Authorities are investigating an explosion that occurred at about 8:15 this morning at the West Central Cooperative Elevator in Gowrie in Webster County. A spokesperson for the West Central Co-op’s headquarters in Ralston, Sara Dorman said there were no injuries as a result of the explosion. On site personnel for the co-op have been following the corporate safety procedures by calling 9-1-1. Several are fire departments have been on the scene. No cause has been yet determined in this morning’s elevator explosion at the West Central Co-op.
Explosion hits Gowrie elevator
June 24, 2009 By
Woman charged after allegedly leaving baby in hot van
June 24, 2009 By
Police in Iowa City charged a Rock Island, Illinois woman with child endangerment Tuesday after she allegedly left an infant in her van while she went shopping. Sergeant Troy Kelsay says a person called police at 12:25 p.m. after spotting the six-month-old child in the unattended van. The caller said the baby was crying and covered in perspiration.
"It’s just a poor practice even on a day when weather isn’t a factor," Kelsay said. "You should not leave a six-month-old unattended in a vehicle for any length of time, for any reason," Kelsay said. The temperature in Iowa City at the time of the call was 90-degrees. The caller saw a woman exit Menards and drive off in the van.
Police stopped the van on Highway 6 and arrested 51-year-old Emma Spin-Samaniego. She claimed she was in Menards for 10 minutes and left the child, who was sleeping at the time. "She downplayed the incident, I’m paraphrasing here, but she said ‘people are overreacting,’" Kelsay said.
Spin-Samaniego told officers she was watching the baby as a favor to the infant’s mother. She did not leave the van running and there was no air conditioning when she left the baby in the car.
Kelsay says it’s hard to believe. "Just this morning I drove across town and I happened to have a Hersheys candy bar in my truck. I wouldn’t leave that candy bar unattended for more than one or two minutes and this is a six-month-old infant who was (left alone) for at least 10 minutes," Kelsay said.
In addition to child endangerment, Spin-Samaniego was also charged with failure to secure a child. Kelsay says the infant was seated in a child carrier, but the baby was not secured in the carrier and the carrier was not secured to the rear seat. Police were not immediately able to reach the child’s mother.
The baby was turned over to the Department of Human Services. Spin-Samaniego was transported to the Johnson County Jail.
Tuesday’s plane crash victims from Wisconsin
June 24, 2009 By
Northwest Iowa authorities say the three victims in Tuesday’s plane crash near Sanborn were from Wisconsin.
The plane crashed Tuesday morning as strong thunderstorms produced high winds in the area, but investigators say they don’t know yet whether weather was a factor.
The Piper Cherokee — a single-engine plane with four seats — was owned by a man from Milton, Wisconsin, but he was not on board. One of the three men who died was from the same Wisconsin town. The other two men were from Cambridge and Fort Atkinson, Wisconsin.
All three Wisconsin men were in their 60s. According to a sheriff’s deputy who was at the crash site, there were “long guns” in the plane which suggests the men may have been on a hunting trip.
According to a statement from the O’Brien County Sheriff’s Department, the crash victims are 64-year-old Francis Allegretti of Cambridge, Wisconsin; 60-year-old Thomas Boos of Fort Atkinson, Wisconsin; and 65-year-old Malcolm McMillan of Milton, Wisconsin.
Hot weather continues today
June 24, 2009 By
Another hot, muggy day is ahead for much of Iowa, with extremely hot conditions expected in one corner of the state. Rod Donovan, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service, says much of Iowa can again expect highs in the 90s this afternoon. A Heat Advisory is in effect for much of Iowa’s southern half while an Excessive Heat Warning is in effect for a dozen counties in southwest Iowa.
The heat index there may hit 115-degrees this afternoon. Tuesday afternoon’s storms rolled across Iowa, with some areas reporting 80-mile-an-hour winds and plenty of tree damage. A Cedar Rapids woman was hurt by a falling tree. Donovan says there’s a silver lining in the clouds.
He says, "One good thing with those storms, they did wash out a lot of our oppressive humidity across the area where we’ve had dewpoints yesterday in the upper 70s to around 80 (percent), which is almost unheard of." Iowans can expect more thunder-boomers later today, Donovan is predicting.
He says more storms are expected to roll out of Nebraska and over much of Iowa this afternoon with the possibility of more damaging winds and large hail. To learn more about the forecast, visit "www.weather.gov" and click on Iowa on the national map.
Culver riding rails to tout passenger trains
June 24, 2009 By
Governor Chet Culver is riding the rails today, a trip from Des Moines to Council Bluffs that’s intended to highlight his call for expansion of passenger rail service.
The Iowa Interstate Railroad train took off at eight o’clock this morning, headed west. But Governor Culver’s push for passenger rail first is focused east.
"Our goal, obviously, is to get a…high speed rail from Chicago to Des Moines and that appears to be going very well," Culver says. State officials met recently in Washington, D.C. with the CEO of Amtrak and Culver plans to hold a "summit" with the governor of Illinois in "the next month or so." Culver says it "really helps" that President Obama is from Illinois.
"He’s going to make sure Iowa, I think, is in the mix, too," Culver says. "…The president mentioned the fact that he wants this Chicago to Des Moines link to happen when he was here in Newton not long ago."
Mike Kulik, chair of the Greater Des Moines Partnership’s Transit 2030 Task Force, sees a route to financing mainly through the federal government.
"This is the time," he says. "There should be funding available if we all work together to get this accomplished."
There’s no firm estimate yet, though, of the total cost of the project.
"It would be a significant capital investment for the road bed, for the equipment," Kulik says. "And a study would need to be completed to determine exactly how many dollars that would take."
According to Kulik, getting Iowans to park their cars and take a train will help reduce pollution.
"This Amtrak service would also be very important for the business community as it will assist in providing jobs and economic development," he says.
Culver and an entourage of train enthusiasts and reporters boarded the Iowa Interstate Railroad’s "Hawkeye" coaches this morning. The group will travel through 13 communities on their way to Council Bluffs, with stops in Earlham, Menlo and Atlantic. Culver’s two young children are also along for the train ride.
Iowa store owner to testify before Congress on health care reform
June 24, 2009 By
The owner of a Des Moines clothing store, known for its t-shirts with irreverent and anti-establishment slogans, is scheduled to testify before a congressional committee today about health care reform.
Twenty-six-year-old Mike Draper says he’s seen the health care picture from all perspectives — having been uninsured, underinsured, covered under his wife’s plan, and now as an Iowa small business owner.
He also lived overseas for a year under the United Kingdom’s national health plan. Draper says he’s anxious for his voice to be heard on the topic in Washington D.C. Draper says, “The system we have now is just so absurdly designed that I can’t imagine that a group of intelligent people could come up with anything actually worse.”
The invitation to speak before the House Ways and Means Committee came after Draper, who runs the store called Smash, recently wrote a letter to the editor of the Des Moines Register about our nation’s ailing health care system. Copies of the letter got around, even to the U.S. Capitol.
“Anybody who knows me from Smash and knows the type of humor, knows that I never really tone it down,” Draper says. “I’ll take out obscenities and stuff but I usually just say what I want in the way I like to say it which is sarcastically or with biting humor.”
He opened the t-shirt business by himself in Des Moines’ East Village a few years ago and has built a wide customer base through the Internet, now with a staff of 12 and anticipated gross sales this year in excess of a million dollars.
Draper is among three Iowans who’ve been flown to Washington this week by the Iowa Citizen Action Network to address members of Congress and others. “I think it’ll at least be an interesting perspective,” Draper says. “You hear a lot of times that congress people will say, ‘Well, small businesses don’t want this because…’ and I think it’ll just be helpful to step in and say, ‘I’m an actual small business and this is what I would want.’”
He’s been known to sport a mohawk-style haircut and wears t-shirts daily, so testifying before a U.S. House committee presented something of a wardrobe emergency for Draper.
“I do a lot of public speaking for Smash to various groups, whether it’s 200 fifteen-year-olds or a college business class, so speaking in front of Congress I don’t find very intimidating, but trying to pick out clothes to wear was a nightmare,” Draper says, laughing.
“I haven’t actually bought a shirt with buttons for the last six years. It’s like I’ve been dropped into a whole new world, trying to figure out what’s fashionable and what isn’t fashionable.”
The other Iowans in Draper’s group are: ReShonda Young of Waterloo, the operations manager of a family business, Alpha Express, and Chris Petersen, an independent farmer from Clear Lake.
Young testified Tuesday before the House Labor and Education Committee hearing, while Petersen is to provide testimony at a small business town hall meeting on Capitol Hill tomorrow.
Part of state’s largest apartment complex goes smoke free
June 24, 2009 By
Smoking is being banned in nearly a quarter of the units in what developers call the state’s largest private apartment complex. Nine of the 40 buildings in the Sun Prairie apartment complex in West Des Moines have been declared smoke-free zones. Kerry Wise of the American Lung Association says she knows of only one other private apartment complex in the state where smoking has been banned inside the apartments. It’s a 30-unit complex in Cedar Falls. "In Iowa we’ve had an increased number of calls to our office from tenants specifically asking, ‘What are the options for me for smoke-free housing?’ and we’re starting the process of education with owners and managers," she says, "and they’re starting to see the benefits, not only health wise but bottom-line wise." Iowa’s Smoke-Free Air Act took effect July 1st of last year, banning smoking in public places. However, it did not ban smoking in private residences, like apartments. "The difference that we’ve seen in Iowa from a year ago to now is monumental," Wise says. "We’ve seen a huge increase of individuals who have asked or are interested in quitting and then we’ve seen businesses and apartment complex owners who are open to the possibility of making and having these discussions where they weren’t a year ago." The Sun Prairie apartment complex in West Des Moines has 1,100 units and smoking is now banned in about a quarter of those apartments. A survey found three-quarters of the tenants in the complex wanted smoking banned inside apartments and on the wooden decks attached to the units.
