Month: April 2015

An Oregon City motorcyclist was flown to a Bend hospital for treatment Friday after two dirt bikes collided head-on in an off-road riding area southeast of Bend, authorities said. Deschutes County 911 got a second-hand report of the crash from Lake County dispatchers around 1:50 p.m., said sheriff’s Deputy James Whitcomb, assistant search and rescue

The Bend lacrosse team is off to their best start in school history: they’re currently 11-0 and fifth in the rankings. They lead the state in goals scored per game at 15.5 And they are led by one of the state’s most dynamic players: Eli Pite. The first thing you notice about Pite: he’s kind

The Sisters Ranger District will be closing an area off of Forest Road 16 while construction takes place on a new Whychus Overlook and associated trail system. The area included in the closure will cover all Deschutes National Forest land from Forest Road 16 to Whychus River and Peterson Ridge escarpments. The public is prohibited

Full reservoirs should help keep much of Deschutes County from experiencing severe drought conditions this summer – but county officials want to help one Sisters-area irrigation district that depends solely on Whychus Creek for its water. County commissioners are being asked next Wednesday to adopt a resolution declaring a “localized state of emergency” and seeking

A La Pine man whose pickup truck left state Highway 31, crashed through a fence and into a tree Thursday morning said he’d been eating a corndog when he choked on it and passed out behind the wheel, Oregon State Police reported. Ronald Eugene Ganienany, 52, was flown by AirLink helicopter to St. Charles Bend,

A simple prescription — that’s how it started for Barrett Hamilton. “I got injured at work and went to the doctors and got prescribed Vicodin,” Hamilton said recently. Within a short amount of time, he was hooked. “It got to the point where I was taking six 80 milligrams (of) Oxycodone a day,” Hamilton said.

A Bend city councilor called Tumalo Irrigation District’s apparent surprise expression of interest to purchase the Pacific Power dam a “fantastic idea,” while the director of Bend Park and Rec initially called the news “frustrating” at a Mirror Pond committee meeting Thursday. Tumalo Irrigation District Manager Ken Rieck told NewsChannel 21 the idea is preliminary,

Thirty years ago, the Oregon Lottery launched ticket sales with its first-ever game, the Pot of Gold Scratch-it. On Friday, it marked the anniversary with a tally of the money raised and prizes given over that time. Here is the rest of the news release, in full: Now after offering hundreds of new games, creating

The Tower Theatre is hosting the “Bend Follies” show in its third year. Friday and Saturday night, familiar faces from around Central Oregon will take the stage to “laugh at ourselves.” “The whole thing is really sort of a lampoon,” NewsChannel 21’s Bob Shaw said Thursday. “You will see and hear things you have not

Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) issued the following statement Friday after the announcement that Comcast would not proceed with its takeover of Time Warner Cable, a merger he strongly opposed. “For the second time this year, America’s consumers stood up toBig Cable and won, refusing to make their monopoly any bigger,” Wyden said. “The decision will

Business owners and residents weighed in at a Bend open house Thursday night on proposed designs for a renovated Galveston Avenue corridor. The city asked for public input to select a preferred design concept to present to the city council for final approval. Both of the designs propose major changes between 14 th Street and

When the final bell rings, and school shuts for the summer, parents have to figure out what to do with their kids. “It’s really difficult to find all day care for your kid all week when you’re a working parent,” parent Liana Ottaviano said Thursday. For some programs, you have to start planning now —

A National Park Service report out Thursday says just over 1 million visitors to national parks in Oregon spent $71.6 million in the state last year. That spending resulted in 1,224 jobs and had a cumulative benefit to the state economy of $100.9 million. “The national parks of Oregon attract visitors from across the country

The Oregon Office of Emergency Management is scheduled to support a statewide radio operator exercise at county and city emergency operations centers, as well as other locations throughout the state, on Saturday from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. More than 200 people in 27 counties statewide, including 14 medical facilities (St. Charles Bend among them),

A brief after-school lockdown was called Wednesday afternoon at the Warm Springs K-8 Academy after a parent who was not to be on school grounds was reported on site, officials said. Jefferson County School District 509-J Superintendent Rick Molitor said the lockdown began around 3:35 p.m. when “a community member/parent that was not to be

The Oregon Parks and Recreation Department and the Oregon Department of Forestry will be burning slash piles on the Ochoco Scenic Viewpoint property during daylight hours Monday through Thursday of next week. ODF will monitor weather conditions to ensure that there are favorable conditions to burn. The burn will occur above and below Highway 126,

A Portland martial arts teacher has been arrested on Deschutes County charges of sexually abusing a boy under the age of 12, prosecutors confirmed Wednesday. Eben Eli Keiji Kaneshiro, 35, was arrested by sheriff’s deputies and booked into the county jail in Bend Sunday afternoon, jail records show. He is being held on $500,000 bail,

Trek Bicycles is recalling nearly 1 million bikes over a safety issue that resulted in one rider becoming paralyzed. Bend bike shops say the odds of a problem are small, but they are ready to give them a close look. The recall covers 900,000 Trek bikes in the United States and 98,000 in Canada. The

A wildfire 35 miles southeast of downtown Los Angeles heeds a warning to Oregonians as the summer fire season approaches, officials warned Thursday. The fire, caused by an unattended cooking fire, led to the evacuation of 300 homes in Riverside County. While a fourth consecutive year of drought in California is prompting an early start

Tom Del Ruth moved to Bend in 2005 with his wife, Patricia. After a career in the film industry for more than 45 years, the couple chose to retire in Central Oregon. Growing up with parents in the industry, Tom was hooked. His father, Roy Del Ruth, was a film director. His mother, Winnie Lightner,