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Appeals Court rules in favor of man over flying plywood

May 26, 2010 By

The Iowa Court of Appeals has ruled a man can sue his friends over a wayward piece of plywood. Mark Peak was helping friends Ellis and Rachel Adams move into their Muscatine home in February of 2008. The U-Haul truck they were using got stuck and Peak placed a piece of plywood under the rear wheels to help with traction.

The plywood flew out from under the truck as the wheels started spinning — striking Peak and breaking his leg. Peak required surgery to fix the leg. U-Haul’s insurance company agreed to settle with Peak for 20-thousand dollars if he would sign a waiver. Peak than filed suit against Ellis and Rachel Adams alleging they were jointly negligent on four counts, including the operation of the truck and their failure to remove accumulated snow from their driveway.

Peak’s suit said the U-Haul release did not include Rachel Adams and he could still make a claim against her property and auto insurance. Ellis and Rachel Adams said Peak had released all claims against both of them by signing the U-Haul waiver. The district court ruled in favor of the Adams and dismissed Peak’s claim against them.

The Iowa Court of Appeals ruled that the language of the release is ambiguous and does not warrant a finding that it constituted a full release of both Ellis and Rachel Adams. The Appeals Court says the case should go back to the district court to determine if both of them did rent the truck, and if Peak still has a claim against Rachel Adams.

Filed Under: Crime & Courts

Iowa Flood Center develops maps to predict floods

May 26, 2010 By

Engineers at the Iowa Flood Center are developing a computer mapping program to predict how far flood waters will reach into various communities. Director Larry Weber says the flood inundation maps present a mathematical representation of the geometry of the river. A user can adjust the river’s flow and height, as well as various governmental mitigation strategies, to determine the reach of flood waters.

“You can go to the inundation maps and visually see those gauge readings today or three days from now or five days from now – exactly the extents of the inundation in your neighborhood,” Weber said. The new map models are built on a Google maps background. Weber says the website can even predict the chances of a home being flooded. He pointed out an area on the Iowa River located in a 100 year flood plain.

“If you’re going to purchase a home in this area, you have about a one in four chance of your home being flooded over the life of your mortgage,” Weber said. Maps have been created for the Iowa City/Coralville area, Cedar Falls and Waterloo. Maps for Des Moines and Cedar Rapids will likely be finished by the end of the year.

See more here: www.iowafloodcenter.org/maps

By Jami Brinton, KCRG-TV, Cedar Rapids

Filed Under: Fires/Accidents/Disasters

Des Moines teacher on leave over video show to students

May 26, 2010 By

An elementary school teacher from Des Moines is on leave after showing her students a questionable video. The mother of one of the nine-year-old students at Wright Elementary says the video amounts to pornography.

Art teacher Karen Maresh reportedly showed the video in class about an artist, Keith Haring. School district officials say Maresh was put on paid leave Monday after the video was shown last week. It included a host of Haring’s works, including the alleged obscene images of sexual acts and genitalia.

One of Haring’s sculptures, depicting three colorful dancing figures, was put on display in a downtown sculpture garden in Des Moines last week.

Filed Under: Education

Alliance allows students to see the medical profession first hand

May 26, 2010 By

Students from 17 schools in western Iowa and eastern Nebraska visited the University of Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha last night. U-N-M-C Vice Chancellor Bob Bartee says the students will be taking part in what’s called the High School Alliance, a first-of-its-kind educational venture for the hospital. Bartee says the competition for the three-dozen slots was stiff.

“These students were selected,” Bartee says, “They first had to apply themselves, work with their counselors and their parents and then we then took the pool who had applied and we selected them on a random basis, a random sample. We literally drew names out of a hat. We thought that was the fairest way to do that.”

The 36 students are taking part in the program designed to give high school juniors and seniors an opportunity to take college-level courses in preparation for careers in health care. Classes range from human anatomy to bioscience and biomedical research. “We are going to be offering duel enrollment through UNO for all but one of these courses,” Bartee says. “We expect to have a high degree of standards for these students and we also hope they challenge our faculty and learn a lot from our faculty as well.”

He says the students’ entire support network has to be involved in the process, so siblings, parents, aunts and uncles were also part of last night’s introductions. Bartee says, “For success, a lot of the determinates and the studies show that it starts in the home and we want to guarantee that from the very beginning, the parents and their friends and relatives are going to be committed to helping the student in this process.”

Beginning in the 2010-11 school year, students can take classes through the program that aren’t available in the traditional high school setting. He says the Alliance will “provide students with the opportunity to observe, shadow and work alongside world-renowned health care professionals and researchers at UNMC.”

Filed Under: Education, Health & Medicine

Man dead after police shooting in Ogden

May 26, 2010 By

One man is dead after a five-hour standoff with law enforcement authorities in the central Iowa town of Ogden. The incident occurred around 9 o’clock last night at an Ogden home after deputies received a harassment call.

When deputies arrived the suspect confronted them waiving a handgun in a threatening manner. For several hours deputies negotiated with the man inside the home. Boone County Sheriff Ronald Fehr said a special response team was called in shortly before 1:30 this morning by firing a concussion grenade inside the home.

[Read more...]

Filed Under: Crime & Courts

Weather history shows a couple of possibilities for the summer

May 26, 2010 By

An Iowa State University expert who studies evolving weather patterns says two sharply different possibilities might be ahead for Iowa’s summer. One scenario from I.S.U. extension climatologist Elwyn Taylor shows a 60% chance it’ll be just like last summer. ”That says a lot for a cool summer, large crops, maybe wet fields at the end of the year, maybe wet crops at the end of harvest time,” Taylor says.

But Taylor is also watching central Pacific Ocean temperatures ominously moving toward what’s called La Nina that are sometimes associated with drought like the one that hit Iowa in 1983. Taylor says it turned hot in the middle of July and quit raining across the corn belt and that turned things into a disaster in 1983. “La Nina in the summer has been associated with our very greatest disasters to crops — and that’s really the path we are on right now — that doesn’t mean it’ll make it,” Taylor says. It’s a look at past trends — but doesn’t guarantee what will happen.

“It’s not there until it’s there, is kind of the way we look at it,” according to Taylor. Iowa farmers know how much the weather can change, overcoming a late harvest last year to get off to a good start this year. The latest crop report shows 98% of the corn acreage has been planted and 75% of the soybeans. Both are slightly ahead of the five-year average.

Filed Under: Weather
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