The Warrenton Warrior Addresses Your Questions in the Clatsop County Scanner Group Uncensored

Ed. Note: I started this post 8 or 9 months ago and never finished or posted it. The reason being that it wasn’t especially funny or entertaining. That’s still true today, so enjoy.

The Warrior is a part-time reader of several disaster voyeur-type Clatsop County Facebook groups that purport to exist in the service of public safety. My personal favorite is the Clatsop County Scanner Group Uncensored group because its name suggests scandalous content and intrigue beyond what the group actually delivers.

I don’t know the history here, but I believe this is a spin-off of another group, called the “Clatsop County Scanner Feed”. The only differences that I can discern are: 1) content in the original Scanner Feed group stays ever-so-slightly more on topic and, 2) the moderators in the Scanner Group Uncensored group all have #TimberUnity logos in their profile pictures. If any readers have the backstory, please elaborate in the comment section. I suspect there’s a juicy story here.

While I don’t listen in on local police scanners and can’t address some of the very specific questions that are posed in the Scanner Group Uncensored group, many are general enough for me to answer.

Here are my answers to 11 questions that you have posted to this group.

You’re very welcome.

Question 1:

Three reasons:

First, all 2-lane highways entering Astoria were designed and built in the 1920s when the population of Washington State, Oregon, and Clatsop County were much smaller than they are today. Case in point: there were only 788,000 Oregonians in 1920 compared to 4,200,000 today.

Second, car ownership has increased dramatically. The average household had about 1 car in late 1920s. Today it’s about 1.88 cars. So, we not only have more people, but a higher proportion of those people are driving.

Third, drivers are on the road more often and going further distances. The average driver in the US travelled 13,400 miles per year in 2019. The average was well under 8,000 miles annually before the 1940s. So, even if Clatsop County’s population remained stagnant over the past 100 years (it hasn’t, thanks to Warrenton), more people would be passing through Astoria anyway.

In conclusion, all roads leading to Astoria were designed almost 100 years ago to handle traffic volumes from almost 100 years ago. Sorry, Charlie.

Question 2:

Those 6 sirens you see in Warrenton are part of a Tsunami warning system. Similar sirens can be found along the length of the Pacific Coast.

Question 3:

Yes, you can drive directly West from Svensen to Warrenton along two highways: First, highway 30 which later intersects with highway 101 in Astoria. 101 can be taken across the Youngs Bay Bridge directly into Warrenton.

Question 4:

Not at the moment, but you can be guaranteed that right now, somewhere on 26, there is a string of 10 cars driving 40 MPH behind an RV with Washington plates. And since all 10 of those cars are driven by Oregonians, they’re too polite to ride his/her ass and/or honk.

Question 5:

To quote Ghostface Killah:

“Why is the sky blue? Why is water wet?
Why did Judas rat to Romans while Jesus slept?”

Question 6:

Because the moderators don’t agree with your politics. If you haven’t noticed, all of the moderators have TimberUnity logos on their profiles and are staunch supporters of the law enforcement community. You probably also noticed that the moderators who posted live videos during the Seaside protests are clearly hanging with the unmasked antiantifa crowd.

Question 7:

The New Young’s Bay Bridge (known by nobody as the NYBB) was constructed in 1964 and spans about 4,200 feet between Astoria and Warrenton. Originally, there was a railroad bridge that ran parallel to the NYBB. I remember that the railroad bridge opened and swung 90 degrees at one point along the span to allow ships to pass by.

I can’t stand this bridge. There’s absolutely no shoulder on the Eastern span of the bridge, so if there’s an accident or an emergency vehicle trying to get by traffic, it’s a complete nightmare.

Also, would it have been cost prohibitive expensive to have constructed the the bridge just another 20 to 40 feet higher near eastern end to eliminate the need for that godawful vertical lift that has literally wasted days for the average life-long Clatsop Countyite? It’s as if the engineers were trolling all of Clatsop County with NYBB.

Question 8:

It’s still horrible.