The Coast Guard’s relocation of a rescue helicopter from Newport, Ore., has met a chorus of protests that fishermen’s lives will be endangered during the imminent Dungeness crab season.
Sen. Ron Wyden called for a meeting with Coast Guard officials Sunday at the Newport Municipal Airport, for years a forward-deployed base for a MH-55 Dolphin helicopter close to the crabbing grounds.
A stormy public meeting Nov. 12 brought an estimated 800 people to Newport’s city hall for a public meeting on the helicopter move – and reports that the federal Department of Homeland Security plans to build a detention center for illegal immigrants at the airport.
“To date, I have not received any answers or updates from the Coast Guard or DHS,” Wyden wrote in a Nov. 19 message to acting Coast Guard Commandant Adm. Kevin Lunday. “That ongoing silence about a decision that carries life-and-death consequences for Oregonians and visitors to this community is unacceptable to the people I’m proud to represent.”
Late Friday, Oregon Attorney General Dan Rayfield announced the state along with Lincoln County and the Newport Fishermen’s Wives organization are filing lawsuits, seeking to "compel the federal government to return the Coast Guard search-and-rescue helicopter abruptly removed from the Newport Air Facility."
“This helicopter isn’t a luxury – it’s a critical part of how we keep people alive on the Oregon coast,” said Rayfield. “The federal government didn’t just move a piece of machinery. They pulled away a safety net that this community depends on, and they did it in the dark of night with no transparency and no legal process. We’re taking action because every minute matters in a coastal emergency.”
The move shifted the closest Coast Guard air support to North Bend, Ore., about 90 miles and 10 minutes flying time from the coast, according to Wyden, the Newport Fishermen’s Wives Association and other community advocates.
“We are deeply concerned about the safety of our commercial fishing industry, especially with the opening of crab season scheduled for Dec. 16”, Becca Bostwick-Terry, president of Newport Fishermen’s Wives, said in a Nov. 22 post on social media..
“We aren’t saying people might die. We’re saying people will die,” Cari Brandberg of the Fishermen’s Wives said at the Nov. 12 city hall meeting.
“Eight hundred people in a town of 10,000 showed up,” Democratic state Rep. David Gomberg told Rachel Maddow of MSNBC. While one potential contractor for DHS withdrew from negotiations with Newport city officials the federal government still appears to be recruiting for service providers and workers for a detention center, said Gomberg.
Lincoln County’s Board of Commissioners echoed the fishing community’s fears.
“Newport hosts one of the largest crabbing fleets on the West Coast and the largest in Oregon. Dungeness crabbing is famously among the most dangerous occupations, and news of the relocation of the helicopter comes at an especially critical time with the impending beginning of commercial crabbing season,” according to a statement from county officials. “Every year, the helicopter conducts dozens of rescue operations, returning imperiled boat crews and others to their homes and families.”
Newport went through an earlier crisis in 2013 with the closure of Air Station Newport. The Newport Fishermen’s Wives entered a long legal struggle to keep the Coast Guard’s air capability in town.
Senator Wyden was seeking to meet Coast Guard officials before his planned Lincoln County town hall scheduled later that day in Newport.
“Newport residents and small business owners remain extremely concerned about how this move threatens search and rescue operations, considering that the next closest helicopter appears to now be more than 90 miles away in North Bend, Oregon,” Wyden wrote to DHS officials.
“The fishing community in Newport is understandably worried that if someone in the cold water of the Pacific is in need of immediate rescue, the Coast Guard crews nearby will not have the necessary assets to save their lives.”
