Safety Meeting Notes

NEMCCA

(Northeast Multnomah County Community Association)

Safety Meeting notes

March 6, 2024

Corbett Fire Department: D. Redfield

Things have been fairly busy. There were around 70 calls in January, 40 in February and 120 to date.

The new equipment has started to arrive, the rescue rig is here and now the department is waiting for the box to arrive. The rig will be put together in house which reduces costs. This new system will have all responders facing forward and in seat belts. It is also four wheel drive which will help with bad weather calls. Its just safer all around for our volunteers.

The State water tender should be here anytime. Currently we're being told its in Salem but there hasn't been a release date yet. This rig will have the State Fire Marshal logo on it, along with Corbett fire.

On the bond front, permits have been turned in for Springdale and we're working on Station 62 permitting.

United State Forest Service: N. Brodie

The new Deputy Forest Supervisor is here, Nicolas Granum comes to us from FEMA and is a local, having grown up in Portland and now living in Hood River. Looking forward to introducing him to the group.

Sasquatch Shuttle will be starting soon and will be managing the parking lot across from the Lodge.

Grange: C. Mitas

There are 175 Granges in Oregon with an average membership of 25 people. Corbett has a much larger membership with over 175 members. However, all of the subscription dues have to go to the State, rather than having some of the funds stay in the Community to assist on projects locally. You could say Corbett is supporting the Granges across Oregon!

The Grange will be bringing back the Helping Hands Senior Lunches. The first lunch will be March 25, 2024.

The State Fire Marshal stopped by, for the first time in 50 years, and the Grange has come in to compliance.

MCSO: Deputy Kaiser

There was an eviction on Bell, two stolen vehicles were recovered. You may see a couple of people walking around the area, the department is aware of them and you don't need to call them in.

MCSO has been partnering with other agencies regarding retail theft and stolen vehicles. The agencies work as a pod on differing issues and this is just one of the many programs they are doing right now.

The car at the bottom of Corbett Hill has been getting a lot of calls. This is a situation where the person refused help, did not want to get medical help even after speaking with a doctor remotely, and family members that were contacted did not want to come out. You can not force people to get treatment so the agencies did what they could for her, the car has been roped off.

MCSO SAR: Sgt Gerkman

Sgt Gerkman is also the liaison to Multnomah County Emergency Management and they are at the meeting to set up a Public Meeting with the Community to discuss evacuations in our area. This meeting will discuss the different evacuation zones, and the what, why, where of the zones. The team will be there for feedback from the community.

Also being addressed will be the levels of evacuation, what you are supposed to do at each level of evacuation and how communication will be happening during any event. This will be focused on wildfire events.

The meeting will be April 18, 2024 at the Corbett Fire Hall Station 62. It will begin at 6:30.

Springdale Job Corp: S. Closser

The transition of management has been completed and the new team, Career Services Development, has been amazing. The center has 80 students on center and they only way to increase the students they can help is with non-residents, which they know isn't as successful, but there just aren't anymore beds until the dorms are repaired.

With the new management they have been hiring like crazy! Better pay has led to people wanting to work at the center, 20 people were hired in the prior two weeks, staff moral is up, student moral is up, and in general things are looking up.

Happy to add their maintenance man is also returning.

Community Patrol: R. Cannon

Nothing to report. Things are going along just fine.

Multnomah County Roads: E. Johnson

After a break of five years the County has filled the vegetation specialist position. With that the crews will be looking at Knieriem, Hurlburt and Troutdale Road for vegetation clearing. (Discussion: the survey crews have done the staking on Stark Street and you can see that in some areas, the County road right of way barely leaves room for the ditches. The majority of the trees that people are concerned about are on private property and the County can not just remove these trees. The County will be contacting the property owners and having discussion regarding tree removal, risks to not removing, etc. Regarding slides, most of the vegetation will come back naturally and the ferns on that side should be able to hold the bank once established.

In addition there will be around 270 trees removed on the Stark and Kerslake Roads.)

The drop in Louden next to Mannthey will require a dig out to fix, as will the issue on Siedl. The ditch across Larch at the second mile marker will need to wait until the other two issues are resolved.

County roads was unable to get to Latourell due to lack of access on the Old Scenic Highway. (Discussion: Corbett fire is preparing to plow the road to allow access to the area if ODOT is unable to keep the road open.)

Brower, Howard and Pounder are being looked at for fixing. (Discussion: One mother is apparently bringing her student out to Larch due to the bad road conditions for the bus.)

With the recent weather activity there have been more trees down and the freezing and thawing was perfect weather for pothole creation. A submittal has been made to FEMA for funding to help "return roads to previous, better conditions". (Discussion: this could mean a variety of options and will be discussed more once it is known if the money will be coming in.)

Kudos to PGE crews for all their hard work with tree removal and clean up. The County can not touch the roads until the lines are cleared, and with the PGE crews being so busy they are aware some roads stayed closed for a little longer than people expected. Please respect the road closures. (Discussion: lack of real time road closures and openings. The County is lagging behind the locals when it comes to getting out information. The staff member who keeps these situations updated will be reaching out to various agencies, community members, perhaps come to the next Safety meeting, to find out a faster way to communicate. The County is aware its an issue and is working on a solution.)

The PGE closure of Louden was done without notifying the County, so they could not issue a road closure notice. Calls will be made to PGE.

For those who live on Gordon Creek. A consultant has been out to look at the slide area at the switchbacks. The risk of a catastrophic slide is small and they are looking at risk mitigation following the report.

Corbett Water District: H. McGivney

The District Manager is at the Oregon Association of Water Utilities meeting and is unable to attend today.

The district is collating the information from the storm and it is not too late to fill out the questionnaire so please fill it out if you haven't yet.

The debriefing on the storm held on February 20, 2024 was well attended.

A committee is being formed regarding communicating with the community, how, how often and what goes out is being considered. Another committee will address how to respond to future events.

There will be a rate hearing on Thursday the 14th, it will be in person at the fire hall or on zoom. (A new process to register for the zoom meetings is being put in place to avoid what happened at the last meeting. Sorry to those who were exposed to the activity, there has been some learning on how to stop/shut down zoom attendees should it happen again. Follow the link on the public portion of the agenda or contact Heather by email to register.)

Budget meetings will be March 27 and April 11. Public comment will not be taken on the first meeting, but will on the April 11th meeting.

Budget documents will be available on website by March 20th.

A Federal grant is being applied for a GIS (geographic information system) that will locate pipes and appurtenances, create a better Master Plan and a prioritized list.

ODOT: T. Lingley

Summer congestion mitigation will look a lot like last year's with a flagger and timed use permits for parking at the I-84 parking lot.

Sasquatch Shuttle will begin charging for the parking lot across from Multnomah Falls at the end of March. The shuttle service is not affiliated with the Forest Service or ODOT, the lot is owned by the Railroad company and is under lease.

The viaduct projects have started on the Scenic Highway and people are out every day right now. They are doing the sounding on the concrete and are being mobilized. The viaduct will be Closed in October with the turn around at Wahkeena and the parking lot at Multnomah Falls.

The crews are no longer doing 24 hour shifts and are back to doing day shift hours. They are doing more work on I-84 at that is the priority route, but will be getting to the Old Scenic Highway in the next month or two.

Oregon Parks and Rec Department: D. Spangler

Things are going well. There was a break in at the Vista House that resulted in minimal damage. The cash donation box had been recently emptied and they only got the foreign currency that was in the box. The other item they took was the candy, everything but the Skittles. Security is being shored up. It was on the list of projects that were being done, but has been moved up following this incident.

The first three seasonal workers have come on board this week, and they are opening up facilities for the summer. Memaloose opening on March 13, Viento and Ainsworth on March 22nd.

Latourell Falls has the lower falls area open, they are waiting for bridge materials so the upper falls will remained closed for another month. Some of you may have seen the bridges being flown in. Its looking great.