The Newport Fishermen’s Wives, a nonprofit organization focusing on building community and improving safety in the local fishing industry, faced a long legal battle in 2013 to ensure Newport’s Coast Guard helicopter would stay in the coastal town.
Recently, the helicopter was relocated from Newport and to North Bend, with no public warning or preliminary risk assessments.
Its relocation is linked to the rumors of a possible new ICE facility at the Newport Municipal Airport. At a city council meeting last Wednesday, residents voiced concerns about the possible ICE facility. They also raised alarm about the helicopter removal and the safety of fishermen prior to crabbing season on the Oregon Coast. Taunette Dixon of the Newport Fishermen’s Wives joins us to discuss the helicopter’s removal.
Note: The following transcript was transcribed digitally and validated for accuracy, readability and formatting by an OPB volunteer.
Dave Miller: This is Think Out Loud on OPB. I’m Dave Miller. There has been a Coast Guard helicopter based in Newport for nearly 40 years. It’s there to rescue fishermen and other boaters in distress, but that helicopter was recently removed from Newport and relocated to North Bend with no public warning. Its relocation is linked to an apparent plan by the Department of Homeland Security for a new ICE detention facility in Newport. We hope to bring you a conversation about those plans soon, but we’re going to focus on the rescue helicopter today.
Taunette Dixon joins us now. She’s a member of the nonprofit Newport Fishermen’s Wives, which has advocated for the helicopter for decades. Taunette, welcome to the show.
Taunette Dixon: Thank you for having me. I appreciate it.
Miller: Why did the Coast Guard initially station a helicopter in Newport back in the mid-1980s?
Dixon: We are a very large port. We have a very large Dungeness crab fleet. The Dungeness crab season comes kind of at the worst time of the year as far as weather. Because the helicopter was a distance away – Astoria, North Bend – the time it took for them to get to our area was costing lives. We have a derby fishery, and because of that, the first two weeks is kind of all you can catch as far as the crabs, because that is when you get the most. So when large boats are out there in tougher weather it makes it harder for the smaller boats to sit back and not catch. It creates some dangerous conditions. We have a very dangerous bar. Between the cold water, the rough seas, it’s just a tragedy in the making.
Miller: How often is a helicopter used for a rescue over the years?
Dixon: Oh, countless. We utilize the helicopter, of course. It’s a great relief for us to have had it here. But also, you have to think about those tourists on our rocks that are climbing and get stuck or get caught in a tide out on rocks. Or the pleasure crafts that are out there, or the surfers, or even the loggers that are logging in this area and there’s an accident. The Coast Guard helicopter is utilized in so many ways in this area.
Miller: The helicopter had been stationed at Newport for more than 25 years by the year 2013. That was when the Coast Guard announced plans to get rid of it. What did your organization do in response?
Dixon: Well, it was really fascinating because it was kind of the same situation. They gave us 30 days notice right before our crab season. So, it was shocking. We were shocked. We ended up filing a federal injunction against the Coast Guard to prevent it from leaving, until we could legally see if we had a case to stand on to keep it here. We felt like the right protocols hadn’t been taken. Luckily, in the budget, they ended up budgeting our helicopter for us and they guaranteed it. So what happened back then is it was a huge fight. And in the long run, they guaranteed that they would not remove our station until 2018.
After that, they guaranteed that they would not remove our station unless there was public meetings about it. I think there is a year-and-a-half risk factor assessment that they have to go through. There are channels now that were signed by the president that went through Congress that assured that they could not do this again to us – and so far none of those things have happened. We haven’t even gotten a response from the U.S. Coast Guard. Nobody is talking to us.
Miller: I thought you were going to be having a meeting with the Coast Guard. Did that not happen?
Dixon: I had a meeting with our local Coast Guard station and they’re dealing with a lot of the fallout of this. I’ve got to say that all these decisions are being made in Seattle and Washington DC. They aren’t being made here, locally. I can guarantee that the local stations have no decision making.
I was hoping to get contacts. We have reached out to Seattle. We have reached out to North Bend. I was hoping to get contacts through our local station. We weren’t able to do that. I will say that this is an anomaly for us. We have such great contact with our North Bend station. If the Coast Guard was down for four days because of a repair, or if there was a situation that happened, I got a text or I got an email. The communication has always been great. So this is just shocking for us.
Miller: When did you start hearing that the helicopter might be taken away?
Dixon: I started hearing last week – and I was in disbelief – but we are now finding out that the helicopter might not have been here since April. That the station hasn’t been fully staffed since then. So, we don’t know. The hardest part about it is nobody is telling us. I’ve never been in a situation where an entity has made such a huge decision that will, in the long run, cost many, many lives … That they could make this decision and not have at least the respect for this community to tell us why this decision was made, or what’s happening, or if this is something that’s not going to last. We don’t know anything. They are not telling us anything.
Miller: North Bend is about 85 miles away from Newport. Astoria, going north, is even a little bit further away. How big a difference do those different distances make for the at-sea issues that we’re talking about? If a crabbing boat is in distress, what difference does an extra, say, 85 miles make?
Dixon: The Coast Guard has said in the past that they are a half an hour flight away. I will say that is if the pilots are in the helicopter [and] the helicopter is warmed up and it’s ready to go, which doesn’t normally happen when there is an incident. For us, that half an hour … Say there’s somebody in the water. Say there’s a boat that went down and there’s many people in the water. Our waters are cold. Our waters are cold enough to cause hypothermia in the first 10 minutes. In the first 10 minutes, your limbs stop working. Unless you’re in a flotation device, you have a very small chance of surviving. In a flotation device, the cold water is still affecting your limbs, your heart, your body, and you have a very short survival rate.
For us, having the helicopter just a few minutes away is saving lives. It is saving lives right and left, and we just don’t understand how that kind of decision … We’re not like the ports around the country, in the Gulf, even on the East Coast. The weather and the temperatures are completely different. We have strong tides, we have heavy seas, we have brutal winds, all those things. Plus, if you think about even mechanical issues or human error, all those add to boats having maydays at sea. Every year that I’ve been in the group, I have dealt with some kind of tragedy at sea.
Miller: Taunette, just briefly, what are your next steps as an organization?
Dixon: Well, we are taking the next steps. We feel that we have a strong case to fight this and in the next week or so I think that we’ll have a better idea of how we’re going to fight it.
Miller: Taunette Dixon, thanks very much.
Dixon: Thank you so much.
Miller: That’s Taunette Dixon from the nonprofit group Newport Fishermen’s Wives. She joined us to talk about the Coast Guard’s recent decision to move a rescue helicopter from Newport to North Bend.
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