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Volunteers needed to help run second free dental program

August 31, 2009 By

Organizers are preparing for a second two-day event that offers free dental care, and are looking for volunteers to help. It’s called “Iowa Mission of Mercy” or I-MOM and the chair of the event, dentist Richard Hettinger of Sioux City, says you don’t have to know how to drill a cavity to get involved.

He says they need dental professionals, they also need lay volunteers for a variety of things from escorting people through to serving food to patients. “Just about anybody that wants to help somebody, we can find a place for you to work,” Hettinger says. He says all it takes is a little time.

Hettinger says they need far more lay volunteers who are not dental professionals than they do dental professionals. The last mission was in Waterloo last fall and there were over 1,200 people show up to take advantage of the care. Hettinger expects a similar turnout this time. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Health & Medicine

Wind turbines show up on radar as tornadoes

August 31, 2009 By

Wind turbines in Iowa and across the country are showing up on weather radar and looking like tornadoes. Recently, the Des Moines National Weather Service office received a call from an emergency worker who mistook a wind turbine for a twister on doppler radar.

Meteorologist Jeff Johnson says only an amateur would make that mistake. “Wind turbines can produce a false radar echo and you can see it on reflectivity on the internet,” Johnson said. “They look like splotches, they may look like a storm, but to a trained eye it’s obviously what it is – it’s not a meteorological echo.”

But, elsewhere in the country there have been discussions about shutting down wind farms prior to bad storms. In Kansas, a computer program misidentified a wind turbine on radar and mistakenly issued a tornado warning. A meteorologist quickly called off the alert.

“To the lay person out there looking at radar data…a lot of things look false,” Johnson said. “You can have bird interference that shows up on doppler radar that shows a signature that may be confused with something that isn’t there.” Weather radar recognizes motion to warn of storms, and there’s no way to filter out the spinning blades.

Johnson says the National Weather Service is working with the wind power industry so new wind farms might be located to minimize interference with weather radar.

Filed Under: Weather

Man makes first appearance in Webster County murder case

August 31, 2009 By

The man wanted in connection with the 2001 murder of a rural Clare woman made his initial appearance in Webster County court in Fort Dodge on Saturday.Fifty-year-old Mark Anthony Wilson is being held under one-million dollars bond on a charge of first degree murder in the death of 43-year-old Joni Lee Manning at her home in July, 2001.

Wilson returned to Iowa late Friday night on flight from California. He was accompanied by Webster County Chief Sheriff’s Deputy Jim O’Brien and an agent from the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation. In addition to the first-degree murder charge, Wilson is facing charges of forgery and second-degree theft with the bond on those two charges set at a total of 110-thousand dollars.

There will be a preliminary hearing for Wilson this Wednesday. Wilson is being held in the Webster County Jail in Fort Dodge.

Story by Pat Powers, KQWC, Webster City

Filed Under: Crime & Courts

Fire leaves six homeless in eastern Iowa

August 31, 2009 By

A family of six is homeless after a weekend fire in eastern Iowa. The fire was reported early Sunday morning at an old farmhouse near Troy Mills in Linn County. Several fire departments spent over three hours dousing the flames which destroyed the home. Investigators believe an electrical problem sparked the fire.

No one was in the home at the time of the fire, but two adults and four children lived there. The American Red Cross’ Grant Wood Area Chapter is providing the family with temporary lodging.

Filed Under: Fires/Accidents/Disasters

Cool weather leads to record lows overnight

August 31, 2009 By

The first day of Autumn is still 22 days away, but plenty of Iowans had to close their windows and throw a quilt on the bed last night — and some likely switched on the furnaces. One Iowa city hit a new record low temperature this morning, while several cities came close. Brad Fillbach, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service in Johnston, says it was quite chilly overnight.

He says Mason City had a new record low of 38 degrees, breaking the old record of 40, which was set in 1967. Many communities in northern Iowa saw upper-30s overnight while southern Iowa had more temps in the low and mid-40s, well below the norm for late summer. Fillbach says the end of August saw temperatures well under average for the month, following a July that was the coldest Iowa July on record. He says warmer weather should be returning soon.

He’s expecting warmer highs that may reach 80 by the weekend. It was just a few weeks ago, Iowans were sweltering in the upper 80s and lower 90s.

Story contributed by Pat Powers, KQWC, Webster City

Filed Under: Weather

Search on for driver in Warren County fatal hit-and-run

August 31, 2009 By

Central Iowa authorities are looking for a hit-and-run driver who killed a bicyclist on Sunday morning southwest of Des Moines near the town of Cumming. The victim is identified as 54-year-old Mark Grgurich of Des Moines. Warren County Sheriff’s Deputy Neil Gurwell talked with the witnesses who say the driver of the white pickup truck hit the cyclist and kept going.

Deputy Gurwell says it’s unclear what sort of pickup it was, Chevy, Dodge or Ford, but it had a black ladder rack in the back. There was also some sort of placard on the passenger door that was damaged in the collision. “I’m guessing it’s some type of business sign that’s made out of white plastic and it was bolted to the door,” he says. “We’ve got a piece of it but really not enough to make an identification on the company name.”

Gurwell says they’ll be checking with body shops to see if anyone’s trying to get their pickup repaired. “It’s going to have some obvious damage to the front quarter-panel and probably down the door,” Gurwell says. “If they see this type of a white logo, it’d be plastic, bolted to the door, give us a call at the sheriff’s office.”

The accident happened about 10:50 Sunday morning on Warren County Road G-14, not far from the Great Western Trail, a popular bike path that goes from Des Moines to Martensdale. Gurwell says the witnesses thought the truck was speeding and evidence at the scene backs that up.

“The driver of the pickup was traveling in excess of the 45 mile-an-hour speed limit which is in the area,” Gurwell says. “The bicyclist was next to the bicycle. I’m guessing, from my initial investigation, both the bike and the cyclist were thrown about 60 feet.” Both the bike and the truck were eastbound on the hilly county road and Gurwell says the truck hit the bike from behind and continued east. Contact the sheriff’s office at (515) 961-1122.

Filed Under: Crime & Courts

Drop in land-lines means drop in revenue for E911 surcharge

August 31, 2009 By

More and more Iowans have cut the cord and gone to wireless phones which means less money from the E-9-1-1 surcharge for Iowa counties. Counties set the surcharged for land-line phones, while the state sets and collects the money from the cellphone surcharge. Barbara Vos is the E-9-1-1 program coordinator for the state and says the surcharge funds from cellphones are given out based on a formula.

She says they pay 65% of the money to the wireless carriers and telephone companies that are part of the networks that provide the service, and then they pay 25% of the funds to the local entities based on the number of calls the local public safety answering point has handled each quarter. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Miscellaneous
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