People cool off in the Willamette River at Wallace Marine Park on Saturday, June 26, 2021. (Amanda Loman/Salem Reporter)
Nine Marion County residents likely died from causes associated with the recent heat wave, the Oregon State Medical Examiner’s Office said Wednesday.
The office said in a news release it had received reports of 63 deaths across the state which county medical examiners’ preliminary investigations determined may be heat-related. Forty-five of those deaths were in Multnomah County. None were listed in Polk County.
“These are preliminary numbers as some investigations are still in progress and final causes of death have not yet been determined,” the release said. Authorities did not release any information about suspected causes of death.
A farmworker in Marion County died Saturday after being found unresponsive in the field that afternoon, when temperatures soared to a high of 104. The Oregon Occupational Safety and Health Administration is investigating Woodburn-based Brother Farm Labor Contractor and Ernst Nursery and Farms in St. Paul in connection with the death.
Local authorities on Wednesday also announced they’d found the bodies of two swimmers who went missing in the Willamette River June 26.
The Yamhill County Sheriff’s Office said deputies recovered the body of Thomas Paul Stavrum, 51, of Lafayette on Tuesday morning in the river near Highway 219, about one mile downriver of Roger’s Landing in Newberg.
Nasiruddin Shaik, 37, of Salem, was found around noon Wednesday in a channel between the Wheatland Bar and the Marion County shoreline, the Sheriff’s Office said in a news release. Shaik was last seen about a half-mile upstream.
-Rachel Alexander
