MELVIN ENFIELD, 72, of Atlantic died Wednesday, December 11th at his home. Services for MELVIN ENFIELD are currently pending with Hockenberry Funeral Home in Atlantic.
MELVIN ENFIELD, 72, of Atlantic died Wednesday, December 11th at his home. Services for MELVIN ENFIELD are currently pending with Hockenberry Funeral Home in Atlantic.
This year’s record rainfall and devastating flooding are forcing tough decisions about the future of farming in in the face of climate change. Farmers who lost billions of dollars in grain, livestock and equipment must decide whether to continue to gamble on fertile bottomlands, as federal officials determine how many damaged levees can and should be rebuilt.
Chart shows the percent change for the annual average number of days with at least one inch of rainfall for 2009-2018 compared to the annual average from 1950 to 2018
Many farmers now believe heavier rains are the new normal _ even those skeptical that human activity is a factor. With the ground still soggy heading into winter, experts say the stage is set for more flooding next spring.
A California man who pleaded guilty in Iowa to child sexual exploitation has been given 30 years in a federal prison.Prosecutors say 22-year-old David Vogelpohl, of Vista, California, was sentenced Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Cedar Rapids. He must serve five years of supervised release after he leaves prison and must comply with sex offender requirements.He had admitted that he persuaded a girl under 18 to engage in sexually explicit conduct last year for the purpose of producing visual depictions.
Authorities say a suspicious package detected Wednesday morning at an Air Force base near Omaha contained nothing threatening. The U.S. Air Force said in a news release that a military K-9 alerted security personnel to the package inside a commercial vehicle that was undergoing a routine check at an Offutt Air Force Base gate. Military and civilian investigators checked into the package and concluded that it held nothing harmful. Officials have not released any information about the vehicle or the person or people in it.
(Radio Iowa) — A memorial celebration for former Iowa Congressman Berkley Bedell will be held next summer in the Spirit Lake area. The 98-year-old Bedell died December 7th, three days after suffering a massive stroke in Naples, Florida. Bedell represented the former Sixth Congressional District in northwest Iowa for six terms. Iowa District Court Judge Jeff Neary interned for Bedell when Neary was a senior at Westmar College. He later worked part-time for the congressman in his Sioux City office. “He had a reputation of being not often very political and just expected from his caseworkers and staff people to get things done. And to be visible with people and to be out and about and to do the work that was required just to make folks know that they had an advocate in Washington, D-C,” Neary says.
Neary says Bedell was not perceived as a “traditional Democrat” by district voters and was good at getting things done that were important for northwest Iowans. “And when he helped people, the politics didn’t get involved. And he was very, very sincere about everything he did,” Neary says. “I think he was generally very moderate — and I think that appeals to folks in northwest Iowa. And he put politics aside most times and I don’t think he was a lightening rod like some can be — and that was the focus of what he was all about,” according to Neary.
Bedell last appeared in Sioux City last July to campaign with Senator Elizabeth Warren, who he supported for president. A visitation for Bedell will be held at Peace Harbor on Highway 86 in Spirit Lake, on Friday, July 24th at 5:00 p-m. A memorial celebration is planned for July 25th at the Spirit Lake United Methodist Church at 11:00 a-m.
Memorials may be sent to the Foundation for Alternative and Integrative Medicine, P.O. Box 2860, Loveland, Colorado, 80538.
(Radio Iowa) — Public health officials will be at a northern Iowa high school before Christmas break to test students, staff and others who may have had close contact with a student who’s been diagnosed with tuberculosis. Administrators at Hampton-Dumont High School sent an alert to parents and guardians on Monday afternoon that a student at the high school had been diagnosed with tuberculosis. The school district’s nurse is working with officials from the state, Franklin County and the local hospital to come up with a final list of people who will be notified that they should be tested. Jenni Swart is Hampton-Dumont’s school nurse. “TB can get quite complicated as in the length of time we could have it in our body and we would actually develop it, but we can identify it and treat it,” she says. “There is a state program and the testing is free as well as the treatment is free.”
Swart says it’s hard to say how the student contracted T-B. “It’s transmitted with close contact with coughing, sneezing, talking with the person that’s actually diagnosed with that.” Hampton-Dumont Superintendent Todd Lettow says the district’s website is being updated to keep the community informed. “We just want to have a central place where everybody can go and get the same information,” he says.
Symptoms of active T-B include coughing that lasts three or more weeks, a fever and unintentional weight loss.
The Atlantic Police Department says there were a dozen arrests that took place between November 16th through December 9th:
Authorities say a military K-9 detected a suspicious package Wednesday morning at an Air Force base near Omaha. The U.S. Air Force said in a news release that the dog alerted security personnel to the package inside a vehicle that was undergoing a routine check at an Offutt Air Force Base gate. Military and civilian investigators are checking into the incident. Officials have not released any information about the package or the person or people in the vehicle.
(Radio Iowa) — The Missouri River at southwest Iowa’s Fremont County fell below flood stage this week for the first time in 270 days. Flood warnings have been in effect for the river since March, but it’s now below flood stage from Sioux City all the way to St. Louis. National Weather Service hydrologist David Pearson says it’s not normal for the waterway to be so high for so long. “It shows just how extreme and how much water had to move through, not just in Nebraska and Iowa, but also in the Dakotas,” Pearson says, “and a lot of the water that went through the river came from the Dakotas.”
Sites further downstream have a higher chance of staying above flood stage for longer because more water comes in from smaller rivers. Plus, the amount of water released at Gavins Point Dam was higher than normal, adding even more water to the river. Pearson says conditions are favorable for another flood early next year, but there’s still a lot of unknowns, like how much precipitation we’ll see this winter. “With the wet soils and a lot of the rivers are higher than normal, those two things alone contribute to an increased flood threat,” he says, “and if we get a lot of precipitation, snow and rain, it will make it potentially that much more worse.”
Fremont County still has standing water over some roads. The river needs to drop even farther for that water to finally recede.
(Reporting by Katie Peikes, Iowa Public Radio)
FORT MADISON, Iowa — The Iowa Department of Public Safety reports that just before 11-p.m. Tuesday, the Fort Madison Police Department was called to a local manufacturing warehouse in reference to an individual armed with a handgun. Upon arrival, law enforcement encountered the individual who was subsequently shot by a Fort Madison police officer. The subject was transported to the Fort Madison Community Hospital where he succumbed to his injuries. The name of the person shot was being withheld pending notification of next of kin.
The Fort Madison Police Department contacted the Iowa Department of Public Safety’s Division of Criminal Investigation (DCI) to request an independent investigation into the southeast Iowa shooting incident. Per protocol, the name of the police officer is being withheld pending an interview with the DCI. Departments responding to the incident consisted of the Fort Madison Police Department, Lee County Sheriff’s Office, Iowa State Patrol, Iowa Department of Corrections-Probation and Patrol, Iowa State Fort Madison Penitentiary, West Point and Donnellson Police Department, Fort Madison Fire Department and the Lee County Ambulance Service.
No additional information will be released at this time.