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Council briefed on Shooter safety program By TONY REED The Siuslaw News

Florence Police Chief John Pitcher gave a presentation to the city council regarding a widely-adopted training program designed to reduce casualties at active shooter events and possibly even stop them as they unfold. The ALICE (Alert Lockdown Inform Counter Evacuate procedure (ALICE) In response to a violent emergency situation such as an active shooter. During the council’ s Aug. 8 work session, Pitcher explained that locking doors and hiding in the corner is the old way, but the ALICE procedure gives more options for people to reach safety. He said that 25 years of mass shooting events have shown the average response time for police responding to an active shooter has been around five minutes. “If you are depending on the police to get there and save you, it’s going to take us five to six minutes to get there,” he said. “At Sandy Hook, over 100 rounds were fired in 5 minutes.” He said by the time police arrived, the shooter had already inflicted much damage, death and injury. Pitcher said that while it happens in schools a lot, mass shootings can happen anywhere. See SAFETY, Page A8

Sheriff’s Office arrests barricaded arson suspect near Florence by LANE COUNTY SHERIFF’S OFFICE

On the evening of Aug. 6, Lane

County Sheriff’s Deputies responded with Oregon State Police to a Dispute in the 5000 block of S. Jetty Rd., Florence. Once on scene, they learned Lindsey Abigail Williston, 39, had intentionally lit a vehicle on fire with a child inside. The child had been safely removed from the vehicle, but Williston went inside the residence with another child. LCSO, Oregon State Police and Florence Police were able to rescue the second child through a window. See ARSON, Page A3

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Siuslaw News Florence, Oregon Wednesday, August 21, 2024 Number 34 • 133 years

COURTESY PHOTO FROM OSU

Surf breaks, nearshore areas whose special mix of coastal and seafloor characteristics creates waves surfers crave, are often found in or near ecosystems that are conservation priorities, such as coral reefs and mangrove forests.

Protecting surf breaks mitigates climate change, helps coastal communities STEVE LUNDEBERG For The Siuslaw News

Safeguarding places to hang ten and shoot the curl is an opportunity to simultaneously mitigate climate change, fuel tourism and help surrounding ecosystems, new research has shown. “There is a growing conservation movement regarding coastal areas that host surf breaks,” said

Jacob Bukoski of Oregon State University, one of the study’s co-authors. “Earlier research showed that surf breaks tend to be biodiversity hotspots, but no one had looked at the stocks of carbon held within these ecosystems – carbon that could drive climate change if disturbed and lost.” In study published in Conservation Science & Practice, Bukoski and collaborators identified more than

88 million tonnes of “irrecoverable” carbon in the land-based ecosystems surrounding 3,602 surf breaks around the globe. Surf breaks, nearshore areas whose special mix of coastal and seafloor characteristics creates waves surfers crave, are often found in or near ecosystems that are conservation priorities, such as coral reefs and mangrove forests.

Irrecoverable carbon is defined as carbon stored in nature that, if lost, could not be replenished within 30 years. Carbon sequestration is a key component of climate change mitigation. Bukoski, a faculty member in the OSU College of Forestry, stresses that the study did not take into account the significant, but harder to See CHANGE, Page A7

Sen. Wyden hosts town hall in Florence By TONY REED Siuslaw News

Oregon Sen. Ron Wyden held a town hall in the Florence Event Center Friday and took questions from Florence Mayor Rob Ward introduced the senator adding that Wyden had held over 1,000 town hall style meetings in the state of Oregon. “Florence has benefited as a result of funds that have been provided through the federal government, which involves Senator Wyden, Including our Highway 101 beautification project, which has turned out really nice,” he said. “Our Florence Airport has A resurfaced runway and we have all the electronics that guide people into land and take off safely.” Ward joked that the airport needs another 500 ft of runway so that ”our jet” can take off with more

Opinion — A3 Classifieds — B7-B8

than a quarter-tank of fuel. Word added that, as a coast guard city, it appreciates the funding from the federal government to keep Station Siuslaw River open for the protection of citizens.

Climate action

After some back and forth ribbing with the mayor, Wyden took questions from the audience, starting with local climate activist Mike Allen, who asked how the City of Florence can pursue funding for a local climate action plan. “I’m chairman of the Senate Finance Committee,” Wyden responded, “and after 50 years of gridlock on climate change… I was able to break the gridlock in 2022 and what I did, as chairman of the committee was that I said, I’m going to get as close as I can to throwing the energy provisions of the tax code in the trash. I got pretty damn close.

We now have a tax code that says for the next 10 years, the more you reduce carbon, the bigger your tax savings. Number two, we’ll have technological neutrality, so that there is no favoritism, no people getting a

political edge, just an open market, so we can reduce carbon emissions using scientific innovations.” See WYDEN, Page A7

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