The Coast Guard stationed a helicopter at Yaquina Bay, Ore., after a fishing boat capsized in 1985, killing three people because rescue aircraft were too far away to respond fast enough. When the Obama administration tried to move the helicopter to North Bend in 2014 local residents sued and Congress intervened to force the Coast Guard to provide ample notice and research to support any relocation of the helicopter — even for maintenance.
So, when rumors spread a few weeks ago that the helicopter was gone, many fishermen dismissed them, reports the New York Times, primarily because the very idea was ridiculous. Response times from the alternative landing site in North Bend can take up to an hour or longer.
“It’s mind-boggling that the decision was made to move this helicopter, but it’s just as mind-boggling that nobody bothered to talk to us about it,” said Taunette Dixon, a leader of the nonprofit Newport Fishermen’s Wives. “I don’t understand why the approach has to be adversarial here.”
Soon after the election of President Donald Trump, local businesses began getting calls gauging their interest in providing basic services, including water delivery and solid waste removal, to a suspected Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facility at the airport. The Times reports other Coast Guard facilities, including Staten Island, are similarly being considered for an ICE takeover.
But the waylaying of coastal safety resources is a big problem for such a dangerous place.
“The shoreline is notorious for king tides, sneaker waves and storm surges that can sweep people off beaches or jetties,” reports the Times. “To reach commercial crab grounds and offshore fishing runs, boaters must cross the Yaquina Bay bar, where the Yaquina River, on Newport’s southern edge, meets the Pacific Ocean. Along the bar, swells, tidal currents and shifting sand create an obstacle course of steep, breaking waves that challenge even Coast Guard rescue boats. Water temperatures off Newport average 50 degrees to 54 degrees, and the Pacific Northwest crab fleet has a higher fatality rate than crabbers more than 1,000 miles north in the Bering Sea.”
“Bar crossings are the most dangerous portion of operating a fishing vessel,” said Amelia Vaughan, a commercial fishing safety expert with Oregon State University and a board member of the Newport Fishermen’s Wives. “Having close, easy response times from the Newport air facility can be the difference between life and death.”
The Trump administration refused to address the helicopter’s removal, instead calling the suggestion that it is slowing Coast Guard rescue operations “an insult to the hard, heroic work the men and women of the Coast Guard put in every day.”
Still, Dixon said a local Coast Guard leader in Newport became emotional when he told her that he could not answer that same question with either a ‘yes’ or ‘no’.
Gary Ripka is a crab hunter who says he voted for Trump and appreciates the president’s effort to tighten the southern U.S. border. However, he remains furious that his safety is now compromised by Trump’s diversion of resources to that effort.
“It makes you question yourself: Is this what I voted for?” Ripka said. “It just doesn’t seem like these are decisions about the people who live and work here.”
Read the New York Times article at this link.