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Headlight Herald
TILLAMOOKHEADLIGHTHERALD.COM • AUGUST 29, 2012
LONGEST RUNNING BUSINESS IN TILLAMOOK COUNTY • SINCE 1888
Paving their own way
McMurrin pleads in robbery, burglary
BY JOE WRABEK
jwrabek@countrymedia.net
Sarah MacDonald and Pam Zielinski are paving their road. They’re not the only ones. The two are among the organizers of an effort to pave with private funds Grand Avenue west of Highway 131 in Oceanside, and adjacent Glenwood Street. The two roads, both currently gravel, are part of the Avalon West subdivision. They’re “public access roads,” for which the county claims limited maintenance responsibility, as distinct from Sharon Reeder and Sarah MacDonald “official” county roads. Since December 2008, Tillamook County’s work on hold a sign show their Avalon Road public access roads has consisted simfundraising goals.
BY MARY FAITH BELL mfbell@countrymedia.net
Marshall Lee McMurrin, 48, pleaded guilty to aggravated theft and no contest to burglary and first-degree attempted robbery in Tillamook County McMURRIN Circuit Court last week, in a plea agreement negotiated with the District Attorney’s office. McMurrin, a former Tillamook business owner, was arrested in July 2011 after a crime spree that began with fraudulently charging the credit cards of his customers at Tillamook Computers and Service, and culminated in an attempted armed robbery of the Neskowin Market Place, followed by burglary of Tillamook Sporting Goods.
said, has been years of “eating dust and replacing bent tire rims.” The Avalon West Road Fund, spearheaded by MacDonald, Zielinski and Sharon Reeder, wife of the subdivision’s original developer, Perry Reeder, raised in a matter of weeks $25,850 toward paving the roads. The equivalent of four city blocks will be paved this summer. “We’ve already scheduled with S-C Paving,” Zielinski said. About one-third of the neighborhood’s 90 property owners contributed, she said. Organizers are hopeful more will contribute later on.
ply of posting and maintaining stop signs, small projects to re-open roads blocked by storm activity, inspecting bridges, and maintaining, repairing and posting signs warning of dangerous bridge conditions. In past years, the county did more. The change was triggered by the precipitous drop in road monies that used to come from the U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management. After failure in 2008 of a ballot measure that would have levied additional property taxes for maintaining roads, the county commissioners voted to stop most maintenance of public access roads. The result, MacDonald and Zielinski
See PAVING, Page A8
Are our schools ready for
THE BIG ONE?
See ROBBERY, Page A8
INDEX Classified Ads .........................B5 Crossword Puzzle....................B2 Fenceposts ..............................B3 Obituaries................................A6 Opinions..................................A4 Sports......................................A9 Tides .....................................A10
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HIGH 67 66 66 69 62 65 68
STATS LOW 53 55 51 46 54 48 53
mfbell@countrymedia.net
cientists at Oregon State University recently released a new report upgrading the likelihood that a major subduction zone earthquake such as the 2011 Tohoku earthquake in Japan, or the Sumatra earthquake of 2004, will occur off the Oregon coast in our lifetimes.
WEATHER AUG 22 23 24 25 26 27 28
BY MARY FAITH BELL
RAINFALL .00 .00 .00 .00 .00 .00 --
Previously, Oregon Department of Geology and Mineral Industry (DOGAMI) scientist George Priest and other experts in the field warned the public that there is a 10 percent chance that a major subduction zone earthquake will occur in the next 30 years. That estimate was based upon a 10,000-year timeline, calculating how often in the past 10,000 years the subduction zone has “broken,” in order to determine the pattern of pressure build-up and release. We are in the 312th year of a cycle that has historically occurred every 250 to 500 years. Meaning that we are due at any time. The new study presents even more dire numbers. Scientists are now predicting that the probability of a major (8.1 to 8.3) earthquake off the Oregon coast is as high as 40 percent in the next 50 years in the southern portion of the zone, which extends from northern California to approximately Florence on the central Oregon coast. A major earthquake in the southern section of the subduction zone could impact the north coast and spawn a devastating tsunami. Chris Goldfinger of OSU, lead author of the US Geological Survey publication, said “One of the take-home messages is that
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these numbers are larger than people are used to seeing…right now, we have already exceeded 75 percent of the known recurrence intervals.” The subduction zone is a 680 mile-long fault off of the coast, where the Juan de Fuca oceanic plate “subducts,” or slips beneath, the North American plate. The plates are moving, and slowly but surely pressure is building up where they meet. Inevitably the subduction zone will “break,” releasing pressure and vast amounts of energy in a “megathrust” seismic event like the 2011 Tohoku earthquake. However, the zone is not a single, continuous line; rather, it acts as a series of sections that sometimes break independently, and less often break all together. The southern section mentioned above breaks independently more often than does the whole.
How safe are our schools? The Headlight Herald is taking a look at schools in the county for seismic vulnerability based upon 2006 statewide “rapid visual screening” (RVS) seismic assessments conducted by DOGAMI. Rapid visual screening means a visual assessment as opposed to an in-depth structural engineering report. 2006 is the most recent year statewide assessments are available for schools in Oregon. This week we’re looking at the Tillamook School District, and next week we’ll look at Nestucca and Neah-KahNie school districts.
See BIG ONE, Page A8
Collapse potential for Tillamook Schools Based on a 2006 DOGAMI report South Prairie: total building collapse potential low, <1% East Elementary: main section facing Alder Street, collapse potential high, >10% Only the southwest addition of East behind the school is rated as collapse potential low, <1% Liberty: gym collapse potential very high 100% Main section of school facing Ninth Street, high collapse potential >10% Only the 1980 wing facing Stillwell has low collapse potential, <1% Tillamook Jr. High: total building collapse potential high, >10% Tillamook High: main section of school facing 12th Street collapse potential high, >10% 1960 East wing collapse potential low, <1 % Gym collapse potential moderate, <10 % Shop/ vocational education building collapse potential low, <1% Next week we’ll look at schools in the Neah-Kah-Nie and Nestucca districts. The 1927 section of the Garibaldi school is rated as very high collapse potential, 100%.
‘Pull yourself up by the bootstraps’ for a family wage job BY MARY FAITH BELL mfbell@countrymedia.net
MARY FAITH BELL/HEADLIGHT HERALD
Jim Carlin, IMT program coordinator and TBCC instructor demonstrates machinery in an IMT classroom.
Interested in a family wage job in Tillamook County? Tillamook Bay Community College (TBCC) is currently registering students for the Industrial Maintenance Technology (IMT) and Electrical apprenticeship programs. The hands-on career training programs are “open to anyone interested in getting started in high-paying industrial careers or looking to advance in existing careers,” said Jim Carlin, coordinator for the program. The college partners with local business leaders, Tillamook County Creamery Association, Hampton Affiliates, Stimson Lumber and Tillamook Public Utilities District, training and apprenticing students for specialized, skilled mechanical and electrical jobs, which employers would otherwise have to recruit for from outside the area. It is a “grow your own workforce” model, designed to train locals with the skills
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See JOB, Page A7
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local industry needs. “This program is an opportunity for Tillamook High School students, 16 and older, to stay in Tillamook and earn a family wage, or for a single mom to learn skills for a high paying job, or for someone who already works in local industry to advance,” said Carlin. “This is a pull yourself up by the bootstraps kind of program. If you want a better job in local industry, this program can help people obtain skills and make connections to get there. Starting wage for a millwright, for example, is $25 dollars an hour,” said Carlin. Carlin invites women and minorities to check out the program, which teaches skills directly applicable to local industry, and provides inroads to skilled technical jobs such as operator, millwright, mechanical supervisor, safety supervisor. “This is traditionally a male dominated field,” said Carlin, “but it doesn’t have to be.”
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