Story by Rodger Nichols for Gorge Country Media
Wasco County Administrative Officer Tyler Stone reported on the aftermath of the Rowena Fire to the Columbia Gorge Commission meeting in Cascade Locks yesterday. Once the firefighters were through, the command team turned over control to Tyler as incident commander.
He said people from many different counties were working on recovery efforts from the fire, and some state agencies as well:
“DEQ is doing the hazmat cleanup for this incident, starting today with air quality monitoring and soil testing. That’s going to immediately roll into hazmat cleanup. As soon as that is completed, there will be a brief one day when folks if they want to get back into their sites, and then we’ll roll into a formal debris cleanup. DEQ is also going to be coordinating that.”
He reminded commissioners that many of the items in a home produce hazardous byproducts when burned. And he added this:
“As Incident Command, I’d like to formally invite the Gorge Commission to take a tour with the fire chief, probably the Sheriff, myself and probably DEQ to roadside and take a look for yourselves, because until you’ve been there, you won’t really understand what happened.”
Gorge Commission Executive Director Krystyna Wolniakowski said that the drop in funding level for the biennium meant that the agency, which had previously been funded for 10 FTEs, would now only have enough budget to support 8.25 FTE’s:
“We each have a specialty in what we do, and each of our staff is critical to the success of the Gorge Commission. We all decided to take pay cuts and time cuts in order to not have any layoffs. That just means we’re going to be doing the same work; it’s just gonna be uh maybe taking longer to do some things because we will be closing our office on Fridays.”
It also means that instead of meeting 11 months a year, the Commission will move to meet only six or seven times a year.
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