Police and Firefighter Donations

Donations from Storm Lake firefighters and police officers will allow technology upgrades to the city’s emergency operations center.

Thursday representatives of the Storm Lake Volunteer Fire Fighters Association and the Storm Lake Police Officers Association presented city manager Jim Patrick with 750-dollars. Public Safety Director Mark Prosser says the donations will be combined with seized criminal assets to complete some upgrades to the Emergency Operations Center which is also used daily as “Squad Room” for the police department.

The upgrades will include large wall mounted computer screens that can be used when the emergency operations center is operational, but also be used for training and information sharing on a daily basis.

Both the fire and police associations hold annual fund raisers and use the donated funds they receive to donate to civic organizations, acquire equipment for the respective departments, and assist fellow public safety staff in their time of need.

Area Rainfall

Rainfall for the 24 hours ending at 7am Friday.

Storm Lake 1.50
Akron 4.80
Carroll 0.93
Cherokee 2.24

Emmetsburg 0.61
Holstein 2.68
Orange City 2.81
Pocahontas 3.27

Rockwell City 1.23
Sac City 1.65
Sheldon 1.64
Sioux City 2.93

SL Plans Neighborhood Groups

The City of Storm Lake is beginning a new neighborhood focus group program to enhance the communication efforts.

The new program will promote forming partnerships with neighborhood groups to address issues of concern and provide a direct communication link between the focus group and City Staff. City clerk Justin Yarosevich says city staff will meet with the neighborhood groups to learn about their concerns and thoughts on improving their neighborhood and look at innovative ways to address those issues and achieve the desired results.

Neighborhood group meetings could be regular meetings or they could be scheduled as the need arises depending on the desires of the group. Meetings could be held in the neighborhood if desired. Yarosevich says the City hopes that this program will help provide a less formal way of communicating with City staff. Applications for setting up a neighborhood group are available at City Hall and at the police station.

City staff will also be discussing the new program with citizens during National Night Out next Tuesday evening.

Guard Sendoff Friday Morning

The Iowa National Guard has scheduled sendoffs across the state for its largest deployment since World War Two… including one Friday morning in Storm Lake.

The send-off for Company “G”… 334th Brigade Support Battalion will be at 11 o’clock Friday morning at the Storm Lake High School. About 80 soldiers will be mobilized from Storm Lake. The public is encouraged to attend the send-off.

Over two dozen ceremonies are planned for about 28-hundred members of the Second Brigade Combat Team. The soldiers will report to Camp Shelby, Mississippi, for additional training before heading to Afghanistan.

Child Injured In Fall

A young Storm Lake boy was lifeflighted Wednesday after a fall from a second story window.

Storm Lake police and Buena Vista County paramedics were dispatched shortly after noon to 305 Oneida Street, where a child had fallen from a window. According to police, a six-year-old boy was found injured and on the group at the rear of a two-story residence. Paramedics took the child to the Buena Vista Regional Medical Center where he was later transferred to an Omaha hospital by helicopter.

An investigation at the scene determined the young boy was sitting in a window on the second floor of the house and fell through the screen in the window, about 15 feet to the concrete below. Some older siblings were in the home at the time, but did not witness the accident.