on Friday,Sept.12,2008.Salvors have had to battle 13-foot waves, high winds and fog to keep working on the ship's removal. Lou Sennick, our chief photographer, was on the front lines of the many futile efforts to get the ship off the beach. “We put a lot of hours in that month,” he remembered as we chatted about our experiences this week. “Our publisher at the time said do whatever you need to do, take whatever time you need, whatever materials we needed we had, cause we sold a lot of papers. We printed extras but it wasn’t enough.” Michael Dudash was actually the first photographer on the scene for The World, but Sennick soon found plenty of things to shoot a couple of days later. SEE CARISSA | A8
New Medicare guidelines will cost BAH $300K in 2014
INSIDE
COOS BAY — New, stricter guidelines from Medicare brought on by the Affordable Care Act have more than a thousand hospitals nationwide feeling financial strain. Bay Area Hospital is no different. The hospital will lose up to $300,000 in Medicare funding this year due to the new measures, said CEO Paul Janke.
Police reports . . . . A2 What’s Up . . . . . . . Go! South Coast. . . . . . A3 Opinion. . . . . . . . . . A4
The criteria, set by Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services in 2012, cause hospitals to incur increasing penalties — starting with losing up to 1.5 percent of their reimbursement in October 2014 — if they don’t score well enough. The penalty grows a quarter percent annually until it reaches 2 percent. However, Medicare is adding more criteria that will make the possible percentage grow.
Sports . . . . . . . . . . . B1 Comics . . . . . . . . . . C5 Puzzles . . . . . . . . . . C5 Classifieds . . . . . . . C6
Hospitals also get incentives for good scores. It hits Bay Area hard because about 50 percent of its patients are on Medicare or Medicaid, Janke said. The scoring system is a complex formula comparing hospitals against each other. It also looks at how each hospital has improved from two years ago compared to other hospitals. That means some institutions with low scores may
Michael Finley, Coos Bay Betty Boyd, Anchorage, Alaska Lawrence Barnes, North Bend Marie Roe, Coos Bay R. Jay Walton, Keizer Joyce Killin, Myrtle Point
get more money than others because they showed vast improvement. Bay Area has the highest readmission rate in Oregon, Janke said. Readmission rates measure how many patients are readmitted to the hospital within a month of their initial visit. Partially because of Bay Area’s high readmission rate, it will lose between $200,000 and $300,000 this year, and could lose up to $3 million next year.
Hugh Johnson, North Bend Roger Berry, Coos Bay Kala Pahalad, North Bend
Obituaries | A5
FORECAST
The World
DEATHS
BY EMILY THORNTON
Bay Area’s combined penalizations for core measures and readmission went from minus 0.68 percent in 2012-2013 to minus 1.11 percent in 2013-2014. The exact dollar amount depends in part on how much a hospital bills Medicare. The hospital wasn’t alone in penalizations. Six Oregon hospitals scores went
Rain 51/45 Weather | A8
SEE BAH | A8