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KGW's top stories of 2021: Record gun violence, a deadly heat wave and another year of COVID-19

Here are 10 stories that captured the attention of Oregonians in 2021.

PORTLAND, Ore. — The past year has been busy for the KGW newsroom. Portland broke records, like the hottest day ever recorded and the most shootings and homicides in a single year. 

It was also the second year of going through a global pandemic together. A year of nurses, teachers and other front-line workers pushing through overwhelming days for months on end. A year that most people in the country got a COVID vaccine. 

There was a winter storm that knocked out power for 300,000 people and a wildfire in southern Oregon that was the third largest in state history.

We had Portland city leaders trying to come up with solutions to the city's ever-growing housing crisis and school leaders in Newberg banning teachers from displaying Pride and Black Lives Matter symbols in the classroom. 

There was controversy over Fred Meyer playing loud music at night and countless videos on Twitter of mysterious lights in the sky — which later turned out to be debris from a SpaceX rocket. 

Here are 10 stories that our viewers couldn't stop watching in 2021:

Unprecedented gun violence

In 2021, Portland had the most shootings and homicides the city has ever recorded. 

As of Dec. 27, there have been 1,274 documented shootings and 90 homicides, 69 of which involved a firearm. 

KGW compiled a list of every documented homicide in Portland this year, including what we know about each case.

With mounting pressure on city leaders to do something about the gun violence,  the Portland City Council approved $7 million for public safety as part of its annual budget adjustment. 

Mayor Ted Wheeler said his goal is for the Portland Police Bureau to hire 300 more staff, mostly officers, in the next three years, as well as equipping officers with body-worn cameras and creating a new police training academy in Portland.

The COVID-19 vaccine rollout

Four in every five adults in Oregon got at least one dose of COVID-19 vaccine this year. 

It took a lot of work to get there.

COVID restrictions were constantly changing in Oregon through the first half of 2021, until the state reached the governor's goal for reopening the economy: a 70% vaccination rate

There were mass vaccination sites (like the ones at the Oregon Convention Center and the airport), vaccine incentives (like the state's $1 million vaccine lottery) and vaccine mandates that boosted the number of people who opted to get the vaccine.

Now, with breakthrough cases becoming progressively more common and the emergence of the omicron variant, Americans are urged to get booster shots to maintain their immunity to the virus.

Portland City Council proposes sanctioned homeless villages

Portland's housing crisis has been mounting for years and it was amplified by the pandemic. 

The public has been pressing city officials for a solution and over the summer, a big one was proposed: opening six sanctioned, city-run sites for homeless people. They're called Safe Rest Villages. 

City officials approved the plan in June and released a list of 70 potential sites the following month. The goal was to open six Safe Rest Villages throughout the city by the end of the year. 

That didn't happen because of a series of setbacks, including supply chain issues, restrictions on the use of federal funds and resistance from property owners and community members about specific site locations. One proposed site was pulled because it sat in a flood plain.  

In December, Portland Commissioner Dan Ryan, who's spearheading the plan, said the city is pushing back its own deadline to early 2022. There are currently three planned locations for the homeless villages. 

$20 million in COVID relief funds has been dedicated to the project.

Oregon's deadly June heat wave

In late June, a heat wave brought record-high temperatures to the Portland metro area. At least 96 people died as a result of the heat, including 54 in Multnomah County alone. The temperature peaked at 116 degrees on June 28

The city opened cooling shelters and encouraged people to call the 211info help line for rides to those shelters. Despite those efforts, the city's preparedness for this kind of heat event was called into question. 

KGW confirmed that hundreds of calls to 211info were abandoned because the nonprofit didn't update its numeric phone options to include cooling center information, and the nonprofit's call center was not staffed during the weekend. 

This led 211info to update its services to be available 24/7 across Oregon and in four counties in southwest Washington. The nonprofit also changed its automated phone tree to include more specific emergency information. 

Inside the ICU

In August, KGW spoke to nurses at Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU) in Portland and St. Charles Medical Center in Bend about what it's like to work in the intensive care unit more than a year into the pandemic. 

At this point, ICUs statewide were overflowing with COVID patients, and it was the first time news crews were allowed inside the hospital to see firsthand what ICU nurses were dealing with: countless patients lying motionless in hospital beds, hooked up to machines keeping them alive. 

The pandemic led to many nurses leaving the profession, and many more appear to still be considering doing so

“People are getting burnt out," said Erin Boni, an OHSU charge nurse. "People feel so frustrated knowing they are caring for patients. Now it’s a preventable illness. They’ve given so much because they’ve volunteered to work extra. At some point, you’re so tired and you realize, like, ‘I can’t live my normal life and I can’t be present in my home life and also do this work."

Watch KGW's full special Overwhelmed: Inside Oregon's ICUs:

Controversy in the Newberg School District

In mid-August, the Newberg School Board's conservative majority adopted a policy banning district employees from displaying LGBTQ+ and Black Lives Matter signs on campuses. 

The ban ignited a fierce debate between the school board members and the citizens of Newberg. A number of residents protested the ban. A group constructed a massive Progress Pride flag and BLM flag out of plywood, which were erected in view of the school. 

The school board rescinded its original ban after district lawyers found it to be unconstitutional. In late September, the board approved a new policy banning teachers from displaying "political, quasi-political or controversial." The new ban included Pride and BLM flags. 

In the midst of the controversy that followed, the board's conservative majority voted to fire Newberg Superintendent Joe Morelock without cause on Nov. 9. KGW later learned that school board chair Dave Brown spoke to a candidate he liked for the superintendent job more than a month before Morelock was fired.   

Multiple lawsuits have been filed over Newberg's political symbols policy, and there will surely be more stories to report about it in 2022. 

Bootleg Fire becomes third-largest wildfire in Oregon history

The Bootleg Fire burned 413,000 acres in Southern Oregon from July 6 to Aug. 15. It became the third-largest wildfire in state history in just 39 days. 

The fire grew exponentially early on and spread to more than 150,000 acres in the Fremont-Winema National Forest in the first week. 

At least 160 homes were destroyed in Klamath and Lake counties, and thousands more were threatened. 

Some people lost everything, including a family who spent their time mopping up hot spots after their house burned, and an 89-year-old veteran who lost his home. Farmers returned to their land to find mass cattle loss, too.

Days after it started, the Bootleg Fire was the largest wildfire burning in the country. 

Fred Meyer plays loud classical music at night, frustrating neighbors

In November, KGW learned that some Fred Meyer stores were blasting classical music over their loudspeakers at night to discourage illegal activity. 

Neighbors were frustrated, saying the music was a nuisance to everyone in the area and that it was often too loud and played for far too long, keeping them up at night.

"I can’t escape the noise unless I drown it out with loud volume on television, and eventually I’ll get to sleep that way," said a neighbor named Paul. "But I have neighbors here being awakened by this. It disturbs me greatly."

He added, "This is not a community-friendly exercise if you ask me. I don't think it's helping to solve any problems whatsoever with homelessness."

Fred Meyer received a lot of backlash after the story aired, and the company announced shortly after that it would stop playing music at night. 

Winter storm leaves 300,000 without power

Back in February, a winter storm dropped nearly 10 inches of snow on the Portland metro area and other parts of the Willamette Valley. 

The roads froze over, creating treacherous road conditions, and more than 300,000 people were left without power. In Clackamas and Marion counties, tens of thousands of people went without power for more than week

But it wasn't all bad. 

KGW kept a notebook of our reporters' social media posts about the snow. A particularly fun one came from chief meteorologist Matt Zaffino. 

SpaceX rocket debris puts on a light show

On the night of March 25, people stared up in awe as mysterious flashing lights streaked across the sky

It was anybody's guess what the lights were. A meteor shower? That one was probably the most common. 

Whatever it was, people all over Oregon and Washington started lighting up social media with videos of the spectacular light show. 

It wasn't too long before a reputable source finally provided the answer people were looking for. 

Astronomer Jonathan McDowell with the Center for Astrophysics tweeted that the lights were from SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket reentering the atmosphere after it "failed to make a deorbit burn." The rocket had launched on March 4 and spent 22 days in orbit before coming back down. 

In early April, debris from the rocket was found in central Washington. 

   

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