The owners of the three Black Bear diners in Central Oregon have opted to allow for indoor dining despite Deschutes and Jefferson counties being placed in the extreme risk category for COVID-19.

The owners join a list of seven Central Oregon businesses with complaints lodged against them for breaking state COVID-19 rules enforced by the Oregon Occupational Safety and Health Administration.

Aaron Corvin, OSHA spokesman, said the department has received multiple complaints about the Black Bear Diners allowing indoor dining.

“We are investigating these open complaints,” Corvin said. “Certainly the situation is on our radar.”

It was mid-January when the NE Third Street Black Bear Diner owner Kathy Degree decided to reopen the Bend and Redmond locations to indoor dining. The Madras location has been opened for indoor dining since late December and is owned by Joe Davis, who could not be reached for comment.

Degree said that when they reopened at 50% capacity during the summer, it was a tough.

“We maintain the same strict guidelines that we operated under during the summer months, said Degree who has owned the diner since 2006. “We are following the strict guidelines of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that is required of all businesses: face masks, social distancing, daily employee wellness checks and strict sanitation procedures. We are following those same guidelines that all businesses are using that are now open.”

Under the extreme risk category, according to the Oregon Health Authority, indoor dining is not allowed. Outdoor dining is allowed with a maximum of 50 people, including individual dining pods, according to the guidelines. A dining party is limited to six people per table and a maximum of two households. Restaurants must close by 11 p.m.

To date, seven businesses in Deschutes County have been fined by OSHA. The largest fine was issued to Kevista Coffee on SW Century Drive in Bend.

Since March, Oregon OSHA has received about 18,800 complaints related to COVID-19.

In a typical year, the agency receives around 2,000 complaints.

At first, Degree didn’t want to talk about the decision to reopen the two locations she owns to dining-in service.

“We have second-generation families who have worked with us since we began ownership,” Degree said. “They are our family.”