(Radio Iowa) – Two stranded kayakers were rescued Sunday afternoon in the Boone River near Webster City. The Webster City and Stratford Fire Departments along with Van Diest Medical Center EMS and the Hamilton County Sheriff and Conservation Departments responded to rescue the kayakers who were stuck on a log in the Boone River. The two were reported last seen around the Albright landing of the river between Webster City and Stratford. They were rescued by boat and safely made it to shore.

The two individuals were checked over with no injuries reported. It was reported that the river had risen up an additional six inches and was moving very rapidly.

ANKENY, Iowa — [KCCI-TV] – A juvenile was killed in a head-on collision near Cottonwood Recreation Area on Sunday afternoon.

According to the Polk County Sheriff’s Office, a two-vehicle crash was reported at about 1:30 p.m. Sunday near the 740 block of N.W. Fisher Lane. Each vehicle was occupied by two people. The occupants of the northbound vehicle — a driver and a juvenile passenger — were both transported to an area hospital, the driver in serious condition and the passenger in critical condition.

Authorities say the juvenile passenger died from their injuries after arriving at the hospital. The driver and passenger of the southbound vehicle were treated for minor injuries at the scene and released.

The crash remains under investigation. The names of the individuals involved and the status of the driver who was transported to the hospital have not been released at this time.

(Iowa News Service) – The U.S. Office for Civil Rights has issued a ruling ensuring that an Iowa man with disabilities is able to live in his home and receive round-the-clock medical care. Advocates for people with disabilities hope the move sets precedent for other people in Iowa and around the country.

When he was about five, Cedar Rapids resident Garret Frey suffered the same spinal cord injury that Superman star Christopher Reeve did in an equestrian accident.  Reeve lived for about a decade after his accident. Frey is closing on 40 years, and sued the state, claiming it violated his rights by failing to provide the 24-hour home-based support and services he needs to live at home, where he said people with disabilities want to be. “It is truly where most of us are happy, healthy,” said Frey, “and it’s most cost-effective.”

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services agreed to raise the provider reimbursement rate for in-home caregivers, allow for respite services, expand the health-care provider base – and help secure overnight, in-home nursing care for Frey. HHS will monitor Iowa’s progress for a year. Frey said he wants this ruling to set precedent for other people with disabilities in Iowa and across the country.

Garrett Fry was honored with the Lifetime Advocacy Award from the Iowa Developmental Disabilities Council in 2023 (Photo courtesy IDDC)

“It’s one baby step in the right direction,” said Frey, “because there are many other disability-related concerns and issues that are ongoing.”

The ruling requires Iowa Health and Human Services to work with federal officials to ensure Frey’s needs are met during that year, and report on their progress monthly.

(Radio Iowa) – State Climatologist Justin Glisan says most infrastructure — like levies and storm sewers — is not built for the type of torrential rain and flooding that’s occurring. “You look at 2019 with the ‘bomb cyclone’ and then the epic flooding along the Missouri River basin, all the Corps levies south of Council Bluffs were damaged or destroyed,” Glisan says. “Those have since been rebuilt.” And Glisan says urban infrastructure can’t keep up with high intensity rainfall.

“Instead of getting these historic quarter inch, half an inch over 24-48 hours, you’re getting an inch to three inches,” Glisan says. “Our systems can’t keep up with that type of behavior and we’re only seeing that behavior increase into the future.” Forecasts indicate there will be a 10 to 15 percent increase in precipitation in Iowa over the next 10 to 15 years — and Glisan says that will sadly lead to more flooding. As for the other severe weather that’s hit the state this spring, Glisan says mobile radars deployed during the Greenfield tornado may help improve forecasting tornadoes.

“The science that we’re going to get out of it I really think is going to move us forward in terms of advanced lead times,” Glisan says. “and even predicting these types of tornadoes further out.” As Radio Iowa reported last month, the preliminary data from the Greenfield tornado includes a measurement that wind speeds were 318 miles per hour at 160 feet above the ground. That means the Greenfield tornado was the second strongest tornado ever recorded. “It’s hard to fathom,” Glisan says.

Glisan made his comments during a recent appearance on Iowa Press on Iowa P-B-S.

(Des Moines, Iowa) – The state of Iowa says it will not necessarily disclose to the public the rationale for disciplinary charges against licensed professionals such as physicians, nurses, therapists and nursing home administrators. The Iowa Capital Dispatch reports the determining factor appears to be whether the state’s licensing boards choose to include the allegations within the text of a final order in a disciplinary case. If a board opts to omit those allegations from the final order, the public may never know what gave rise to the charges. The result is that Iowa’s licensing boards are now, in some cases, keeping secret the alleged misconduct that is tied to charges of professional incompetence, ethical violations, patient abuse and even criminal convictions.

Over the past three years, public access to information from Iowa’s licensing boards has been greatly restricted. Prior to October 2021, all state licensing boards publicly disclosed charges against practitioners at the time they were filed or at the time the practitioners were notified of the charges. That disclosure included not just the charges themselves — which are often vague, such “professional incompetence” or “unethical conduct” — but also the specific underlying conduct that gave rise to the charges, such as a botched surgery or the theft of patient medications.

In October 2021, the Iowa Supreme Court ruled that the basic facts and circumstances surrounding disciplinary action against licensed professionals must be kept confidential at least until the licensing boards issue their final rulings in the matter – a process that sometimes takes years. The court’s decision was based on a statute that says “investigative information” gathered as part of a complaint against a licensee must be kept confidential at least until the board issues its final decision. The court concluded that the basic facts and circumstances surrounding a case are “investigative” in nature.

In the aftermath of the court’s decision, most of Iowa’s licensing boards began issuing redacted statements of charges to keep secret the facts and circumstances of the cases until the cases were closed. Last fall, however, some boards took the position that the basic facts and circumstances that triggered the charges should remain sealed from public view even after a case was finalized.

For example, the Iowa Board of Nursing repeatedly refused a request from Iowa Capital Dispatch for an unredacted copy of the written statement of charges against a nurse whose license has been revoked. The redacted portion of that document outlines the specific conduct that led to the charges against the nurse. In a Board of Chiropractic case involving Bruce Lindberg, the board resolved the case with a settlement calling for Lindberg to surrender his license. The basic facts and circumstances in that case remained sealed until an Open Records Law request was filed by the Iowa Capital Dispatch. That request led to the unredacted version of the statement of charges being published on the website of the Iowa Department of Inspections, Appeals & Licensing, which oversees many of the state’s licensing boards.

Last fall, DIAL attributed widespread inconsistency on public disclosure by the various licensing boards to the agency having taken over their administration just a few months before in July 2023. Prior to that, the boards were overseen by four different state agencies. “The goal of DIAL has been to standardize, modernize and simplify its processes in order to promote best practices across the entire department and provide Iowans great service,” a DIAL spokesperson said last fall. “The department is working closely with the attorney general’s office to ensure all information is timely and accurately provided to the public in accordance with Iowa law.”

In recent months, some of the boards under DIAL’s control have taken to not only keeping secret the facts and circumstances in their statements of charges, but also the terms of board agreements to reinstate licenses. Historically, Iowa’s licensing boards have tended to disclose far less information on licensees’ alleged wrongdoing than is common practice in other states.