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Lake Delhi task force to meet Friday

August 25, 2010 By

A task force studying how to rebuild the Lake Delhi dam will hold its first organizational meeting Friday. Heavy rains led to the dam’s failure on July 24th – draining the nine-mile long lake in Delaware County. Lake Delhi Recreation Association President Jim Willey believes the task force’s first priority should involve “clearing up misconceptions” about the lake.

“This is a public lake, it is not a private area. That is an incorrect perception,” Willey told Radio Iowa. “There are two public beaches. It is accessible to everyone. There’s nothing private about the lake.” Willey says only the dam is privately owned. He believes public funds should still be used to rebuild the dam.

“People who have been donating to support (the dam) should be appreciated for it – not criticized,” Willey said. “Private funds have been supporting a public facility for a lot of years, but this is beyond what people…can do by themselves, so this public water does need to have public support.” Willey says it appears the needs of hundreds of homeowners around Lake Delhi are being met. Many of those homeowners are working with FEMA and state officials to rebuild their properties.

“So now our attention is turning to the clean up of the public areas – the lake bed that has a lot of debris left in it and working on the rebuilding of the dam,” Willey said. The Lake Delhi Recover and Rebuild Task Force, created by Governor Chet Culver, is scheduled to meet for the first time at 10 a.m. Friday at Kirkwood Community College in Cedar Rapids.

Public input will not be taken at the meeting. The task force is planning to hold four public meetings in the Lake Delhi area in September and November. The group isn’t scheduled to issue a report until December 1st. The Lake Delhi dam was originally built in 1927.

Filed Under: Fires/Accidents/Disasters, Politics & Government

Emergency federal food assistance available for disaster victims

August 25, 2010 By

Federal emergency help food has been approved for Iowa and the Department of Human Services will begin taking applications today. D.H.S. spokesman Roger Munns says residents of the 32 Iowan counties approved for individual assistance under the presidential disaster declaration for the recent storms can apply for the one-time benefit.

Munns says it’s similar to the normal food assistance program, formerly known as food stamps, but the eligibility criteria have been relaxed. He says one of the more important criteria takes the amount of damage you suffered compared to your monthly income. The amount you receive is also based on the number of people in your household and can range from $367 to over $600.

Munns says you can go to any D.H.S county office to sign up and you do not have to sign up in the county where you live, and you can also go to the federal disaster recovery center in Des Moines. Munns says they’ll soon make an announcement on when part-time D.H.S. offices will be open to take applications. Munns says it’s not a large amount of money, but it does help those who’re trying to recover.

“When you’re dealing with trying to figure out how to straighten out your basement, or how to recover from the property damage of a flood, you’ve got a lot of other things on your mind besides how you’re gonna to go to the grocery store. So if you can have this one thing taken care of for you….it’s very helpful,” Munns says. He says past experience shows the food help is something many disaster victims can use.

Munns says 2008 was a much larger disaster, and 35,000 people qualified for the benefit. He says about 85% of the people who applied in 2008 would not have been eligible for the benefit under the regular program. The deadline to sign up is August 30th.

The benefits are available for the following counties: Black Hawk, Cherokee, Clayton, Decatur, Delaware, Dubuque, Fayette, Franklin, Hamilton, Howard, Humboldt, Ida, Jackson, Jasper, Jones, Kossuth, Lee, Lucas, Lyon, Mahaska, Marion, O’Brien, Osceola, Polk, Ringgold, Sioux, Story, Taylor, Union, Warren, Webster, and Wright.

Filed Under: Fires/Accidents/Disasters, Politics & Government Tagged With:

Colfax-Mingo football players ready for season after flood fight

August 24, 2010 By

Flooding in Colfax.

After supporting the community during recent flooding the Colfax-Mingo high school football team is hoping to get a lot of community support on Friday night when they open the season at Nevada. Members of the team helped fight a record flood that hit the town of Colfax on August 11th.

Their field and practice area were dry, but Colfax-Mingo coach Mike Rupert had phone calls about people needing help with sandbagging and to move things from flooded homes, so he released the kids to go help.

He thought they would come back and have a short practice late in the day, but Rupert says the kids continued working throughout the day in the heat and they finally canceled practice.

The were impacted throughout the week as players helped their families recover, but he says the players worked hard and did a great job in helping with the flooding. Rupert says the team tried to mix in some practices while also helping with the cleanup for several days.

He says the did practice Thursday, and then many of the kids went out and sandbagged in the heat of the afternoon. “I told them I don’t know if we’re going to win any games or not, but they are definite winners,” Rupert says, “it’s just impressive to see what they did this last week and a half.

More than 300 homes in Colfax were damaged by the flood and Rupert hopes the team will give the town something to cheer for. He says they had a scrimmage night the other night and they had a nice crowd, and he hopes the community supports them throughout the season.

The Tigerhawks play their first home game on September third against Saydel.

Filed Under: Fires/Accidents/Disasters, Sports Tagged With:

Morningside looks to return to football playoffs

August 24, 2010 By

Morningside is expected to return to the NAIA football playoffs this season despite having a brand new offense. The Mustangs are ranked fifth nationally despite losing nine players from last year’s offense that averaged more than 45 points per game.

Morningside coach Steve Ryan says they are looking for some young guys to step up and make contributions. An experienced defense will be counted on to lead the way early in the season. They return eight starters on defense and he says they’ve had a good fall camp and the defense looks to be faster than last year.

Ryan says their national ranking is based on reputation as he says the preseason polls are interesting in that they look at the way you ended up last year. He says they are used to filling in the holes after graduation and they are not concerned about matching up with the expectations.

Ryan says the Mustangs have high expectations for themselves, and says it’s fun to be with a group that expects to have success and has experienced it before and are waiting to show what they can do. Ryan says the confidence level is high and he believes the offense can follow through and play well.

The Mustangs open at home on September fourth against Doane.

Filed Under: Sports Tagged With:

U.S.D.A. designates 20 counties disaster areas

August 24, 2010 By

The U.S. Department of Agriculture has designated 20 counties in Iowa as natural disaster areas because of losses caused by severe storms between April 25 and July 18, 2010.

The counties are Appanoose, Fremont, Lee, Taylor, Clarke, Guthrie, Lucas, Van Buren, Davis, Humboldt, Marion, Wapello, Decatur, Jefferson, Monroe, Wayne, Des Moines, Keokuk, Ringgold and Woodbury. The designation also covers 32 contiguous counties. Iowa Agriculture Secretary Bill Northey says crop experts are still assessing how much recent heavy rains are reducing the state’s corn and soybean yields.

“We just have a lot of unpredictability out there, we have crops that sat with water over their roots and in some cases those crops just didn’t mature the way they needed to, I think there’s a lot of uncertainty of what crop really looks like,” Northey says.

Northey says southeast Iowa farms are generally hardest hit.

Northey says, “We’ll have fields down there that will only make 30 or 50 or 80 bushels and acre of corn, compared to what we would normally hope for 150 to 200 bushels of corn.” The latest U.S.D.A. crop report released Monday showed 4% of the corn crop was in very poor condition and 8% poor. Twenty-one-percent was rated fair, while 67% was rated good or excellent. Eleven-percnet of the bean crop was rated very poor or poor, while the rest was rated in fair to excellent condition.

The Ag disaster designation makes farmers eligible for low interest emergency loans from the U.S.D.A.’s Farm Service Agency (FSA). Farmers in eligible counties have eight months from the date of the declaration to apply for loans to help cover part of their actual losses.

Here is a list of the contiguous counties also covered in the designation:

Adair, Adams, Audubon, Carroll, Cass, Cherokee, Crawford, Dallas, Greene, Hancock, Henry, Ida, Iowa, Jasper, Kossuth, Louisa, Madison, Mahaska, Mills, Monona, Montgomery Page, Palo Alto, Plymouth, Pocahontas, Polk, Poweshiek, Union, Warren, Washington, Webster, Wright.

Filed Under: Agriculture, Fires/Accidents/Disasters, Politics & Government

Iowa soldiers will sport new type of uniform in Afghanistan

August 24, 2010 By

Iowa National Guard soldiers on their way to Afghanistan will be wearing new uniforms designed to make their mission safer. Jason Jager, one of the Iowa soldiers training for the deployment, says the uniforms feature a camouflage pattern that will make the troops less obvious in the terrain of Afghanistan.

“You don’t want to be walking around with an orange hunting vest. That’s what these uniforms will do. They’ll blend us in with the surroundings a lot better,” Jager said. Command Sergeant Major Steve Wayman says the Iowa National Guard soldiers will be the first to sport the new uniforms.

“It’s a great matter of pride because, traditionally, over the past couple of decades, the National Guard has sometimes been the last to be fielded new equipment,” Wayman said. The older style of uniform blended in well in Iraq and many other parts of the world, but stood out in Afghanistan, according to Wayman.

The soldiers are getting different boots, too, that are better suited to the mountainous country. “You want to make sure you take really good care of your feet because your feet take care of you,” Jager said. “You’re always on ‘em. You don’t want to end up with blisters.”

About 3,000 Iowa National Guard Soldiers will have their boots on the ground in Afghanistan by Thanksgiving. Right now, the soldiers are training at Camp Shelby, Mississippi.

By Mark Geary, KCRG-TV, Cedar Rapids

Filed Under: Military Tagged With:

Report says 2008 flood communities fared better than expected

August 24, 2010 By

Flooded Hancher Auditorium in 2008 in Iowa City.

A study of the 2008 flood and storm related disasters in Iowa has found the economies of the hardest hit communities weathered the devastation relatively well.

Iowa State University economist Dave Swenson, who co-authored the report, says he assumed he would find significant disruptions to business production in places like Cedar Rapids, Iowa City and Waterloo/Cedar Falls.

“But what we found, in the main, was that the disruptions to the state’s economy were relatively brief and not long-lasting,” Swenson said. Swenson is quick to acknowledge that many Iowans were devastated by flooding, tornadoes and other weather-related disasters in 2008.

[Read more...]

Filed Under: Business, Fires/Accidents/Disasters, Weather Tagged With:
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