(Radio Iowa) – Governor Kim Reynolds has taken the rare step of rejecting the candidates a commission had nominated to be a district court judge in northern Iowa. Reynolds sent a letter to the commission making nominations for the district court vacancy created when Judge Gina Badding of Carroll was appointed to the Iowa Court of Appeals. Reynolds says she heard from several commission members that the judge who led the interview process had coached one candidate and made unprofessional and disturbing comments about others. Reynolds says her staff discovered Judge Kurt Stoebe of Humboldt also misled commission members by saying one applicant had withdrawn after being interviewed. That person adamantly denied that when contacted by the governor’s office. The commission is to reconvene November 18th and redo the entire process.

According the letter from Reynolds, the only other time nominees for an opening in DISTRICT court have been rejected happened during Governor Robert Ray’s tenure. In 2011, Governor Terry Branstad rejected a slate of candidates for Iowa SUPREME Court openings. The nominating commission reconvened and submitted a second set of names to Branstad. In Iowa’s process of filling openings in the judicial system, governors make appointments from the list of names submitted by judicial nominating commissions.

(Anamosa, Iowa) – One person died, and two others were injured during a single-vehicle rollover accident early today (Friday), south of Anamosa, in eastern Iowa’s Jones County. The Iowa State Patrol says a 2009 Ford Focus was traveling north in the 9200 block of Jones County Road X-40 at around 1-a.m., when the car entered the west ditch and rolled several times before hitting farm equipment. One person died at the scene, the two surviving occupants were transported to area hospitals. Authorities were withholding the names, pending notification of family.

The Patrol was assisted at the scene by Anamosa Police, Fire & Ambulance.

(Radio Iowa) – One of the ceremonies on Veterans Day honored Iowa military hero George “Bud” Day of Sioux City, and his wife Doris. The event was a ribbon cutting at the Interpretive Center at the Siouxland Freedom Park in South Sioux City. Day’s son George Junior was at the ceremony. “When I think of our dad’s legacy and our mom’s legacy — and the fact that in a way we are honoring them — but more importantly we are honored by the people of this community in America and what it’s doing to inspire the youth of future generations,” he says.

Brigadier General Day received the Congressional Medal of Honor for his service after being shot down over Vietnam and put in a prison camp. He was tortured, escaped, and was caught and tortured again. “It’s incredible to hear him talk about that and then share it with others. One of the biggest things that he shared was his faith in God,” Day says. “He never expected to survive in Vietnam. He never expected to live as many years as he did. He never expected to live through two bailouts in fighters. And yet, God kept him on this earth for a reason, and we are so thankful for that.”

The Bud Day Center

His children grew up without him while he was in the prison camp until the war ended. His daughter Sandra wore his flight jacket to the ceremony, and says she didn’t realize for a time what her dad had gone through.

George Jr and Sandra Day. (KSCJ photo)

“Probably my biggest revelation was when I actually sat down and read his book. Then it really hit home about what he went through and how bad it was,” she says. Sandra learned more about what he endured in the North Vietnam prison camp as she took care of her dad.

“In taking care of him when he was sick I could see the lash marks on his back. And that was really difficult — when you see it like that and you realize what it is — that really brings a new meaning to freedom and a meaning to torture and what he went through,” Sandra says.

George Junior graduated from the Air Force Academy in 1985 and went on to become an F-16 pilot. He later flew plans for Southwest Airlines after leaving the military.

(Radio Iowa) – A class in disaster preparedness is being offered at Iowa State University for the first time this fall to ready students for everything from severe weather to hazardous materials spills. I-S-U’s emergency manager Clayton Oliver is teaching the course to students in the Honors Program who need to pass special classes as part of their requirements to graduate with honors.  “The name of the class is You Are Your Own First Responder,” Oliver says. “The general concept behind it is teaching baseline first responder skills, disaster medicine, triage, how to use a fire extinguisher, light duty search and rescue to, in this case, honor students.”

As part of the course, an Ames apartment was turned into a simulated tornado disaster area as students learned how to respond to and manage an emergency. “This is a class that offers them a lot of skills where, hopefully, they’ll never be in a situation where they have to use them, but if they are, they can take definite action,” Oliver says. “There’s a strong interest in our students in learning how to take care of themselves — and how to take care of others — in emergencies.”

The seminar is built around Community Emergency Response Team, or CERT, training. It includes academic elements like studying reports from disasters like the 1993 Iowa floods and the 2011 tornado that hit Joplin, Missouri. “What I’m trying to do with this is pilot what I hope will be a larger program someday where we can spread these skills to more people across the campus, whether that’s students, faculty or staff,” Oliver says, “and ultimately, build a campus that is more prepared to respond to disasters, more resilient and more capable of recovering from them.”

Besides the tornado drill, students are also learning about disaster medicine and stabilizing victims with Thielen Student Health Center staff, search and rescue and extrication with the Ames Fire Department, and disaster psychology for victims and responders with I-S-U Student Counseling.