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(Logan, Iowa) – Harrison County Emergency Management alert- The city of Logan has issued a boil order until further notice for businesses and residents in the shaded area below.

A boil order is issued when an event has occurred with the potential to adversely affect water quality, or a situation has occurred where there is known degradation of the water quality. DO NOT DRINK WATER WITHOUT BOILING IT FIRST. Bring all water to a rolling boil, let it boil for one minute, and cool before using; or use bottled water. You should use boiled or bottled water for drinking, making ice, washing dishes, brushing teeth and food preparation until you are notified that the advisory has been lifted.

Officials also recommend the following steps:
• Throw away uncooked food or beverages or ice cubes if made
with tap water during the day of the advisory
• Keep boiled water in the refrigerator for drinking
• Do not swallow water while you are showering or bathing
• Provide pets with boiled water after cooling
• Do not use home filtering devices in place of boiling or using
bottled water; Most home water filters will not provide
adequate protection from microorganisms
• Use only boiled water to treat minor injuries
• It is safe to wash clothes without first boiling the water.

Everyone is encouraged to sign up for Everbridge if they have not already done so. Updates will be sent through our mass notification system. The link to do so is:
https://member.everbridge.net/892807736721501/login
Residents are also encouraged to monitor the Harrison County EMA’s Facebook page as updates will be posted online.
https://www.facebook.com/HarrCoEMA

Davenport, IA – Gerald Brian Hoard, age 49 of Bettendorf, Iowa, was sentenced today (Monday) to time-served following his plea of guilty to Attempted Transfer of Obscene Material to a Minor. Hoard went into custody on March 15, 2022. Hoard will serve three years of supervised release including one year at a residential re-entry center.

According to court documents, Hoard used the social media application Grindr, an online dating app, to communicate with an undercover officer posing as a 14-year-old. Hoard sent a picture of his genitals to the purported minor. Hoard agreed to meet the minor at a local store for the purpose of engaging in sexual activities.

U.S. Attorney Richard D. Westphal of the Southern District of Iowa made the announcement. The Federal Bureau of Investigation investigated the case. This case was prosecuted by the United States Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Iowa as part of the U.S. Department of Justice’s “Project Safe Childhood” initiative, which was started in 2006 as a nationwide effort to combine law enforcement investigations and prosecutions, community action, and public awareness in order to reduce the incidence of sexual exploitation of children.

For more information about Internet safety education, please visit https://www.justice.gov/psc and click on the resources tab.

(Radio Iowa) – With Thanksgiving behind us now, Iowa food pantries are bracing for the winter ahead and a dramatic boost in demand as the year-end holidays near. Matt Unger, C-E-O of the Des Moines Area Religious Council, says while pandemic-era assistance, like extra SNAP benefits and increased unemployment benefits, helped for a while, it didn’t address the underlying problems with food insecurity.

“We have this growth now, and the number of folks that are needing this kind of assistance, and we don’t have the same spotlight on the issue that we did during the pandemic,” Unger says, “so I think there’s the risk that we’ve got some complacency.” So far this month, Unger says DMARC has helped 14-thousand individuals. Zuli Garcia is the founding president of Knock and Drop Iowa, the first-ever Latino food pantry in Des Moines’s metro, which provides culturally-specific foods. Garcia says higher food prices are having an impact and lately, they’ve had to dip into reserves to make sure those in need have enough to take home.

“That’s what our fear is, that we’re going to get to the point where unfortunately, we’re going to have to start turning people away because things are getting expensive, not just out there for everyone, but even for the nonprofits,” Garcia says. “We can’t find the food that’s needed to be able to feed families.” Garcia says for just one day of the pantry being open, Knock and Drop spent 48-hundred dollars on food for 387 families. Officials with the Food Bank of Iowa say they are continuing to see historic need from communities around the state, serving about 150-thousand individuals each month since spring.

(reporting by Catherine Wheeler, Iowa Public Radio)