Peace Health working hard to recruit new docs; Zombie invastion likely; Beating the Wave in Florence; and power outage caused by windblown branch

Officials working to alleviate Primary Care shortage

Administrators at Peace Health know there is a shortage of primary care physicians.  Dr. Ron Shearer is the Medical Director at Peace Health Medical Group.  He says four providers have left just in recent months.

Ron Shearer – “When you ask the providers that leave, and I know some of them are writing letters, they left mostly for personal reasons; some of them for… that they have a need in their selves or their family that can only be supplied by a larger community.  So they leave the same reasons that other people leave town.  It’s unfortunate that so many happened to do it all at the same time.  That’s what’s happened to us.”

Shearer says they were short doctors before the four left… and they’ve been working on recruiting reinforcements for more than a year.

Ron Shearer – “And even though we’re focusing on primary care; replacing Dr. Park in General Surgery is pretty critical.  Without having a general surgeon, if you have trauma, you know, people die.  I think we have an excellent candidate coming that’s going to be starting just soon after Dr. Park leaves.”

Shearer said one new doctor did start last month and they have three more coming by the end of the year.  Peace Health has signed two additional physicians… but they won’t arrive until 2017 and 2018.

Zombie invasion expected in Historic Old Town

Here’s your advance warning… there’ll be a zombie attack on Historic Old Town Florence later this week.

It’s actually a fund and awareness raiser for CROW… the children’s theater and arts education group in Florence.

Artistic director Melanie Heard says students in her “technical theater camp” have been working on makeup, costumes and special effects and will be putting their preparations into practice Thursday afternoon beginning at one pm.

Branch causes Saturday outage

That wayward wind accounted for another power outage in the community over the weekend.  This time, it was Saturday evening and the affected area was most of Florence south of 9^th Street… including Old Town.

According to a Central Lincoln PUD spokesperson the culprit was a wind-blown branch that fell across a line about a half mile west of Florence.  About 650 customers were affected; power was restored approximately 40 minutes after the outage was reported.

Tsunami resiliency and prep

The City of Florence will be working alongside other coastal communities to fine-tune tsunami evacuation maps.  A planning grant from the Oregon Department of Land Conservation and Development will also help local officials develop, draft, and adopt land-use regulations aimed at reducing risks arising from tsunamis… and make coastal communities more resilient.

The City Council is being asked this evening to approve signing a “memorandum of agreement” with DLCD to work with them in the matter.  According to a report to the council, the plan would not cost the city any cash… But, says planning director Wendy Farley-Campbell, there will be staff time invested in reviewing and drafting new regulations and policies.

The Council meets at six this evening at City Hall.