TRP319

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SERVING DEL NORTE COUNTY SINCE 1879

www.triplicate.com

FRIDAY, MARCH 19, 2021

Crescent City, CA

Council bans most beach fires in Crescent City By David Rupkalvis The Triplicate

In less than a month, beach fires will be illegal on most beaches in Crescent City. On Monday, the city council voted 3-1 with Councilman Isaiah Wright voting no, to approve a new ordinance that will almost ban beach fires between Preston Island and Battery Point. The ordinance would allow property owners on the beach to

have fires and would give property owners the right to give written permission for others to burn on the beaches abutting their property. The ordinance would limit the size of fires, would require any to be fully extinguished before leaving and would prohibit the use of coal on the beach. Before the law takes effect, the city will place signs at all beach access points, explaining that fires are banned. “If the council does adopt this, we will be immediately ordering

signs so they can be up simultaneously with the ordinance going into effect,” City Manager Eric Wier said. “We would have signs at each beach access location in the prohibited area.” Mayor Pro Tem Blake Inscore urged the city to put signs in all the traditional access points, but also in places that might not be the norm. Wier agreed, saying signage would be placed in most locations where access can be granted to the beach. During public comment, several people spoke against the ordinance,

asking the council to go a step further and ban beach fires outright. “Allowing permission slips for vacation rentals will threaten fulltime owners’ safety and health,” Natalie Fahning said. “Plumes from three-foot fires can be blowing in our homes from as far as 50 feet away. Property owners or managers must be on the property for any fires to occur.” Fahning added that before considering the ordinance the council should wait until a fifth member has been selected to fill a vacant seat.

COVID testing goes mobile in Del Norte County By Zack Demars The Triplicate

It’s not all fun and games in Crescent City’s Beachfront Park: A new mobile unit is making important strides in the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic. Last week, a new testing center, run through a state contract with OptumServe, launched in Del Norte County. The bus-turned-test-center is scheduled to make stops in Crescent City, Klamath and Smith River every week. The test center replaces the drive-through location at the information center, and can process up to 84 tests per day with a two- to five-day turnaround time for test results, according to Jason Grow, the event onsite coordinator for the mobile unit, which is being run by OptumServe subsidiary LHI. Individuals older than one year hoping to get tested can register for a test online at lhi.care/covidtesting or by calling (888) 634-1123 — and walk ups are accepted on site. The tests are free with or without insurance. Once there, those getting tested check in at a tent and receive an individually packaged virus test. After a short walk to the bus, patients use the nasal swab to take the test. “It’s still self-administered, unless the person is unable or unwilling to do so,” Grow said. Fortunately, the test is a little different than previous tests, since patients only have to get the swab into their nostril — not all the way into the back of the throat like other tests. “So it’s a lot less intimidating,” said Alisa Occhionero, an emergency medical technician who’s been

administering tests in the county since December. Once the swab is done, patients carefully return it to an individual vial, seal it back up and pass it through a bus window to another staff member inside, who returns the sample to a double-sealed cooler bound for the lab. In all, the process takes just a handful of minutes and is 98% effective, according to Occhionero. The bus is in Beachfront Park near the KidTown parking lot on Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays; at Smith River Fire on Tuesdays; and in Klamath at Holiday Inn Express on Wednesdays. It’s open from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. Even though much of the attention on fighting the virus has turned to vaccinations, testing is still an important part of the community’s fight against the virus. “It’s really important because there are large swaths of the population that are unable to get vaccines that are still vulnerable,” Grow said. While vaccines remain in slim supply, testing can still help to reduce the spread of COIVD by identifying cases and getting them into isolation, according to grow. And beyond just the numbers, increased virus spread creates other risks, Grow said: The more the virus spreads, the higher chance it has to mutate and create new variants, like those that have begun to pop up across the globe. “If one of them ends up being more deadly and immune to the vaccine, then a lot of our work goes away,” Grow said. Right now, the site is helping the county’s student athletes get

The Triplicate

Del Norte Unified School District is open and welcoming students every day, just as the district has since September. Despite the COVID challenges, Superintendent Jeff Harris said his board, teachers and staff have worked relentlessly to keep the schools open. “We still have folks in our community who don’t know schools are open,” Harris told the Crescent City City Council on Monday. “Our schools have had students on campus since mid-September. We have run a hybrid program since Oct. 5. We’ve been open longer and more consistently than 97 percent of the state of California. While it’s not nearly to the extent we would want it to be, while we would love to see our students every day, we are open from our infant-toddler program to our adult education program.” Harris said he would love to reopen schools fully, with every child in class eight hours a day. But state requirements for social distancing make it impossible in Del Norte County. “The barrier that we’re facing that stops us from seeing them more is basically distance,” Harris said. He explained state requirements

INDEX Crossword................................................A4 Crossword Answers..................................A7 Classifieds................................................A5

Leaders celebrate sister city on tsunami anniversary The Triplicate

Photos by Zack Demars

Above: After check in, those getting tested file into two bus-side lines to self-administer their swab. After sealing it up and passing it through a window, their test is on its way to the lab, and test results will return in two to five days. Bottom: The new OptumServe COVID-19 testing site is highly visible in Beachfront Park, and makes stops in Klamath and Smith River. Walk-ups are also offered.

Please see COVID, Page A10

mandate each desk have two feet in front, back and on both sides that are empty. “That puts us at about half a class size,” Harris said. “That’s about where we are. If that size were to diminish, we could do more. My frustrations are the constantly shifting on our teachers, on our students and on our families.” Harris said he believes the fastest way to return schools to normal, with every student in class every day, is to amp up vaccinations. “I have a strong feeling as we move forward, vaccinations will be a component about returning fully to school,” Harris said. “It is not part of the vaccine plan that it will be mandatory. You may hear rumors, but we urge people to contact the schools directly to get accurate information.” Even with the challenges, Harris said some things are getting back to normal – sort of. “Sports are up and going,” Harris said. “We’re looking forward to seeing all the blue and gold on the streets.” Harris said Del Norte schools have hosted several sporting events. The one exception is football, where two players tested positive for COVID. As a result, the football schedule has been altered and the team will not open the week as

Please see FIRES, Page A10

By Zack Demars

Del Norte schools open for business By David Rupkalvis

Michael Sayre said he agreed with Fahning. “It is very difficult to understand in an emergency where we’re coming to grips with public health why we would property owners rights to have a fire that would impact multiple property owners,” Sayre said. “This is inconsistent, illogical and inappropriate for public health. I really think this needs to go to a no-fire zone, period.” Inscore, who has visited the area

Photo by David Rupkalvis

Like all schools in Del Norte County, Joe Hamilton School is open for students every week. scheduled this Friday. With the 2020-21 school year very unusual, Harris said the district is working on summer plans to help students who have fallen behind and help others who may have missed out on opportunities given during normal times. “We are looking at how do we mitigate some of the learning loss that happened the past 12 months,” he said. “We’re looking at a variety of summer projects, from summer school to being far, far, far from traditional summer school.” One element he discussed with

the council was the district’s swim lessons. Traditionally, fourth-grade students take swim lessons in the city pool every year. Both this year’s class and last year’s class missed out on that, but Harris said he is working with the city to get those kids into the pool, even if it’s not until the next school year. In closing his presentation, Harris said counties like Del Norte have suffered due to the statewide rules that are constantly changing and leaving little control in local Please see SCHOOLS, Page A4

Ten years later, local and national leaders are remembering the silver linings to come from the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and the tsunami devastation that followed. Crescent City’s sister city relationship with Rikuzentakata, Japan, was highlighted last week in an online celebration of the “unshakable friendship beyond borders” sparked by the earthquake March 11, 2011, a magnitude 9.0 which struck off the northeast coast of Japan’s Tōhoku region and triggered a massive tsunami and a meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant. “As we look back over the last 10 years, and especially the last four years, so many things have happened that we could not have imagined,” said Blake Inscore, Crescent City councilor and former mayor. The relationship between the two cities started when Del Norte County students and community members discovered a boat from Takata High School in Rikuzentakata had washed up on South Beach two years after the tragedy. Upon the discovery, they set out to return the boat, Kamome, to its home city, which had been all but leveled in the disaster. Bill Steven, now retired, spearheaded the effort to return the boat while he was an undersheriff for the county. Steven appeared in Thursday’s video presentation about the sister city relationship. “A lot has happened in that time. We’ve had a lot of growth, we’ve had some extraordinary things happen, the sister city agreement and everything in between,” Steven said. “And it all started with Kamome, that boat that drifted up to this beach all those years ago, which was kind of the seed for what blossomed into what is now today and what it’s become.” Steven recounted the visits he’d made to Rikuzentakata with delegations from Del Norte County, and said the city had made great progress in rebuilding in the years since the disaster. “It was such a tragic thing to happen to both communities, especially over there, but the boat Kamome, that washed up on our beach, which I think was referred to as the ‘boat of hope’, ‘Kamome the boat of hope.’ And there’s so much truth in that — to have so much devastation and negativity occur, but then as the years go by, so many great things happen as a result of things washing up on our beach and what became years later, it’s amazing. It is hope.” Rikuzentakata Mayor Futoshi Toba, who had just been elected before the disaster struck, recounted how important the boat return effort and sister city relationship had been to the city. “I believe that if it had not been for our encounter with you, we would have surely lost hope,” Toba said through a translator. “And although our connection was initiated by the disastrous Great East Japan earthquake and tsunami, we are bonded by our mutually bitter experiences with tsunamis, as well Please see TSUNAMI, Page A10

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