A release of anhydrous ammonia at  the Farm Service Cooperative facility in Harlan Friday morning, resulted in two employees being sent to a hospital in Omaha. According to Harlan Lt. Fire Chief Jason Wickizer, the two, unidentified employees were working on a semi tanker believed to have contained anhydrous ammonia around 10 a.m. Friday, when the incident occurred.

Ron Kenkel, of Farm Service, said the workers were taken to Myrtue Medical Center and then flown by medical helicopter to the Nebraska Medical Center. Farm Service Coop was evacuated but returned to normal operation within two hours.

The cause of the anhydrous ammonia release remained under investigation.

Two, Maple Grove, Minnesota residents were injured Friday night during a rollover accident in Pottawattamie County. The Iowa State Patrol says a 2006 Saturn Ion driven by 18-year old Laryssa K. McClouth, of Maple Grove, was traveling south on Interstate 29 at around 10:42-p.m., and was taking the offramp from I-29 onto I-680 southbound, when the vehicle failed to negotiate a curve on the offramp.

When the car went off the road to the left, McClouth overcorrected, causing the vehicle to spin out of control and cross the offramp before it entered the right ditch, where it rolled over and came to rest on the driver’s side.

McClouth was not injured in the crash. Her passengers, 21-year old Rayna McClouth and 16-year old Nolan McClouth, both of whom were wearing seat belts, were injured and transported by Crescent Rescue to Mercy Hospital in Council Bluffs. A report on their conditions was not immediately available.

An Audubon County Sheriff’s Deputy and his K-9 partner were injured during an accident late Friday night. The Iowa State Patrol says 25-year old Deputy Shawn Young, of Audubon, who was wearing his seat belt, was transported by Exira Ambulance to the Audubon County Memorial Hospital for treatment of minor injuries, while his k9 partner suffered life threatening injuries, and was transported to a vet clinic in Atlantic.

Officials say the accident, which remains under investigation, happened at around 11:12-p.m. near 345th Street and Lark Avenue. When a Trooper arrived on the scene, he found a 2012 Chevy Tahoe in a field drive on the southwest corner of a curve.

No other details were released.

The state’s unemployment rate continues on its downward trend with February dropping down to four-point-one percent from January’s rate of four-point-two percent. Iowa Workforce Development spokesperson, Kerry Koonce, says it’s the fifth straight month with a drop. “We continue to see drops in the number of people who are unemployed. We are down four-thousand from a year ago for the number of people who are unemployed,” Koonce says. “And our number of people who are actually receiving unemployment insurance is down almost 12-thousand from last month as well.”

The number of unemployed dropped, even though the state lost some jobs in the month, the first decline in jobs since September.”We dropped 400 jobs, which isn’t very big. Most of that being in the trade, transportation and utilities area. We saw a larger growth in that last month than really was expects, so I think that was just some leveling out,” according to Koonce. “We saw nice growth in manufacturing, nice growth in education and health services — so those really helped the state as well,” Koonce says.

Workforce Development figures show manufacturing added 12-hundred jobs, the education and health care areas increased jobs fueled entirely by gains in private education of one-thousand jobs. The number of unemployed Iowans dropped to 70-thousand-100 in February from 71-thousand-800 in January. Koonce says warmer weather should lead to more job gains.

“Because you will have a lot of those people who are on temporary unemployment coming back to work. And we saw some gains in construction this month, the biggest gains are coming in industrial, which is good, because that shows overall growth,” Koonce says.

The national unemployment rate was five-point-five (5.5) percent in February.

(Radio Iowa)

No injuries were reported following two separate accidents in less than 10-minutes Thursday, in Atlantic. The A-PD reports both collisions happened at 14th and Plum Streets. The first occurred at 7:49-a.m., when a vehicle driven by Dawson Walter, of Atlantic, crossed the centerline of the road and collided with a vehicle driven by Brandon McConkey, of Atlantic. Officials say Walter was blinded by the sun as he was traveling east on 14th Street. The left sides of both vehicle struck each other,  causing a total of $1,600 damage. No citations were issued.

The second accident at about the same location, happened at 7:59-a.m. Thursday, when a vehicle driven by Cain Stuart, of Atlantic, rear-ended a vehicle driven by Heather Schorle, of Atlantic. The collision occurred as both vehicles were traveling east on 14th Street. When Schorle stopped for traffic ahead of her, Stuart didn’t see her until the last moment and failed to stop in time. He was cited for Failure to Have Control. Damage from the mishap amounted to $2,700.