Tree sitter dies in fall from platform - 14 April 2002

PROTEST: Tree sitter dies in fall from platform

Sun | Local

— Apr 14th, 2002

PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) - The woman who died after falling 150 feet from a tree-sitting platform while protesting the Eagle Creek timber sale has been identified as Beth O'Brien, 22, of Portland.
She had unhooked herself from one platform and was trying to reach another by a rope ladder when she fell Friday night, Clackamas County Sheriff's spokeswoman Angela Blanchard said.
In a sad twist, the timber sale had been canceled three days earlier. The cancelation was announced on the U.S. Senate floor by Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., on Tuesday.

"This is so senseless and so incredibly sad, and I just want to urge the young people in the strongest possible terms to come down from those trees immediately," Wyden said Saturday.
Local rescue crews struggled up snow-clogged dirt roads to reach the tree-sitters' camp in the Mount Hood National Forest after fellow activists called 9-1-1 on a cell phone at about 7 p.m., Blanchard said.

The caller said the woman was unconscious but still breathing, Blanchard said. But by the time rescue crews arrived at about 9:30 p.m., she was dead.

"We had problems getting up to that area because there was snow on the ground, slushy snow on the ground, and we couldn't get the four-wheel drive trucks up there," Blanchard said.
Sarah Wald of Cascadia Forest Alliance, which organized the protests, said Saturday afternoon that they were preparing to take down the tree sits when O'Brien fell.

"We were awaiting a legally binding contract canceling the sales," she said Saturday afternoon at a somber backyard press conference in southeast Portland.

Wald said protesters remained in the trees Saturday evening.

Ivan Maluski, a longtime Eagle Creek protester, said four people take turns living year-round in tree platforms in the area where the protester fell. He said they were days away from leaving the site after a three-year vigil.

Wald was vague about Cascadia's immediate future plans in the Eagle Creek sale.
"We are a community in mourning right now,' she said.

Wyden, an opponent of the timber sale, announced Tuesday that the U.S. Forest Service had canceled the cutting contract after an independent review determined the deal required significant modifications to prevent environmental harm.

At issue was the problem of blowdown, or trees not intended for cutting being felled by winds on the edge of clear cuts. The Forest Service said tree sitters were not a factor in deciding to cancel the Eagle Creek sale.

The Forest Service proposed a "mutual cancellation" of the sales with the timber company, Boring-based Vanport Manufacturing.

The agency offered to refund roughly $1.3 million in deposits, interest and other expenses that Vanport incurred. Vanport President Adolf Hertrich said he would accept, and that appeared to end the contentious timber harvest.

"As chairman of the Senate subcommittee on forestry I want to again give my word this sale is over," Wyden said Saturday. "It is canceled. The sale is not going forward."

At least two other tree sitters have fallen from perches in the past year in Oregon, requiring evacuation and medical treatment.

A protester fell together with his dislodged platform at the Eagle Creek timber sale last June and was taken by helicopter to a Portland hospital. The unidentified protester at first refused medical treatment and then ran away from the hospital without treatment.

In October, anti-logging protester Tre Arrow tumbled 60 feet from a treetop perch in the Tillamook State Forest and suffered multiple broken bones.

https://products.kitsapsun.com/archive/2002/04-14/0053_protest__tree_sitter_dies_in_fall.html