A large earthquake was reported at 7:25 p.m. Thursday off the Oregon coast. The magnitude 6.0 quake occurred 183 miles from Bandon, Ore., according to the U.S. Geological Survey.
The earthquake occurred at a depth of 6.2 miles and had an estimated intensity of VI on the modified Mercalli intensity scale, which signifies strong shaking.
In the last 10 days, there have been no earthquakes of magnitude 3.0 or greater centered nearby.
Find out what to do before, and during, an earthquake near you by signing up for our Unshaken newsletter, which breaks down emergency preparedness into bite-sized steps over six weeks. Learn more about earthquake kits, which apps you need, Lucy Jones’ most important advice and more at latimes.com/Unshaken.
This story was automatically generated by Quakebot, a computer application that monitors the latest earthquakes detected by the USGS. A Times editor reviewed the post before it was published. If you’re interested in learning more about the system, visit our list of frequently asked questions.
Bill Anderson was close to 70 when he first spotted the clock.
It looked like a ship’s wheel, a kitschy bit of decor you might see at a nautically themed bar. But he was drawn to it because of its maker.
Timepieces from Chelsea Clock Co. were renowned for their design and precision. The company’s clocks could once be found on Navy battleships during World War II, and adorned mantels, walls and desks at the White House for presidents ranging from Dwight Eisenhower to Joe Biden.
Anderson, a retired watchmaker and collector, was particularly interested in the base of the Chelsea Comet, which was engraved with the initials “J.F.K.”
John Fitzgerald Kennedy?
Although watch collectors obsess over celebrity ownership, and a Camelot connection counts for a lot, the prospect of a payday was only part of the allure for Anderson.
Retired watchmaker Bill Anderson owns more than 200 timepieces, including a Chelsea Comet with a plaque featuring a “J.F.K.” engraving.
(Courtesy of Bill Anderson)
The mystery of the clock’s provenance — could it possibly be the real deal? — has animated his life for years. This, Anderson said, “is a nice game that I’ve got going here.”
He’d purchased the clock in 1999 from a seller on EBay, a New Hampshire dealer who’d picked it up at an estate sale in Wellesley, Mass., for $280.
In the intervening years, Anderson, who is 95, has plumbed the cloistered world of clock collectors. His hunt would take him to the online message boards of watch and clock aficionados, and the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum. It would eventually lead to a refrigerated vault 200 feet below ground in a former limestone mine in rural Pennsylvania.
Anderson, who lives in Eugene, Ore., may not use the word “obsession” to describe his interest in his J.F.K. clock, but others do. All those decades he’s spent trying to uncover its backstory are evidence of its almost gravitational pull.
Anderson, whose parents ran a grocery store, grew up in Roseburg, Ore., south of Eugene. In the late 1940s, he left the University of Oregon after just one quarter and enrolled in a watchmaking school run by the Elgin National Watch Co.
Anderson’s maternal grandfather had been in the trade. “I leaned over his watchmaker’s bench and watched him as a little boy,” he explained. “He let me have the insides of an alarm clock … that was the beginning of it.”
In time, Anderson became a retail liquidator, helping to close jewelry and watch stores and sell their remaining inventories. Along the way, Anderson married and started a family. He gained a reputation as an honest broker — and for being able to spot the value in merchandise that others couldn’t sell.
“Bill is like the George Washington of people — you know, ‘I cannot tell a lie,’ that type of thing,” said Errol Stewart, a Maine watchmaker who has known Anderson for about 40 years.
In 1974, Anderson paid $15,000 for the inventory of a jeweler in Baker City, Ore., selling what he could and bringing the leftovers home. Forty years later, he came across them while cleaning out his attic; among the wares was an old football helmet.
It turned out to be a rare Spalding head harness from the early 1900s. No more than 10 are believed to still be in existence, and Anderson sold it for about $14,000.
He has retained more than 200 timepieces for his collection, including several from Chelsea, and has watched the prices for celebrity-owned timepieces surge in the last few decades.
“With Kennedy you get the highest multiplication factor for any political figure,” said Paul Boutros, who heads the U.S. watch business for Phillips, a London-based auction house.
Anderson knew if he could confirm the ownership, it would be a boon — perhaps a capstone to his legacy as a watchmaker and collector. The first thing he did was get in touch with Chelsea to request the clock’s certificate of origin.
When it arrived, the spot for the original buyer’s name was marked “no record.” Could that have been a courtesy extended to a VIP customer? JFK’s father, Joseph P. Kennedy Sr., had visited the company’s headquarters in Massachusetts — home to the Kennedy clan — where he purchased several items.
Chelsea had published a feature on its website about in-house master clockmaker Jean Yeo that touched on that celebrity connection. She said that she began working at Chelsea in 1951, a time when “all of the Kennedys came in here” and had special praise for the family’s patriarch, calling him a “nice guy” who talked to her about her work.
But Anderson wasn’t sure what to think. The growing allure of watches with A-list history was enticing people to peddle dubious timepieces.
In 2005, a Rolex that was said to be a gift from Marilyn Monroe to Kennedy was auctioned for $120,000. The gold Day-Date, allegedly given by the actress to Kennedy in 1962 on the occasion of his 45th birthday, featured an inscription that reads, “Jack / With love as always / from / Marilyn.” But collectors and watch scholars have noted that the timepiece in question featured a serial number that dated it to 1965.
At one point in his search, Anderson had a breakthrough when he discovered an online photograph of the future president and his wife at home in 1954. A clock was positioned on a desk, and it looked just like Anderson’s Comet, but the low-resolution picture was so blurry that any engraving it may have had was impossible to discern.
Then-Sen. John F. Kennedy and his wife, Jacqueline, at their home in Washington, D.C., in 1954. A Chelsea Comet clock sits on the desk.
(Bettmann Archive)
James Archer Abbott, co-author of “Designing Camelot: The Kennedy White House Restoration and Its Legacy,” said there was no record of the Comet having been displayed at the White House, and cautioned that if it were important to the family, it likely would have been earmarked for Kennedy’s presidential library. A representative of the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum said that it has no record of or information on the Comet clock.
But Tony LaChapelle, president of Chelsea, was open to the possibility that it had once been owned by Kennedy.
“Could somebody who had nothing better to do in their life take that photo of JFK, Jackie and that clock, and get a Comet clock and try to capitalize on that? I suppose they could,” he said. “We look at [Anderson’s ] clock and we look at that photo of [Kennedy’s clock] sitting out on the table, and in our opinion it is highly probable” they were one and the same.
Anderson tried to find the original high-resolution image for years but couldn’t turn anything up. No one seemed to know the source of the photo. There were tens of thousands of pictures of Kennedy to comb through online. Or more.
But eventually, after a serpentine, multiyear effort, the whereabouts of the original negative were finally uncovered. It was in a photo archive stored inside a Boyers, Pa., facility known as the Iron Mountain, a formidable place that securely maintains records of all types, including for the federal government.
The Bettmann Archive, which comprises millions of photos and is managed by Getty Images, is housed in a section of the Mountain that’s more than 10 stories underground.
Last year, an archivist located the negative and brought it to one of Bettmann’s labs, where she placed it on a flatbed scanner. Soon, a new, ultra-high-resolution version of the 1954 image glowed on her computer screen. The clarity was remarkable.
The Comet could be clearly seen in the photo, including the clock’s wooden base.
It was blank.
When he heard the news — relayed via telephone — Anderson grew quiet.
But he offered no lamentations and later he said he wasn’t disappointed: “Not a bit.” He’d come to realize how important the hunt had been for him, especially after his wife, Sallie, died in July 2023. She was 93.
“She understood that I loved that kind of stuff,” he said.
The research made a dark time just a little easier.
During a recent interview, Anderson sat at his dining room table, where there was an array of photos of his wife. The Comet was there too. He explained that over the last year or so, he has asked each of his five children to select clocks from his collection that they will inherit when he dies.
Marilyn Monroe, seen in a 1962 photograph, is said to have gifted President Kennedy a Rolex that was later auctioned for $120,000.
(Cecil Stoughton / White House Photographs / John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum / Associated Press)
“I don’t know how many more miles down the road I’ve got,” he said.
But Anderson has yet to offer the Comet. “Why that hasn’t happened yet, I don’t know,” he said.
One of his sons, Mike Anderson, a watchmaker who owns Anderson Jewelers in Corvallis, Ore., has an idea. “There’s no doubt in my mind he wants to link [the clock] to JFK — he wants to believe that that was on his desk,” the younger Anderson said. “That’s what drives him.”
After all these years, Anderson still loves the chase.
When flames were spotted within one of the world’s tallest trees, firefighters flooded the area.
Drones, aircraft and hand crews worked for days to tame the fire, successfully stopping it from spreading across the dense forest that surrounds the famous Doerner Fir tree in Oregon’s Coast Range mountains.
But the towering Coast Douglas-fir has remained stubbornly alight.
And firefighters — at least at the moment — seem stumped.
“There’s still this spot where water is just not quite reaching yet,” said Megan Harper, a spokesperson for the Bureau of Land Management in Oregon. “Partway down the tree there’s an area that’s burning a cavity into the side. … That is the area that is now still hot.”
Smoke rises from a burned segment of the Doerner Fir.
(Bureau of Land Management)
The bizarre single-tree fire has now become an almost weeklong firefight in Coos County, Ore., as the hot spot continues to burn approximately 280 feet up on the side of the arboreal giant.
“We have different conversations [going on] in the background with arborist experts, who may be able to help get the rest of the fire out,” Harper said. “How do you get water into a hot spot from the side?”
She said crews are stationed around the tree and will remain so until the fire is out. The fire initially broke out Saturday around 2 p.m.
“We’ve been able to use helicopters with buckets … that’s been very successful getting the top of the tree,” she said. The still-smoking side cavity has proven more difficult.
Harper said the blaze’s initial charge felled an estimated 50-foot chunk from the top of the tree, which consistently had ranked among the world’s tallest. Before the fire, it was often listed as the second-tallest tree in the U.S., trailing only Hyperion, a gargantuan 380-foot Coast redwood located in Redwood National and State Parks.
“Prefire [Doerner] was 325 feet tall and about 11.5 feet in diameter, so it’s a large, tall tree,” Harper said. “We’re not sure exactly how much height is lost.”
Depending what happens in the next few days, “more height could be lost,“ she said.
Harper said the cause of the fire remains under investigation. Initially, officials thought lightning was a likely culprit, but weather data have ruled that out, Harper said.
“I think everyone would be super disheartened to learn that maybe it would be human-caused,” Harper said, confirming that there is a remote trail that provides hikers access to the tree. But she said their team is not making any assumptions while the investigation continues.
“Fire in the Oregon Coast Range is actually pretty rare … so the fact that it even happened and then it happened to be this tree — it was a very unique situation,” Harper said.
BLM land around the Doerner Fir fire in Coquille, Ore., remains closed while firefighting continues.
A section of a United Airlines aircraft was discovered missing upon inspection Friday afternoon in Southern Oregon, adding to a growing list of mishaps for the airline.
United Airlines Flight 433 took off from San Francisco and successfully landed 90 minutes later at Rogue Valley International Airport in Medford, Ore., at 11:53 a.m.
Airport personnel noticed a “piece from the underside of the plane,” a Boeing 737-800, was missing upon a routine postflight inspection, Airport Director Amber Judd told The Times.
“Our airport operations were paused briefly so that we could conduct a runway safety check to look for debris,” Judd said. “We did not find anything.”
Judd said the plane landed safely and all 139 passengers and six crew members exited without an issue.
The flight was scheduled to continue to Denver, but was initially delayed 3 hours and 35 minutes before eventually being canceled.
“It’s my understanding that most passengers were aware of the delay and the circumstances, although there were probably some that didn’t know,” Judd said.
United Airlines in a statement Friday said the aircraft’s crew did not declare an emergency to airport personnel as “there was no indication of the damage during flight.”
“After the aircraft was parked at the gate, it was discovered to be missing a panel,” United’s statement read. “We’ll conduct a thorough examination of the plane and perform all needed repairs before it returns to service.”
The airlines also said it would conduct an investigation.
Judd said the plane was an older 737-8 and not one of the Boeing Max aircrafts that have received scrutiny in January after a door panel blew off an Alaska Airlines flight that left Portland, Ore.
Nonetheless, four Boeing planes operated by United have suffered incidents over the last two weeks.
A Boeing spokesperson referred all questions to United Airlines regarding the airline’s fleet and operation.
On Monday, a San Francisco-bound United Airlines flight turned around two hours after leaving Sydney. The Boeing 777-300 aircraft returned due to a maintenance issue.
Prior to that, a Boeing 777-200 operated by United Airlines made an emergency landing in Los Angeles after a tire fell off on March 7.
There was also an emergency landing in Houston on March 4 after flames were spotted coming from a United Airlines Boeing 737-900ER. United confirmed the engine ingested bubble wrap.
Four days later, a Boeing 737-8 Max rolled onto the grass near a runway in Houston upon landing, though no passengers were injured.
United stressed their were no injuries in any of these incidents.
“We take every safety event seriously and will investigate each of the incidents that occurred this month to understand what happened and learn from them,” the United statement said. “Much of this work is conducted together with the manufacturers, the FAA, and the NTSB as well as with the manufacturers of individual components.”
The apartment industry and its residents contribute $3.4 trillion to the national economy.
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While rent control appears to help housing providers in the short run, in the long run it affects their investment and development plans, according to new research by the National Apartment Association (NAA). Potential actions include reducing investments, shifting plans to other markets and canceling plans altogether. Furthermore, a full two-thirds of housing providers would not consider investing in markets with strict rent control policies.
NAA’s analysis highlights the unintended and detrimental consequences of rent control. From December 2022 to February 2023, NAA commissioned ndp | analytics to conduct interviews with housing providers and developers from three markets affected by rent control policies and proposals: St. Paul, Minnesota; Santa Ana/Santa Barbara; California; and Portland/Eugene, Oregon. The respondents ranged from large firms operating thousands of units and having properties across the country to mom-and-pop businesses with a handful of units and, often, invested in real estate as part of a retirement plan or second source of income.
The housing provider research was supplemented with an online public opinion poll across the country in February 2023. The poll questions focused on housing availability, residential construction and policy perspectives. Here are the key findings from the interviews and public opinion poll.
The unintended consequences of rent control
With rent control in effect, housing providers say they are faced with the difficult financial strain of absorbing essential maintenance costs and are forced to reduce investments in improvements and nonessential maintenance. As a result, 54% said they expect to or would consider selling some assets. This is particularly alarming for the apartment industry, as the nation faces housing supply challenges and must build 4.3 million new apartments by 2035 to meet current shortages and address future demand. Furthermore, the apartment industry and its residents contribute $3.4 trillion to the national economy and support 17.5 million jobs.
“NAA’s latest research aligns with decades of data and real-life case studies that all lead to the same conclusion: rent control is a failed policy that brings more harm than relief to local communities,” said Bob Pinnegar, NAA president and CEO. “It’s not surprising that policies that make it harder for housing providers to do their jobs lead to less housing options. It is past time for our elected officials at all levels of government to shift their focus to policies that address housing supply issues and are targeted to the households most in need of support.”
A multifamily residential building under construction in Palo Alto, California. The entire Silicon … [+] Valley and San Francisco Bay Area is facing a housing crisis, with increased housing costs.
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Struggling to meet demand for more apartments by 2035
“This latest data reinforces what we already know – the U.S. can not afford to pursue housing policies like rent control if we are to meet demand for 4.3 million new apartments by 2035,” said Leah Cuffy, NAA’s director of advocacy research. She added, “More than half of housing providers today are small business owners, and our data shows that rent control deters providers from investing and developing in those markets. Squeezing housing providers with these strict regulations risks lowering current supply and limiting future growth, creating a volatile environment for affordable housing across the U.S. and ultimately doing more harm than good for renters.”
Extensive interviews with housing providers and developers helped ndp | analyticsto better understand the implications of rent control and encompassed three markets affected by state or local policies: St. Paul, Minnesota; Santa Ana/Santa Barbara, California; and Portland/Eugene, Oregon.
The research was also supplemented with an online opinion poll that gauged public perceptions of rent control. A whopping 75% of respondents indicated a desire for policies that increase funding for local programs by attracting more residential and commercial development. Nearly half of respondents incorrectly believe that rent control is targeted to only help low- and moderate-income renters.
