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Concussion law: Enough to keep youth athletes from worse injury?
Awbrey Hall Fire: 20 years later
By Nick Grube The Bulletin
Local officials applaud new requirements as step in right direction By Sheila G. Miller The Bulletin
It was one of the biggest games of the season. Bend High running back Kyle Brown knew the stakes and was living up to the hype, having run 66 yards on 12 plays in the first half of the Civil War game against Mountain View last October. Then he took a hit that knocked him out of the game. Bend would go on to win, but the Lava Bears’ star running back didn’t touch the ball again. Instead he was on the sideline nursing a concussion, and he stayed there the following week for a nonleague game against Ashland. No one likes sitting on the sidelines. But lawmakers hope, now that a new law is in place, more athletes who suffer head injuries will avoid further injury by staying away from the action until they’re fully healed. Local officials say many of the new rules are already in place here, but that there’s more to be done to protect student athletes from traumatic brain injuries. See Concussions / A3
Lyle Cox / The Bulletin file photo
The Awbrey Hall Fire roars past Skyliners Road west of Bend shortly before sunset on Aug. 4, 1990. The blaze would eventually burn across 3,350 acres, prompt a massive evacuation and destroy 22 homes.
By Kate Ramsayer • The Bulletin
I
Lessons from a large fire, fears of fading memory
t might have been 20 years ago, but Patti Craveiro has a clear memory of the events of Saturday, Aug. 4, 1990. She and her family had been camping at
hen the Awbrey Hall Fire burned across west Bend, in 1990, many neighborhoods’ homes were designed to blend in with the surrounding environment. “A lot of the subdivisions at that time around Bend wanted that natural feel and look,” said Bob Madden, with the Bend Fire Department. “So their landscaping codes required native vegetation close to the homes and wood-shake roofs.” But that natural look made the homes susceptible to the fire. In wildfires, brush and shrubs near homes act as ladder fuels, allowing small, manageable fires to jump up into the treetops, out of reach of firefighters. And most structures burn after embers fall on roofs — like the highly flammable wood shakes. See Lessons / A8
W
Cultus Lake, windsurfing and sailing. They
returned home to Sunrise Village in Bend, and around 3 p.m., Craveiro was putting food back in the fridge when she spotted smoke in the distance.
See Fire / A8
“We walked outside and oh my God, the entire sky was a red fireball. It was like a giant, giant sunburst explosion.” — Patti Craveiro, who lost her home to the fire Pete Erickson / The Bulletin file photo
Kyle Brown, 18, sustained a concussion while playing running back for the Bend High football team in the fall. His head injury was monitored by a concussion testing system called ImPACT, which helped coaches figure out when he was safe to return to the field.
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AUG. 6 10 a.m. — Evacuees are allowed to We use recycled newsprint The Bulletin An Independent Newspaper
Vol. 107, No. 213, 46 pages, 7 sections
SUNDAY
(colored area represents perimeter of fire)
Existing 5 p.m. neighborhoods: Valhalla Heights
City limits
COCC She
vlin
Park
BEND Rd.
Newport Ave.
U|xaIICGHy02330rzu
Skyliners
return home.
AUG. 7 6 p.m. — Fire is declared contained.
Rd.
9 p.m.
yD r.
Simpson Ave.
Ce
ntu r
What’s there now West Ridge Shevlin Commons
Valhalla Heights
She vlin
BEND
Par k NorthWest Rd. Crossing
First on the Hill
Mt. Bachelor Village
Sunrise Village
Highlands Simpson Ave. at Broken Broken Top Top Tetherow First on the Hill Sunrise Village
AUG. 9 6 p.m. — Fire is declared controlled;
Romaine Village
West Ridge
Romaine Village
crews continue to mop up.
AUG. 21 Crews declare the Awbrey Hall Fire out.
14th St.
Galveston Ave.
AUG. 5 3 a.m. — The fire stops moving forward, six miles from where it started. 6 a.m. — Residents east of Highway 97 are evacuated. 8 a.m. — Crews complete a fire line around the fire perimeter.
Mistaken as Iranian martyr, then hounded New York Times News Service
Start of fire, first reported at 3:06 p.m.
Shevlin Park
Dr .
INDEX
3:30 p.m. — Air tankers begin dropping fire retardant on the blaze, now 2 acres in size. 5 p.m. — Interagency command center is set up as fire reaches 350 acres. 9 p.m. — 150-foot-tall flames cross Shevlin Road; residents within 10 miles are evacuated. 9:30 p.m. — 2,000-acre fire crosses Century Drive, destroys 16 homes. 10:30 p.m. — Fire crosses the Deschutes River toward Deschutes River Woods, destroying six more homes. 11:30 p.m. — U.S. Highway 97 is closed to help with the evacuation.
Bend’s plan for how and where it wants to grow over the next 20 years is about to undergo some changes. Within the next couple of weeks, the state is expected to issue its final ruling on the city’s proposed expansion of its urban growth boundary, which is that invisible line that shows where city limits end “Our guessand where they timate is could one day that when expand. City officials we rework are fairly cer- all this ... tain that when it’ll mean they see this or- a smaller der and follow its directions, (urban it will result in growth a pared-down boundary).” version of its initial 8,462- — Eric King, acre UGB ex- city manager pansion proposal, partially because it will require more dense development inside Bend’s current bounds. Bend City Manager Eric King said its hard to say exactly how much the UGB will shrink under the state’s ruling until city staff has had a chance to analyze the state’s decision, but he estimated the size could be reduced anywhere from 1,500 to 2,000 acres. See UGB / A7
By Souad Mekhennet
At 3:06 p.m. on Aug. 4, 1990, a fire is reported in Shevlin Park near Aspen Hall (dispatchers mistakenly refer to it as Awbrey Hall); it quickly spreads south, scorching 3,353 acres in 12 hours.
Ce nt ur y
Entire town joins Clintons to celebrate daughter’s wedding, Page A2
Abby
A fire sweeps across Bend’s west side
AUG. 4 3:25 p.m. — Awbrey Hall Fire heads south.
TOP NEWS INSIDE
City awaits state ruling, anticipates tighter UGB
97
Deschutes River Woods
Source: Oregon Department of Forestry’s “Disaster in the making” publication
97
3 a.m.
Bake
Deschutes River Woods
r Rd .
tt R
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Greg Cross / The Bulletin
FRANKFURT, Germany — Zahra Soltani, whom everyone calls Neda, will never forget the day she saw her death announced on television, accompanied by the picture she had posted on her Facebook page. “They said that I was killed during the protests against the presidential elections,” she said, shaking her head. In fact, it was Zahra Soltani another Iranian — wrongly woman with a identified as similar appear- Neda Aghaance and name, Soltan, whose Neda Agha- death in 2009 Soltan, who became a was shot and symbol for killed during a the opposition demonstration — fled Iran. in Tehran in June 2009. Her death was captured on video and posted on the Internet, becoming a symbol of the fight against the repressive government of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Soon, Soltani found herself swept up in the government’s efforts to counter any suggestion that its security forces had been involved in the shooting — and to deny that the woman in the video had died. Iranian intelligence officials, Soltani said, pressured her to come forward to show that she was alive and denounce the shooting as faked, and threatened her when she did not comply. See Iranian / A6