A1 Tillamook County
Aug. 6-9, 2025 Headlight Herald
Tillamook County Fair
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Headlight Herald
Tuesday, August 5, 2025 | Vol. 137, Issue 31
Fair week is here
Wednesday Aug. 6 – Saturday Aug. 9
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Staff report
illamook County Fair week has arrived, and all the fun will be kicking off Wednesday at 10 a.m. at the Tillamook County Fairgrounds. This year, the fair is celebrating the centennial anniversary of the only-in-Tillamook Pig n’ Fords races as their theme, but fairgoers will also have access to the gamut of beloved fair activities like parimutuel horse racing, nightly concerts, a demolition derby, livestock shows and so much more. After kicking off with the opening ceremony at 10 a.m., the next big activity is parimutuel horse racing, which gets started at 12:30 p.m. on Wednesday and each subsequent day of the fair. With a post time of 1 p.m., there will be eight races Wednesday, Thursday and Friday and nine races on Saturday, as competitors vie for $226,000 in purse money. Rainier Amusement’s carnival midway will be open from noon to 10 p.m. daily, with wristbands required for entry in addition to your fair ticket. Entertainment will continue in the evening when Pig n’ Ford racers square off at 5:30 p.m., with Wednesday, Thursday and Friday’s races serving as qualifying rounds for Saturday’s championship showdown. The fair’s annual concert series will take place the first three nights of the fair on the Main Grandstand Stage at 8 p.m., with Chase Matthew performing on Wednesday, Fleetwood Mac cover band Taken by the Sky performing on Wednesday and Waylon Wyatt rounding out the series on Friday.
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Headlight Editor
ast month’s passage of the Big Beautiful Bill has raised questions and concerns for healthcare providers across the nation, especially those in rural areas, about the impacts of cuts to Medicaid funding. Adventist Health Tillamook is no exception, with 35% of patients relying on the program for insurance, and while President Eric Swanson said that it is hard to
Russian quake triggers Tillamook tsunami advisory WILL CHAPPELL
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cern was the impact on patients. “It’s a moving target; so, we don’t know all the details,” Swanson said. “What we know is, and our corporate position is, it’s going to be devastating to people on Medicaid.” As evidence of this, Swanson pointed to the changes that occurred after the Affordable Care Act (ACA) was first passed in 2010, expanding Medicare coverage. Prior to the legislation, Adventist Health Tillamook had provided $7 million See HEALTH, Page A3
See TSUNAMI, Page A3
(Top) Racers jockey for position on the final turn in a 2016 contest. Photo by Brad Mosher (Bottom) Journey tribute band Stone in Love performs at the 2022 fair. Photo by Joe Warren
Saturday night, the fair will culminate in the demolition derby, also in the main grandstand arena, starting at 7:30 p.m. There are a plethora of other activities scheduled through the week, so don’t miss the comprehensive guide in this week’s print issue, also available online or at our booth at the fair, which includes a complete schedule for the week, map and more.
forecast impacts, the hospital will be able to continue offering its critical-access services. “At the end of the day, when somebody needs emergency care, we’re going to be able to help them, no matter what,” Swanson said. “If you can pay, if you can’t pay, it doesn’t matter. Where it’s going to be more difficult is for folks who are looking for elective surgery or non-emergency care.” When passed last month, President Trump’s signature fiscal and taxation legislation included several mechanisms to drastically slash the budget of Medicaid, largely
through reducing the number of people eligible for the program. In states like Oregon, where the Oregon Health Plan, the state’s Medicaid program, serves 34% of the entire population and 59% of children per data from the Oregon Health Authority, this change presented a huge potential problem for healthcare providers. At the moment, Swanson said that it is difficult to gauge what the impacts of the legislation will be, in part because of the law’s phasing, with some provisions only set to come into effect in 2027, but that his and the company’s biggest con-
Headlight Editor
projected 8.8-magnitude earthquake off the Kamchatka Peninsula in Russia triggered a tsunami watch, subsequently upgraded to an advisory, in Tillamook County and across the United States’s Pacific coast early in the evening of July 29. By midday Wednesday, the alert had been canceled. A tectonic summary of the quake from the United States Geological Survey’s National Earthquake Information Center said that the quake was the largest globally since the 2011 9.0-magnitude Tohoku, Japan earthquake, and among the ten largest since 1900. The earthquake occurred at 12:24 p.m., July 30, local time (4:24 p.m. pacific daylight time, July 29) 80 miles off the Kamchatka Peninsula in Russia’s far east where the Pacific Plate moves west-northwest against the North American Plate, which extends beyond the continent. The report said that the fault event was likely to have caused a slip around 240 miles long by 85 miles in length and had been preceded by ten days of quakes in the region. In Tillamook County, residents signed up for Everbridge Nixle alerts received a first warning at 5:21 p.m., letting them know that a tsunami watch had been issued for the area. A tsunami watch is issued as advance notice to areas that may be impacted by a tsunami at a later time, with an update around 6:15 p.m. informing the public that impacts were expected to start in Seaside at 11:55 p.m. The watch was upgraded to an advisory around 6:30, meaning that strong currents and dangerous waves from one to three feet in height were expected and members of the public should stay out of the water. The advisory was canceled on Wednesday, July 30, just before 11 a.m. A water level monitor in Garibaldi operated by the Center for Operational Oceanographic Products and Services showed varia-
Adventist Health Tillamook prepares for Medicaid uncertainty WILL CHAPPELL
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