It happened at 4:17 p.m. on May 30, 1948, this very minute 75 years ago.

The Columbia River was swollen by snowmelt and rain.

Then came a break in a levee surrounding Vanport, a WWII housing project home to 18,000 people.

Residents had 35 minutes to run for their lives. 1/ Vanport’s wooden apartment buildings, which once housed wartime shipyard workers, had been built quickly in 1942. They came unmoored and floated away.

At least 16 people died. 2/

This is a fundamental flaw facing Oregon politics: “We impose oddly low compensation for elected officials, but then allow unlimited large political contributions and big money lobbyist influence. That’s a bad combination.”

oregonlive.com/politics/2023/… The reality of governing Oregon:
* Low pay
* Few limits on side gigs, nepotism or campaign spending
* Weak oversight
* The most corporate $, per capita
* No limits on campaign $ despite HUGE voter support

1/ At a legislative hearing last week, a timber lobbyist told lawmakers that our reporting on the Oregon Forest Resources Institute was “full of half-truths,” “absolutely inaccurate” and "completely bogus."

It’s not. We have the receipts to prove it.👇 2/ The lobbyist, Jim James, told lawmakers we “took a segment of an email, interpreted it for [ourselves] ... and came up with some conclusions that were absolutely inaccurate.”

That’s not what we did.

For years, Oregon's logging industry has been booming. But its logging towns haven’t.

One big reason? State lawmakers gave the industry huge tax breaks that cost counties at least $3 BILLION in the last 30 years.

Here's how it happened 👇 2/ Half of Oregon is covered by trees. In the 1990s, its national forests were put off-limits to logging to protect species like the spotted owl 🦉

Timber towns have been in crisis ever since...
🚨 911 calls went unanswered
📚 libraries closed
🍎️schools needed funding