The Palo Alto County Sheriff’s Office said late Friday afternoon, residents of three households that were evacuated near the site of a train derailment and fire in the northwest Iowa county have been allowed to return home. The department says the three homes were each at least a half-mile from the site, where the ethanol-fueled fire was still burning late Friday afternoon.

The derailment occurred around 1 a.m. Friday near Graettinger. It sent 27 tanker cars, each carrying 25,000 gallons of ethanol, off the tracks. The sheriff’s office says two crew members escaped unharmed. No injuries have been reported.

Iowa DNR Field office supervisor Ken Hessenius said Friday afternoon that “there was a pretty big explosion” around 2:30 p.m. at the site, but that officials expect the fire to have burned out by Saturday, allowing investigators and railroad crews to better assess the damage then.  He says it did not appear any significant amounts of ethanol had spilled into a creek at the derailment site after staff from his agency checked downstream. Hessenius says a water sample from the creek hadn’t yet been lab tested, but said the water appeared uncontaminated after “a smell test.”

Earlier in the day, Friday, the National Transportation Safety Board said it was sending some of a 15-member investigative team from the site of a fatal train collision on the Mississippi coast to rural northwest Iowa, to look into a derailment that caused the ethanol-fueled fire. Some members of the team will be coming from Biloxi, Mississippi, where the agency is investigating a Tuesday crash in which a Texas tour bus was hit by a freight train at a crossing, killing four. Other members of the investigative team heading to Iowa  come from NTSB headquarters in Washington.

Red Oak Police report the arrest Friday afternoon of an Elliott man on an active Montgomery County warrant. 21-year old Devin Michael Thompson was taken into custody at around 3-p.m. on the warrant for a Controlled Substance Violation. Thompson was being held in the Montgomery County Jail on a $2,000 bond.

A traffic stop in Adams County Friday late morning resulted in the arrest on a drug charge, of a woman from Nebraska. The Adams County Sheriff’s Office says 19-year old Yaasmyn Spivey, of Omaha, was arrested for Possession of Drug Paraphernalia, after her vehicle was pulled over at around 10:37-a.m. and a consent search resulted in the recovery of a marijuana pipe. Spivey was booked into the Adams County Jail, where her bond was set at $300.

SIOUX CITY, Iowa (AP) — A woman has pleaded not guilty to a charge related to a chase and a Sioux City man’s gunfight with a sheriff’s deputy. The Sioux City Journal reports that 27-year-old Brittney Hood, of Sioux City, entered the plea Thursday to a charge of eluding.

Authorities say she was driving a vehicle carrying 24-year-old Melvin Spencer and another man on Feb. 26 when a deputy tried to pull her over. Prosecutors say she sped away but finally stopped and fled on foot into a field, where the deputy caught her.

Authorities say Spencer then drove away in the vehicle and later exchanged shots with another deputy. The other man in the vehicle was wounded. Spencer’s been charged with attempted murder.

Officials with the Cass County Health System (CCHS) said Friday, several scholarships are available to area students through Cass County Health System and its affiliate organizations. CCHS offers a $1,000 scholarship to southwest Iowa students pursuing a four-year degree in a health-related career. The application deadline is April 1st, 2017.

Cass County Memorial Hospital (CCMH) Auxiliary provides Grant-in-Aid scholarships for students pursuing a health-related career. The application deadline is March 31st, 2017.

And the Cass County Memorial Hospital Foundation offers the Louie and Elsie Hansen Memorial scholarships for graduates of a Cass County high school who will be attending a medical or nursing school leading to an MD, RN, or LPN degree. The application deadline is April 3rd, 2017.

Applications are available on the Cass County Health System website, www.casshealth.org, and can be turned in to the Human Resources Office or Cass County High School guidance offices by the respective deadlines listed above.

For more information, contact Sara Nelson, Director of Public Relations, 712-243-7408.