The Porch: Do You Know Your Spit?

SEEN AND HEARD: “Six feet, please ...” ... “I saw the horses in a pasture off Tucker Road on Sunday, they too are social distancing,” said Porch-izen Judy Dutcher ... man asking for his coffee “to go” and then realizing his redundant words ... brown carcasses of Christmas trees still seen along roadsides ... “Please: we all need to work together to stay healthy. Keep yourself and children from touching the playground equipment” reads a Waterfront Park sign, where children scaled the climbing wall ... strong winds on Monday morning blowing waves of plum and cherry pedals off the trees ... “Kindness costs nothing but means everything. Remain Faithfull.” — Tucker Road Baptist Church readerboard sign.

 

KNOW YOUR ZONES: The Emergency Zone photo? Years back first-response agencies put together a zoned numbering system for the Hood River Waterfront, where with so many access points with so many similar or poorly-understood names, and so many places with multiple names, it gave life-saving logic to establishing a numbered access zone system.
That way, locals or visitors would be on the cell phone and could inform 911 that the drowning surfer or heart attack victim was at Zone 2, and not say “Event Site“ because where you are standing is actually “Waterfront Beach,” but people can be either confused or unfamiliar. Or at The Hook, to be able to say “Zone 1” and not “where people launch their boards.”

 

To be frank, years after the system went into place, it is my observation that those involved in the emergency response system often do not employ the numbers. You still hear them tell dispatchers, or are told by dispatchers (who are working with information provided), to respond to “The Spit” or “The Hook” or “Marina Beach” or “The Sandbar.”

 

Believe me: Not everyone knows the difference between any of those.
I have personally heard several conversations where responders and dispatchers either gave the wrong name or had to ask such things as “The Spit? By Marina Beach, or do you mean ‘The Sandbar’?”

 

I love and respect all our responders, but if they are reading this, I hope all agencies will refresh themselves and learn the Access Points. They are numbered west to east:

 

1. The Hook; 2. Waterfront Park; 3. Event Site; 4, Nichols Basin/Slackwater Beach; 5. The Spit; 6. Marina Beach; 7. Marina Park/Marina Green; 8. Boat Launch.

 

Notes on names: Access Point 4 is NOT “Frog Beach;” don’t call it that. Yes, there is a sculpture of a frog there, but there is also a sculpture entitled “N’ich’-Wana” just a few feet away, honoring the Nations who used the river first.

 

SAVE THE DATE: Run For Beer, Oregon Brewery Running Series, tentatively rescheduled for May 20 at Ferment Brewing. This is COVID-19 dependent, of course, but there’s still time to hope, right?

 

The event was originally planned for mid-March, when coronavirus really started to bear down on us. Get more information and register at www.breweryrunningseries.com/oregon.