Tag Archive | Kansas
Depth: 15 km
Distances: 783 km N of Dallas, United States / pop: 1,198,000 / local time: 12:54:35.5 2017-04-04
174 km SW of Lincoln, United States / pop: 259,000 / local time: 12:54:35.5 2017-04-04
33 km N of Beloit, United States / pop: 3,900 / local time: 12:54:35.5 2017-04-04
MAGNITUDE 3.4 KANSAS, USA
Depth: 15 km
Distances: 783 km N of Dallas, United States / pop: 1,198,000 / local time: 12:54:35.5 2017-04-04
174 km SW of Lincoln, United States / pop: 259,000 / local time: 12:54:35.5 2017-04-04
33 km N of Beloit, United States / pop: 3,900 / local time: 12:54:35.5 2017-04-04
Thousands of cattle dead due from wildfires in Kansas, USA
Rancher David Bouziden lost his home, his ranch and nearly all his cattle in wildfires that swept through Kansas this week.
“I’d say personally we probably lost close to 150 head, maybe,” he said. “That’s probably 90% of our cattle.”
Bouziden barely escaped the blaze, which set a state record for the most widespread single fire. On Monday, he was plowing a fireguard on his ranch in Clark County in Southwest Kansas when flames propelled by near-70 mph winds struck the pasture, he said. The smoke engulfed him, forcing him from his tractor to struggle through soot and ash. He could hardly see, he said, but managed to distinguish the outline of a hay shed where his pickup truck was parked.
Bouziden was able to drive to safety, but nearly all his cows were killed in the fire that consumed his home, three outbuildings, hay barns and machinery sheds.
“It burned every acre of the ranch. There’s not a blade of grass standing out there.”
Bouziden’s family has been in ranching for nearly 100 years, since his grandfather bought a few cattle in the 1930s. “This is all I’ve ever done,” he said.
His experience is typical of ranchers in Kansas this week, where grass fires have scorched more than 650,000 acres, devastating farming and ranching communities.
The destruction has been particularly pronounced in Clark County.
Randall Spare, a veterinarian in Ashland, the county seat, said Wednesday it’s too early to make a guess as to how many cattle were lost in the blazes; ranchers are still trying to assess the damage.
“It’s probably at least 2,000. It could be 6 or 7,000,” he said.
With spring approaching, many of the cows were calving, Bouziden said, and if the calves are added to the count, the number of animals lost could nearly double.
Courtesy of edition.cnn.com
New deadly virus named the ‘Bourbon Virus’ kills a farmer in Kansas, USA
Researchers have identified a new tick-borne illness believed to be the cause of a Kansas man’s death this summer.
The Centers for Disease Control are investigating a new disease being named the Bourbon Virus that doctors struggled to identify for months.
WPTV reports that a patient entered the University of Kansas Medical Center with symptoms like those of other diseases carried by ticks.
In spite of the symptoms, John Seested, 68, tested negative for known tick-borne illnesses, according to the Fort Scott Tribune.
‘It was very frustrating,’ Dr Dana Hawkinson, an infectious disease physician at the hospital told WPTV about the uncertainty surrounding the diagnosis.
‘That’s one of the biggest problems with my job, which I love, when we can’t answer those questions, when we can’t help the patients or their families.’
The man did not respond to treatment, according to Dr Hawkinson, and soon went into multiple organ failure and died.
Seested’s death certificate listed three causes of death, with tick-borne illness as the third, Seested’s wife, Jan, told the Tribune.
MAGNITUDE 4.8 KANSAS, USA
http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eventpage/usc000swru#summary
Subject To Change
Depth: 5 km
Distances: 13km (8mi) S of Conway Springs, Kansas
40km (25mi) SW of Haysville, Kansas
43km (27mi) SW of Derby, Kansas
53km (33mi) SSW of Wichita, Kansas
200km (124mi) N of Oklahoma City, Oklahoma
Plane crashes into an airport building killing 4; 5 are rushed to hospital in Wichita, Kansas, USA
Four people are dead after a prop plane crashed into a building this morning at an airport in Wichita, Kansas, officials said.
Five others have been rushed to a local hospital, fire marshal Brad Crisp said more than three hours after the crash.
“We don’t know what may have caused the incident,” Wichita Fire Department Chief Ron Blackwell said, noting that responders faced a “horrific firefight for several minutes.”
The plane struck the top of the Flight Safety Building shortly before 10 a.m. and approximately 100 people were inside at the time, according to airport officials. The fatalities and injured were taken out of the building and the remaining individuals have all been accounted for.
Federal officials have confirmed that the incident is not related to terrorism.
The plane involved in the crash was a twin-engine Beechcraft that was taking off but lost power in one engine, according to the Federal Aviation Administration.
Keith Rose, the CEO of Rose Aircraft Services Inc., which owned the plane, confirmed that the pilot was one of the two fatalities. He was the only person on board. The three other fatalities were all individuals in the building, which housed Cessna Citation Jet Simulators.
Rose said that the plane was headed to Mena, Arkansas, “for painting and interior refurbishing work.”
Mid-Continent Airport officials reported on their Twitter feed that the building sustained serious damage with collapsed walls and ceilings. Smoke could be seen billowing from the building from miles away immediately after the crash.
Recently retired veteran air traffic controller Mark Goldstein died in the accident, according to the air traffic controllers association. The union and aviation sources confirmed to ABC News that he was the pilot of the plane that crashed.
Goldstein was an award-winning controller, twice garnering the top safety award for his region, union officials said. Goldstein was in the U.S. Navy and joined the FAA as a controller in 1987.
In a 2005 bio of Goldstein provided to ABC News, he is described as someone who has “an extensive background in aviation and is considered to be a conscientious controller.” And on a more personal note, Goldstein volunteered his time as a youth hockey coach.
Friend and fellow pilot Ron Ryan told ABC News that Goldstein was an expert pilot who had flown this particular plane many times. He was so well-known at this airport in fact that the air traffic controllers actually knew his voice and knew immediately it was he who was involved in today’s accident based on his radio conversations with the tower, Ryan said.
Ryan said he would have trusted Goldstein “with his life.”
Severe Thunderstorms Bring Wind Damage and Large Hail to Iowa, Nebraska, Kansas, USA
“This is the worst storm I’ve seen in 40 years here,” said Mayor Pro Tem Ron Hanson
Greg Miller, the Emergency Management Coordinator for Crawford County, Iowa, said five campers were blown over in Yellow Smoke Park. Several roads were flooded and closed in the area and one dam on farmland had failed. Over six inches of rain had drenched Crawford County, according to Miller.
The National Weather Service received a report of one person injured by lightning, but details about the severity were not available, the Des Moines Register reported.
Mid-American Energy said more than 6,000 customers across the state had lost power.
In Sergeant Bluff, Fire Chief Anthony Gaul said the winds had sent trees falling onto homes and pulled down power lines, while the rain caused street flooding, the Sioux City Journal reported. Several people were treated for minor injuries, he said.
“This is the worst storm I’ve seen in 40 years here,” said Mayor Pro Tem Ron Hanson.
Damaging winds destroyed a garage in Harcourt, Iowa, and snapped power poles in half near Dallas Center, Iowa. Wind gusts as high as 70 mph were clocked into the evening from central Iowa to central Kansas.
Hailstones up to tennis-ball size were reported near Beloit and and Shaffer, Kansas, Sunday evening.
The Omaha World-Herald reported that I-29 was closed when the roof and sidewall blew off a building and into a pickup pulling a trailer. Sioux City Police Sgt. Dane Wagner said the truck toppled, but no one was injured.
In the Omaha metro area, the newspaper reported, at least eight people were rescued Sunday evening on the Elkhorn River.
In Kansas City, the Indians-Royals game was suspended due to rain.
Sunday featured the most reports of severe weather in the nation since Aug. 20, with roughly 140 reports of damaging winds, hail, and one tornado in Massachusetts.
Grapefruit-Sized Hail Pounds Plains as Storm Slides East of USA
The powerful thunderstorm that pounded the Plains with grapefruit-sized hail is sliding east on Sunday, bringing the threat of damaging winds and the potential for tornadoes.
Saturday was the 12th consecutive day that severe weather was reported nationwide, according to meteorologists.
Winds of up to 90 miles per hour battered parts of Kansas overnight, according to the National Weather Service.
It said the severe storms are expected to weaken slightly but still produce strong winds and nasty weather for the Kansas City area.
With thunderstorms moving east, swathes of the country from southern Wisconsin through to Illinois and central Missouri will be hit on Sunday, according to The Weather Channel.
It said that large hail and damaging winds pose the greatest threat, but an isolated tornado or two can’t be ruled out.
The Weather Channel warned winds could reach up to 80 miles per hour in Nebraska’s capital, saying that tree damage is likely.
Tornadoes strike central, southern US, killing 12
A broad tornado sliced through Little Rock’s suburbs Sunday, killing at least 11 people and leaving behind a miles-long path of destruction as a powerful system rumbling off the Plains provided a violent kick-start to the nation’s tornado season.
The scene was the same in town after town, with emergency workers and volunteers going door-to-door to check for victims. State troopers performed the same task among the damaged and toppled 18-wheelers, cars and trucks on a two-mile stretch of Interstate 40, a major thoroughfare in and out of Arkansas’ capital city.
“It turned pitch black,” said Mark Ausbrooks, who was at his parents’ home in Mayflower when the storm arrived. “I ran and got pillows to put over our heads and … all hell broke loose.”
“My parents’ home, it’s gone completely,” he said.
Forecasters had warned for days that violent weather would strike this weekend, ending an unusually calm weather pattern. A morning storm forced a delay at the Oklahoma City Memorial Marathon and by afternoon the weather system had grown deadly, spawning a tornado that killed a person in Quapaw, Okla., before moving north into Kansas.
When it reached Baxter Springs, a Kansas community of roughly 4,200 residents just across the border from Quapaw, the twister was estimated to be three blocks wide said Cherokee County emergency manager Jason Allison. It destroyed 60 to 70 homes and another 20 to 25 businesses in the city, he said.
The twister injured 25 people in Baxter Springs and one person also died there, but it wasn’t clear if the death was related to the storm, said Kari West, a spokeswoman for the Southeast Kansas Incident Management Team.
More storms are expected Monday in the South and Mississippi Valley.
Becky Naylor, of Mayflower, said she and her family went to their storm cellar after hearing that tornado debris was falling in nearby Morgan. Naylor, 57, said there were between 20 and 22 people in the cellar and they were “packed like sardines.”
“Everyone is welcome to come into it,” she said. “In fact, people were pulling off the highways and were just running in.”
She said the men held the cellar doors shut while the tornado did its best to pull them open.
“It sounded like a constant rolling, roaring sound,” she said. “Trees were really bending and the light poles were actually shaking and moving. That’s before we shut the door and we’ve only shut the door to the storm cellar two times.”
Matt DeCample, a spokesman for Gov. Mike Beebe, put the Arkansas death toll at 11 — five each in Faulkner and Pulaski counties and one in White County. He said Beebe’s office was relying on reports confirmed through the state Department of Emergency Management.
Pulaski County Sheriff’s Lt. Carl Minden said three people died at a home on the Pulaski/Saline county line about 10 miles west of Little Rock. Minden said several others were injured at the scene.
“I’m standing on the foundation of the house now. It’s totally gone,” Minden told The Associated Press by phone.
In Mayflower, Jacci Juniel was caught away from her home after leaving to find her son as the storm approached. Her 96-year-old mother, left at home, suffered cuts when the storm blew out a window.
“We had to climb over trees and power lines and underneath trees. I was just trying to get home to my mom,” Juniel said.
Nearby Vilonia was hit hard for the second time in three years. Four people were killed in a 2011 storm.
“Homes and businesses are destroyed,” DeCample said. “The size of the path sounds like a half-mile to three-quarters of a mile wide when it went through.”
The Arkansas storm, which was on the ground off-and-on for nearly 80 miles, was one of several tornadoes that touched down Sunday as a large storm system moved through parts of the Plains, Midwest and South.
Less than two hours before the Arkansas tornado struck, the twister hit Quapaw, a community of about 900 residents in northeastern Oklahoma near its border with Kansas and Missouri. Ottawa County sheriff’s dispatcher Kelli Soechs said it killed one person, not two, as her office erroneously reported earlier in the evening. Soechs declined to explain the discrepancy.
Five of the six injured in Quapaw were treated and released from Baptist Regional Health Center in Miami, Okla., said hospital spokeswoman Kristie Wallace. The sixth, who was in fair condition with a broken bone, was kept overnight, she said.
Ottawa County Emergency Management director Joe Dan Morgan said Quapaw was heavily damaged by the tornado.
“Looks like about half of town got extensive damage as well as the fire department,” Morgan said.
Storm ratings for Sunday’s twisters were not immediately available. Before Sunday, the country had not had a tornado rated EF3 or higher — with winds above 136 mph — since Nov. 17. The 160-day streak is the fourth-longest on record. Sunday also would be the latest date for a year’s first storm rated EF3 or higher. The previous latest first big storm was March 31, 2002.
Tornadoes also touched down Sunday in Nebraska, Iowa and Missouri. One touched down northwest of Joplin, Mo., where a massive tornado in May 2011 killed 161 people, injured many others and leveled a large swath of the city. Sunday’s twister didn’t hit Joplin.
Sunday was the third anniversary of a 122-tornado day, which struck parts of Mississippi, Alabama, Tennessee, Virginia and Georgia and killed 316 people.
Meanwhile, authorities in North Carolina said earlier Sunday that an 11-month-old boy who was injured by a tornado on Friday died Sunday at a hospital. His home was destroyed by one of eight tornadoes that hit the state that day.
Plane crash kills Former Kansas lawmaker in Marion County, USA
A former Kansas lawmaker who crashed a plane into a Marion County pond has died from his injuries.
The plane went down in a pond on 170th Rd., about a half-mile west of Indigo, and two miles south of Hillsboro, around 1:45 p.m. Friday.
Troopers with the Kansas Highway Patrol said the plane was an ultralight aircraft. Investigators said the pilot ran into a tree branch, then fell to the ground near a pond and flipped upside down into the water.The pilot was unconscious when emergency crews arrived at the scene. He was taken to a nearby hospital where he later died from his injuries, troopers said.
The pilot has been identified as Donald Dahl, 69, of Hillsboro, according to the Kansas Highway Patrol. Dahl was a former Kansas state representative, who served the 70th district from 1996 until 2008. The Republican leader was speaker pro tem in 2007 and 2008.
Gov. Sam Brownback appointed Dahl to the Kansas Supreme Court Nominating Commission in December.
Brownback said he was saddened to hear of Dahl’s passing.
“He had a proud legacy of public service,” Brownback said in a statement. “A veteran of the U.S. Navy, he served the people of Kansas as a representative for six terms. The Lt. Governor and I extend our personal sympathy to his family and friends.”
The Federal Aviation Administration has been called to help investigate the cause of the crash.
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