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THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 11, 2014
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Nation pauses to mark 9/11 anniversary NEW YORK (AP) — With the solemn toll of a bell and a moment of silence, the nation paused Thursday to mark the 13th anniversary of the Sept. 11 terror attack. Family and friends of those who died read the names of the nearly 3,000 people killed in New York, at the Pentagon and near Shanksville, Pennsylvania. Thelma Stuart, whose husband Walwyn Wellington Stuart Jr., 28, was a Port Authority Police Department officer, said the nation should pray for its leaders, “that
God will grant them wisdom, knowledge and understanding on directing them on moving forward.” The sad roll call was to pause only four times: to mark the times when the first plane struck the World Trade Center, when the second plane struck, when the first tower fell and when the second tower fell. Joanne Barbara, whose husband of 30 years, Gerard Barbara, was a FDNY captain who died, urged all to feel for not only the lost but
“those who continue to suffer from the aftermath.” “May God bless America, and may we never, never forget,” she said. Little about the annual ceremony at ground zero has changed. But so much around it has. For the first time, the National Sept. 11 Memorial and Museum — which includes gut-wrenching artifacts and graphic photos of the attacks — is open. Fences around the memorial plaza have come down, integrating the sacred site
more fully with the streets of Manhattan while completely opening it up to the public and camera-wielding tourists. A new mayor is in office, Bill de Blasio, one far less linked to the attacks and their aftermath than his immediate predecessors. And finally, a nearly completed One World Trade Center has risen 1,776 feet above ground zero and will be filled with office workers by this The Associated Press date in 2015, another sign that a Port Authority Police Assistant Chief SEE ANNIVERSARY | A8
Strikes are first step in campaign
Norma Hardy rings the bell signifying the collapse of the first tower.
On the lookout
BY ROBERT BURNS The Associated Press
Firefighters say conditions couldn’t be better for the worst kind of wildfire BY TIM NOVOTNY
“We are seeing fire danger that we haven’t seen in quite a few years,” Flannigan says, noting the particularly COOS BAY — Eyes will be glued to the troubling forecast of east winds. “From now through the end of the season, anywildland areas of southwestern Oregon time we have east winds predicted, we this weekend. They also will be focused run a chance of having a really big fire, from farther away than they used to be and so we are bringing in extra resources in the glory days of manned lookout from out of the area and preparing.” towers. The winds that whip-up out of the The continued warming trend has east, toward the coast, can typically fire prompted the Coos Forest Protective up to about 30 to 40 miles per hour and Association to increase industrial come with very low humidity. restrictions in wildland areas. Couple that with less standing Effective at 12:01 a.m. water on the ground these days Thursday, Sept. 11, the CFPA and, Flannigan said, you have a will impose Industrial Fire recipe for disaster. Precaution Level III on indus“It’s the drought catching trial operations on all state, up with us. We’ve been short county, private and BLM lands More online: on rain for some time. We’re in within Regulated Use Area CS-1. Watch the video a pretty good drought. Even For everyone else, the preand see the photo last January we burned like caution level also should be gallery at 800 acres because it was so rising, according to CFPA pretheworldlink.com. dry.” vention specialist John He says there is so much Flannigan. growth on the coast that when “Right now, we have all the live fuel moistures get low fire ingredients to run a really big can grow faster. fire,” Flannigan said “Live fuel moistures, kind of Wednesday. “Right now, we are like water just standing there, can take a cautious and we need the public to be lot of energy out of a fire because it has very heads-up and cautious as well.” got to dry the water out before the plants Three main ingredients drive wildcan burn,” Flannigan said. “But right land fires. When the combination of now our live fuel moistures are getting weather, forest fuels and humidity all critically low and when that happens, turn nasty at the same time firefighters start to prepare for the worst. Such is the we have a lot of problems on the coast.” case this weekend. SEE LOOKOUT | A8
From the dispatch center at the Coos Forest Protective Association base on Bunker Hill, the video feeds from the Signal Tree lookout near Camas Valley can be viewed.
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E. coli deaths Randy Cook, Bandon Pauline McDonald, Eugene Mort Brandler, Florence
Obituaries | A5
A second child in the Northwest has died after contracting E. coli. A third child’s condition is improving. Page A5
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Photos by Lou Sennick, The World
A replica fire tower in the early morning light Wednesday on top of Bunker Hill. The tower is set up as fire towers used be. Now, many are no longer manned, but have numerous remote controlled video cameras that can be monitored away from the towers.Top, some of the necessary items in the towers included radios, binoculars, magazines and a deck of cards.
DEATHS
INSIDE
WASHINGTON — By expanding his military campaign against the Islamic State group, President Barack Obama hopes to reverse the militants’ momentum in Iraq, squeeze their sanctuary in Syria and erode their recruiting appeal across the greater Mideast. Those are key steps toward Obama’s stated goal of eventually destroying the extremist group. The strategy’s success, however, also hinges on a set of more difficult moves: effective coordination with Iraqi and Kurdish ground forces, undercutting financial and ideological support for the Islamic State group, and building up anti-Islamic State forces in Syria without strengthening the regime of President Bashar Assad, which Obama considers illegitimate. These U.S. gains are unlikely to occur quickly, but broadening U.S. airstrikes in Iraq and extending them to Syria could “change the reality and the perception of whether ISIL has the momentum or whether they are being rocked back on their heels,” said Michele Flournoy, the Obama administration’s first policy chief at the Pentagon. ISIL is an alternative acronym for the Islamic State group. Undermining the Islamic State group’s popular image as a military steamroller is especially important, particularly in the short run, she said. “On the Iraq side of the border it has already begun,” she said. Five weeks of U.S. airstrikes against Islamic State forces in northern and western Iraq have taken a military and perhaps psychological toll, compelling those forces to disperse and assume more defensive positions, according to U.S. defense officials. That has stalled their offensive, which swiftly routed Iraqi troops in the north in June and gave Islamic State fighters the appearance of being an unstoppable force, prompting Obama to begin limited bombing Aug. 8. Last weekend, the U.S. began airstrikes around the Haditha Dam west of Baghdad, marking an expansion of the mission. With his announcement Wednesday, Obama essentially has lifted all restrictions on Islamic State targets in Iraq, meaning the air campaign will intensify, broaden and perhaps exact a heavier toll. To facilitate the additional strikes, Obama authorized U.S. soldiers to begin embedding with the Iraqi army — not to fight alongside them but to help them profit from U.S. airstrikes. Obama made clear the task won’t be easy. “Now it will take time to eradicate a cancer like ISIL,” Obama said in his televised address to the nation. “And any time we take military action, there are risks involved.” The Pentagon said Wednesday, before Obama’s speech, that U.S. warplanes had conducted 154 airstrikes in Iraq so far, damaging or destroying 212 Islamic State targets, including 162 vehicles.
Sunny 84/51 Weather | A8