ROSBURG, WASH. — At Ron Thielen’s house near the end of Oneida Road in Wahkiakum County, Washington, an engineered rainwater collection system is his source of water. He is not alone. There are no water facilities along this stretch of State Route 4 from the Wahkiakum County-Pacific County line to the Deep River Bridge just…
Katie Frankowicz
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Crabbers rebound from Ilwaco fire
ILWACO, Wash. — On Monday, commercial crabbers in Oregon and Washington state started dropping baited circular steel crab pots into the ocean. On Thursday, they will start hauling them back up — hopefully full of Dungeness crab. It’s a critical and fast-paced time. The bulk of the crab caught in the lucrative fishery is typically…
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Landslide closes road, impacts homes
ASTORIA, Ore. — A shallow, slow-moving landslide impacted seven houses in Astoria’s Uppertown neighborhood over the weekend. As of Sunday evening, five houses have been “red tagged,” meaning they are unsafe to occupy at this time, according to Jeff Harrington, public works director for Astoria. City Manager Scott Spence says the area moving near 27th…
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Cause of Ilwaco fire still unknown
ILWACO, Wash. — The cause of a massive fire that destroyed a seafood landing facility and thousands of commercial crab pots in Ilwaco on Monday is still unknown. Investigators from Pierce County and from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives were expected to be on scene Wednesday to conduct a routine investigation….
ILWACO, Wash. — A massive fire broke out at a crab-landing facility in Pacific County on Monday, inflicting significant damage on the facility and destroying fishing gear ahead of Washington’s commercial Dungeness crab season. Ilwaco residents were warned to stay indoors and keep windows and doors shut because of hazardous smoke from the fire. This…
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Winter weather slows North Coast
NORTH COAST, Ore. —With winter storm warnings and advisories in effect across much of the state, county officials on Oregon’s North Coast are urging people to stay home. Clatsop County officials say the hazardous and icy conditions that arrived Saturday morning have made it difficult to apply treatments to roads and sidewalks. Local roads and…
JEWELL, Ore. — The water is safe to drink again in a rural neighborhood that has been living under a boil water notice for more than a year. State and county officials announced Friday evening that samples from the Evergreen Acres water system have come back clean of coliform bacteria, or E. coli. The system…
JEWELL, Ore. — A rural neighborhood on Oregon’s North Coast that has been living under a boil water notice for more than a year did not have any water at all for several days this week. Residents said Tony Cavin, who operates the Evergreen Acres water system that provides drinking water to around 100 people,…
JEWELL, Ore. — For more than a year, residents of a rural neighborhood east of Seaside have been living under a boil water notice. The water that pours from their faucets can be yellowish, sometimes slightly brown, even foamy. Laundry washed in the water smells bad even when bleach is used. One family started breaking…
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Beacon RV owners face penalties
ILWACO, Wash. — A Washington state judge has ordered that the owners of an RV park in Pacific County violated the customer protection act when they tried to illegally evict tenants last year. On Thursday, Judge Katherine Svoboda issued an order granting partial summary judgement in the lawsuit filed by the Washington Attorney General’s Office…
CANNON BEACH, Ore. — The puffins are early risers, but so is Tim Halloran. For the past 12 years, he has spent most summer mornings — and many sunsets — with his binoculars aimed at a tufted puffin colony on Cannon Beach’s Haystack Rock. Minute by minute, over a series of two hour shifts, Halloran…
ROCKAWAY BEACH, Ore. — The fatal shooting of a Rockaway Beach man by officers in September was justified according to findings released this week. In a lengthy statement, Tillamook County District Attorney Aubrey Olson detailed her review of the Clatsop County Major Crimes Team investigation into the incident, described the events leading up to the…
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Astoria prepares for Halloween
ASTORIA, Ore. — For years, kids in Astoria have known you get the really big candy bars at Coast Guard housing. The South Slope neighborhood attracts a truly astonishing crowd of trick-or-treaters to a relatively small area on Halloween: an actual sea of people surging together up and down the sidewalks. Often many families in…
ASTORIA, Ore. — One afternoon in July, motorists traveling on the Astoria Bridge from Washington to Oregon could have counted 13 dead cormorants on the roadside before they were halfway across. For several years now, the number of dead birds has acted as an informal indicator of the growing colony nesting on supporting structures below….
ROCKAWAY BEACH, Ore. — More details have been released about an officer-involved shooting in Rockaway Beach. The shooting on Sept. 7 left one Rockaway Beach man dead and the community with lingering questions. The two officers involved — a Tillamook County Sheriff’s Office deputy and an Oregon State Police trooper — have both been placed on…
SOUTH BEND, Wash. — Last week, the Pacific County Sheriff’s Office made a dramatic and unusual announcement. In a lengthy statement posted to Facebook, the sheriff’s office announced they would no longer work with the local newspaper, the Chinook Observer. “We understand that the media plays a crucial role in disseminating information to the public,…
CLATSOP COUNTY, Ore. — Jeff Carlsen and his wife thought they were ready to have the conversation. They’d been reading books about death and dying and thinking about how they wanted to approach this time of their life. They were older and the idea of their own mortality was becoming less abstract. They felt open…
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Cougar sighting rattles Cannon Beach
CANNON BEACH, Ore. — Cannon Beach’s most famous landmark was closed all day Sunday after one stubborn and unusual visitor refused to leave. When Mylasia Miklas, the communications coordinator for the Haystack Rock Awareness Program, saw a picture of a cougar prowling around Haystack Rock, her first thought was that it couldn’t be real. She…
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Nurses picket in Astoria
ASTORIA, Ore. — Nurses at Columbia Memorial Hospital are not on strike – at least not yet. But on Tuesday they held an informational picket in front of the Astoria hospital — a sort of prelude to a possible strike. The demonstration was an attempt to sway administration as the labor union, which represents around…
ASTORIA, Ore. — A year after a portion of Buoy Beer Co.’s waterfront facility collapsed over the Columbia River, the fate of the building remains in limbo. Buoy has no permits in front of city building officials for the structure located between Seventh and Eighth streets. “We’re waiting to hear from the property owners about…
The last time Cannon Beach’s Haystack Rock Awareness Program recorded a sighting of a sunflower sea star was in 2019. They are one of the largest sea stars in the world, measuring up to one meter across, with as many as 20 arms. Voracious predators, they feed on urchins, fish and even birds. For visitors…
WARRENTON, Ore. — A massive, quick-moving fire destroyed a building at the High Life Adventures zip line facility in Warrenton early Thursday morning. The building included the High Life Zip N’ Sip Restaurant and a workshop. The Warrenton Fire Department responded to the fire just after 1 a.m. and had to call in the Astoria…
Astoria, Ore. — Winter hit Oregon’s North Coast especially hard in the last half of February. For homeless people in the Astoria area, the dip in temperatures and the snow, ice and windstorms came at a time when there were even fewer than usual options for shelter. The Astoria Warming Center, which would typically provide…
It was a dream season for Oregon’s Dungeness crab fishery last year. Fishing began on the traditional Dec. 1 opener for the first time in years. Domoic acid, a marine toxin that has hampered the valuable commercial fishery time and again in recent years, was almost nowhere to be seen in Oregon or Washington state waters….
CANNON BEACH — Someone is stealing mussels off the iconic Haystack Rock. Bald patches on the rock and nearby boulders have appeared after nighttime and evening low tides — after staff and volunteers with the city-run Haystack Rock Awareness Program have gone home. In addition to the bare spots, volunteers and city staff have found…
ASTORIA, Ore. — Salmon caught in Youngs Bay in the spring are among the first fresh salmon of the year to land in front of Pacific Northwest consumers — and fetch a high price per pound for local fishermen. But commercial gillnetters worry that a damaged gangway at one of the few remaining docks close…
OREGON COAST — This is what it is like to descend into a kelp forest Underwater, the swaying bull kelp is a color that is hard to describe and light and color bounce off of everything around you. There are bright pinks from coral, purples from algae. Down near the bottom, the kelp’s rootlike holdfast…
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Project opens habitat to wild fish
OLNEY, Ore — A fish passage project outside of Astoria aims to reconnect key wild fish species with prime habitat that has long been difficult — if not impossible — for them to reach without human help. The North Fork Klaskanine River is the first major watershed that salmonids and lamprey returning from the ocean…
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Portland brewery eyes Astoria
ASTORIA, Ore — Breakside Brewery, one of the dominant player’s in Oregon’s craft beer industry, plans to open a location in Astoria. The city confirmed the Portland-based business is discussing the logistics with city staff of opening an eating and drinking establishment — not a brewery — in a building that formerly housed the Astoria Co+op grocery…
HAMMOND, Ore. — State fishery managers abruptly closed the lower Columbia River to all salmon and steelhead fishing Thursday night, saying a popular recreational fishery was having too big an impact on threatened Chinook salmon. On Friday morning, Marvin Henkel sat at a picnic table in the Hammond Marina near Warrenton and scrolled through…