Jake Cornett, Executive Director and CEO of the advocacy group Disability Rights Oregon, says he will forever be haunted by Ashlyn Maddox’s death during the 2021 Oregon heat wave.

The Portland woman, 36, was disabled and living in a group foster home. She was dropped off by a medical transport company, but the company didn’t make sure she made it safely into her air-conditioned home. She ended up wandering around for hours in the heat, and died only 50 feet from safety.

Cornett says, “These deaths are preventable with the right planning, the right strategy for mitigation, the right preparedness and a response plan that complies with the Americans with Disabilities Act and respects the needs of people with disabilities.”

Cornett spoke with “All Things Considered” host Geoff Norcross about Oregon’s ability to help people with disabilities during a natural disaster, such as the deadly wildfires burning in the Los Angeles area.

This conversation has been edited for clarity and length.

Geoff Norcross: If we were to transport those fires in Southern California here, would we see a similar catastrophe for people with disabilities?

Jake Cornett: Surely, we fear that the same disasters we’ve seen play out in the catastrophes in the lives of people with disabilities in LA would play out right here in Oregon as well. And I don’t think this is just a theoretical question. It’s only a matter of time before we have major wildfires along Highway 20, very close by in Portland and in other major cities throughout our state.

Norcross: What is the obligation of local governments to provide for people with disabilities when disaster strikes? I guess I’m asking if the Americans with Disabilities Act applies here.

Cornett: Absolutely. The Americans with Disabilities Act requires that cities, counties, the state and the federal government are taking into account what the needs are of people with disabilities, and providing accommodations for those needs when engaging in disaster planning.

Norcross: Getting information out to people quickly in a disaster is so critical, especially for something that’s as fast-moving as the LA wildfires. For people who are deaf or blind, can you talk about how that’s extra complicated?

Cornett: Absolutely. You know, emergency response notification systems that happen on your phone are a great tool if you have a phone, or if you have the technology to make your phone provide you the information you need. And that’s particularly important for folks who are blind.

I think about a blind person who may not have the same visual access to information as others. If police run around your neighborhood and put a notice on your door that says “get out of town, there’s an evacuation order, you’re under wildfire threat,” that notice on your door might not be enough because you can’t access that information.

And this is where cities, counties and the state really have an obligation to adjust to how they communicate so that it’s effective for all people with disabilities.

Norcross: And again, when you say obligation, you mean a legal obligation, not just because it’s the right thing to do.

Cornett: Absolutely. There’s a legal obligation to do that under the Americans with Disabilities Act.

Norcross: Even if an evacuation order gets to affected people quickly, there’s this expectation that most people will get in their car and they will leave. How does that expectation leave people with disabilities in even greater danger?

Cornett: Yeah, that’s another huge issue for people with disabilities, especially when it happens quickly like the LA fires. People think evacuating is getting in the car, driving quickly away to safety.

But many people with disabilities don’t have access to a car, or they can’t physically drive a vehicle. They’re totally reliant on others to transport them to safety. So just providing that notice is not an adequate way to ensure that we are saving the lives of people with disabilities in the way it needs to be done.

Norcross: Is there an event here in Oregon that you can point to that shows us how situated we are to help people with disabilities when disaster strikes, good or bad?

Cornett: Here in Oregon, we’ve seen hundreds die or have serious injuries because of heat in the past few years. Climate change is real. We live in a warming environment, and it’s having a really disproportionate impact on seniors, on people with disabilities and people with underlying medical conditions.

And I’ll forever be haunted by a story of a 30-something year old woman who was dropped off by a medical transport company, but didn’t wait in their air-conditioned van to make sure that she got inside her home where there was air conditioning. Instead, they took off. She wandered around for hours before dying of heat, just 50 feet from her adult foster home.

These deaths are preventable with the right planning, the right strategy for mitigation, the right preparedness, and a response plan that complies with the Americans with Disabilities Act and respects the needs of people with disabilities.

In the beginning … there was a thud. It was an unwanted sound, and one that resonated around the world.

Think back over 20 years ago to Sept. 8, 2004. That’s when NASA’s Genesis sample return capsule slammed into an isolated part of the U.S. Army’s Dugway Proving Ground in Utah. It was an unintended, full-stop, smashing occasion. Held tight within that canister were delicate wafers that were prized samples of atoms and ions, gathered up from wisps of solar wind accumulated over hundreds of days by the Genesis spacecraft as it loitered at Lagrange Point 1, a select spot in space between Earth and the sun. The capsule met the Utah desert at an estimated speed of 193 miles per hour (311 kilometers per hour). On impact, those wafers were shattered to bits.

The Lockheed Martin-built Genesis spacecraft failed to deploy a set of parachutes that were designed to slow it down, a glitch later attributed to improper installation of gravity-switch sensor hardware. A planned and well-rehearsed mid-air retrieval via helicopter of the returning capsule was for not. But now, over two decades later, call it “late breaking” news as scientists studying Genesis samples recovered from the crash continue to make new discoveries.

Contingency plan

This March, a special Genesis sample return 20th anniversary event is being held at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in Texas, a look at what scientists have uncovered from the Genesis samples, while casting an eye toward the future.

As for the capsule crash, “as you might guess, everybody was shocked and alarmed,” recalled Caltech’s Don Burnett, the mission’s principal investigator and lead scientist. “When 2,700 feet was called out, and no parachute, I knew we were in trouble,” he told Space.com.

Burnett said that there was a contingency plan for a hard landing. It was activated in as-soon-as-possible fashion. That plan had all been previously reported to Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) that managed the Genesis mission for NASA management, “but they didn’t remember,” he said.

On crash day, NASA management wanted to call an urgent meeting about what to do, with Burnett advising that upper management should be told “go to hell.”

“We needed to go out to pick up the pieces,” Burnett said. The Genesis science team at the crash site swung into action. “The important point was that the crash would not destroy solar wind atoms … all we had to do was find them,” he said.

Sample returns are forever

The banged up Genesis sample capsule was transported to NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas. Once in curatorial hands, the painstaking work to reclaim science from collector fragments earnestly began.

The solar wind atoms were there, Burnett said, “but all but one of our 200-plus beautiful 4-inch hexagons were broken into small pieces.”

As luck would have it, Burnett added, the one complete hexagon was the least important scientifically. The pieces, down to one-quarter inch, were picked from the mangled capsule one by one with tweezers. There were nine different materials in the hexagons, he said, and with the help of supervision team members the researchers learned to recognize the different types.

As clearly indicated by the Apollo lunar samples, pointed out Burnett, “sample returns are forever,” with science gained as new ideas and analytical techniques become available.

“With a bit of luck here and there, we were able to deliver our required science results for official mission success, but it took until 2010,” Burnett said.

“Genesis analyses were always going to be hard,” Burnett said, “but they were much harder because of the loss of material in the crash and contamination from sample return capsule materials and Utah dirt.”

Rescue science

Amy Jurewicz, project scientist for Genesis, is now an assistant research professor at Arizona State University’s Center for Meteorite Studies in Tempe, Arizona.

When the Genesis capsule was finally wheeled into the high bay for inspection at the Utah Test and Training Range, “the sight was a shock,” said Jurewicz. “But, we could see that pieces of collectors were still there so we knew that we could rescue at least some of the science.”

As both project scientist and the only materials engineer on the science team, Jurewicz knew her expertise would be greatly needed. The work on Genesis demanded a pace to enable the retrieval of the science she knew was there. “And, I have stayed focused on Genesis to this day.”

Cosmochemistry

Genesis data is now producing high impact science in cosmochemistry, solar physics, coronal mass ejections, and space weathering, said Jurewicz, sharing recent work in Japan that uses Genesis data to identify the magnitude of massive solar storms.

“There are opportunities for more Genesis sample science in all these areas and more, and techniques developed will support other research in planetary materials,” Jurewicz reports.

Kevin McKeegan of the University of California Los Angeles is a Genesis mission science team member.

Like other Genesis researchers, McKeegan underscores that, unfortunately, what many people remember about Genesis is the crash.

“What they should know, however, is that the Genesis mission was very successful, achieving all of its major scientific objectives,” McKeegan told Space.com. “This is an excellent demonstration of the resilience of sample-return, and is due to the diligence and creative efforts of a large team of curators and scientists led by our indefatigable principal investigator, Don Burnett,” he said.

Genesis-provided output

In terms of isotopic compositions of the most important volatile elements, oxygen and nitrogen isotopes in chondrite meteorites and inner solar system planetary materials, “we now know that the standard model is grossly wrong,” McKeegan reported late last year at the annual gathering of the American Geophysical Union.

Genesis showed that the Earth and all (rocky) planetary materials are not made out of the average matter of the solar nebula, especially with respect to the abundant volatile elements, McKeegan said. An output from Genesis-provided data, he said, is yielding constraints on fundamental chemical and isotopic fractionation processes occurring in the early solar system.

Steady and creative

Caltech’s Burnett concludes that while success seemed remote, he salutes the 20 years of steady and creative processing and cleaning along with analytical improvements that have led to clutching scientific success from the jaws of defeat.

“The cosmochemistry community has risen to the challenge with a continuous stream of important papers,” he said, with Genesis results raising new questions and sparking new ideas for further scrutiny.

“There is still much important science feasible from Genesis sample analysis,” Burnett concluded.

Ohio State’s linebackers coach from 2019-21, Washington is now in his third season as Notre Dame’s defensive line coach. Washington joined Marcus Freeman’s inaugural staff in 2022 when he and Ohio State parted ways following the hiring of Jim Knowles as defensive coordinator.

Despite their split three years ago, Washington still has nothing but good things to say about Day and Ohio State.

“A ton of respect for Ryan. I’ve known him for a long time,” Washington said of Day, who Washington previously worked with at Boston College. “I had a great time at Ohio State. Unbelievable experiences with the kids. … My time at Ohio State has been valuable to me professionally and personally.”

Asked if he had a favorite memory from his time at Ohio State, Washington said “there’s too many to name” but said most of them center around his relationships with the players.

Washington’s lasting bonds with Ohio State go beyond his relationship with Day, as Ohio State’s linebacker unit still includes multiple players he either coached or recruited to Ohio State, namely Cody Simon in the former category and C.J. Hicks in the latter. He also knows the coach who currently holds the position he used to hold on Ryan Day’s staff, as current Ohio State linebackers coach James Laurinaitis was a graduate assistant at Notre Dame in 2022 before joining the Buckeyes’ staff in 2023.

“James is the best,” Washington told Eleven Warriors at Saturday’s national championship game media day. “Obviously, he’s knowledgeable, well-versed in linebacker play and just football, but just a great person, man. Ton of respect for him and the job he’s done over there. I know a lot of those guys that he’s working with – not all of them, some of them – and I know they’re in the best of hands, man. He’s doing a great job.”

With Washington coaching up its defensive linemen, Notre Dame’s defense has been one of the best in the country this season just like Ohio State’s, ranking just behind OSU as the No. 2 scoring defense in the country with only 14.3 points allowed per game. He believes the Fighting Irish’s success this season has stemmed from its togetherness and competitiveness, and Washington says that starts with the leadership of Freeman, an Ohio State alumnus who Washington had also previously worked with when both were on the defensive staff at Cincinnati in 2017.

“High-character person, great leader of people and cares for people,” Washington said of Freeman. “Those things really impacted my decision (to join Notre Dame’s staff).”

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As his current team prepares to face his former team in the national championship game, Washington sees a lot of common threads between them that have allowed both Ohio State and Notre Dame to get to this point.

“I think they’re both led by good people, and I think there’s a culture of toughness and hard work that’s common throughout both teams,” Washington said. “A lot of pride.”