First responders on the scene of Wednesday’s chlorine leak -photo Manhattan Fire Dept.
RILEY COUNTY – Officials are investigating what caused a chlorine leak at the Northview Pool Wednesday in Manhattan.
Just after 2p.m. Wednesday, the Manhattan Fire Department and Riley County Emergency Medical Service were dispatched to the pool at 510 Griffith Drive for a report of a chlorine release.
Crews arrived on scene to find multiple individuals suffering from skin and inhalation burns. Crews quickly determined the release was contained and there was no further threat to the public.
Eight pool staff members were in the pool at the time of the release and were transported by Riley County EMS to the hospital. Via Christi Hospital reported two additional walk-in patients.
No members of the public are believed to be affected since they were not in the water at the time of the release, according to a news release from the City of Manhattan.
The City of Manhattan closed Northview Pool until further notice.
Northview Pool experienced a lightning strike earlier this month that affected the chlorine controllers that release the chemical into the water. Equipment was replaced to maintain operation of the pool while permanent replacement parts are on order. That equipment did not perform as expected today, which caused the release, according to Manhattan Parks and Recreation Director Eddie Eastes.
KANSAS CITY, Kan. (AP) — Authorities have found a girl safe in the backseat of a car where she was sleeping when the vehicle was stolen from a Kansas City, Kansas, gas station.
The Kansas City Star reports that a woman stole the car around 7 p.m. Wednesday after the driver left the vehicle running with the girl inside while he went into the gas station.
Authorities found the child about an hour later in Tonganoxie in neighboring Leavenworth County. The girl is around 4 years old. Police say she wasn’t hurt but was taken to a hospital as a precaution.
Police dogs were used to search a nearby wooded area, but officers didn’t immediately find the suspected thief or a man who was with her. The man was driving an older utility truck.
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KANSAS CITY- Police reported the child was located safe near Tonganoxie.
Officials returned the stolen tiny house earlier this week
PITTSBURG, Kan. (AP) — Thieves targeting a so-called tiny home in Missouri decided to go big — and steal the whole house.
The Joplin Globe reports Missouri resident Lisa Stubblefield left the structure in a roped-off area in Springfield last week for the Food Truck Showdown. When she arrived for the festivities Saturday morning, it was gone.
Stubblefield says she’s surprised someone targeted the building, which is 13 feet (4 meters) tall and looks like a small house, complete with a covered porch, but has no plumbing. It’s designed to be a mobile clothing boutique.
Stubblefield’s Facebook post about the theft was shared more than 5,000 times and eventually caught the attention of a woman in Pittsburg, Kansas, a town about 90 miles (145 kilometers) west. Police found the house there the next day.
KEARNY COUNTY – Authorities with the Kansas Department of Wildlife Parks and Tourism and Wheatland Electric are investigating a power outage caused by a bobcat.
On Tuesday morning, a Wheatland Electric Cooperative line crew was dispatched on a routine outage call near Lakin, Kansas, according to a media release to Wheatland Electric.
Upon arrival at the service location, they found the meter off and proceeded to isolate the source of the outage. A Wheatland lineman patrolling line nearby discovered a bobcat that had come into contact with energized lines. The bobcat climbed to the top of a 35-foot electric pole and made contact simultaneously with a phase wire and a ground wire which resulted in the animal’s electrocution.
The line crew used a bucket truck to remove the animal, assess any further damage to distribution infrastructure and make the necessary repairs to restore power to the affected meter. Once power was restored, Wheatland contacted the Kansas Department of Wildlife, Parks and Tourism office in Pratt to report the incident. A local game warden from Deerfield was assigned the highly unusual incident and has been in contact with Wheatland personnel.
Since the 1970’s, Wheatland has made wildlife protection a significant part of its electrical system reliability goals. Wheatland attempts to protect all wildlife species including birds of prey, whooping cranes, raccoons, squirrels, snakes, numerous small bird species and more. Wheatland utilizes several methods such as the installation of rubber bushings on transformers, insulated jumper wires, sheet metal wrapping on certain poles and bird nest removal from substations to protect wildlife from electrocution. These efforts both protect valuable wildlife resources and help to improve system reliability for members. For more information on Wheatland’s wildlife protection efforts please click here.
“This unfortunate incident is a valuable reminder that coming into contact with energized electrical lines can result in tragic loss of life to both animals and humans,” said Wheatland spokesperson Shawn Powelson. “We’d like to remind our members to assume any electrical line is energized, never go near downed lines and always report them immediately to their local Wheatland Electric office.
WINFIELD, Kan. (AP) — The Cowley County sheriff says a man who was the subject of a search after a mobile home fire has been found dead.
Sheriff David Falletti says a deputy found the body of 25-year-old Jacob Andes early Wednesday while doing a routine check of property where a mobile home was destroyed by fire Tuesday.
Falletti says Andes appears to have died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
Deputies began looking for Andes after they went to the property about three miles east of Winfield to investigate a report of a domestic dispute early Tuesday and found the mobile home on fire.
A deputy reported hearing popping noises from inside the mobile home and believed it could be gunshots or sounds from the fire.
NEW YORK (AP) — A security researcher says a lapse has exposed data from millions of Verizon customers, leaking names, addresses and personal identification numbers, or PINs.
Verizon Wireless says 6 million customers were affected, but the company says that none of the information made it into the wrong hands. The company says the only person who got access to the data was the researcher who brought the leak to its attention.
The security firm, UpGuard, says the problem stemmed from a cloud server that a third-party vendor had misconfigured.
Gartner analyst Avivah Litan says the issue comes down to human error and it doesn’t make sense to blame cloud service providers like Amazon and Google. She says such lapses are likely common, but it’s hard to know since we only know what’s disclosed
TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — Federal officials are no longer requiring Kansas to file bi-weekly reports on a large backlog of applicants for the state’s privatized Medicaid program.
The Kansas Department of Health and Environment was notified last week by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid that the state can discontinue the reports it has been sending since early 2006. At the time, Kansas had more than 7,000 backlogged applications that had been pending for more than 45 days for its Medicaid program, called KanCare.
The Topeka Capital-Journal reports health department spokeswoman Angela deRocha said the federal agency was satisfied with the progress and results the state has achieved.
The CMS said it will still periodically ask Kansas for updates on its eligibility processing.
Antonio Garcia, Jr. had previous convictions for drugs and criminal possession of a firearm by a felon-photo KDOC
LEAVENWORTH, Kan. (AP) — Authorities say an officer has shot and killed a suspect in northeast Kansas while investigating a vehicle theft.
The Kansas Bureau of Investigation identified the man killed as 47-year-old Antonio Garcia Jr. of Leavenworth. The release said the officer fired at Garcia on Tuesday night after an “altercation” and that he was pronounced dead after emergency responders were called to the scene. A woman was arrested during the investigation on suspicion of interfering with law enforcement, criminal damage to property and concealing, destroying or altering evidence.
Leavenworth police Chief Patrick Kitchens said the officer was at the scene about 10 minutes before reporting that shots had been fired. The officer wasn’t hurt. Neither Kitchens nor the KBI offered any other details about what led up to the shooting.
LEAVENWORTH, Kan. (AP) — Police say a northeast Kansas officer has shot and killed a suspect while investigating a vehicle theft.
The Kansas City Star reports that the shooting happened Tuesday night in Leavenworth. Police Chief Patrick Kitchens says the officer reported the shooting shortly after arriving to investigate the stolen vehicle.
Police have asked the Kansas Bureau of Investigation to review the shooting, as is standard procedure. No other details were immediately released. Police didn’t immediately return a phone message from The Associated Press.
Kansans who registered to vote at the DMV or otherwise used the federal voter registration form are eligible to vote in all races, according to court rulings, whether they’ve provided a citizenship document or not. But those voters might be confused by inconsistencies on Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach’s website.
As of Tuesday, the deadline to register to vote for the primary elections on Aug. 1, the website contained conflicting information on the Kansas proof-of-citizenship rule.
In accordance with a federal court order issued last October, some parts of the KSSOS.org site, and associated state websites, have been updated. The new language clarifies that voters using the federal registration form aren’t currently subject to the proof-of-citizenship rule and can vote in all races.
“If you are a new Kansas voter on and after January 1, 2013, include your U.S. citizenship document regardless of which application form you use… If you use the federal form and you do not provide a citizenship document, then you will be registered to vote only for federal offices and not for state and local elections.”
“FAQs are intended to be sources of quick information for voters,” says Mark Johnson, an attorney working on one of the lawsuits challenging Kansas voting rules. “This information is inaccurate. At best, it’s misleading.”
There’s been a lot of legal wrangling when it comes to the requirement that people registering to vote for the first time in Kansas prove their citizenship with a document such as a birth certificate or passport.
As it sits now, people who register with the state form are subject to the proof-of-citizenship requirement. But under court rulings currently in effect, people using the federal voter registration form, including thousands who registered at the DMV, aren’t subject to the rule.
When federal rulings said the state couldn’t impose the citizenship requirement on federal form registrants, Kobach instituted a dual-tiered voting system.
The guidelines said people using the federal form who had not provided proof-of-citizenship would only have their votes counted in federal races. That system was later knocked down by a judge in Shawnee County before the 2016 primaries.
Johnson says he believes the FAQ should be changed “immediately,” noting that it’s been almost a year since that Shawnee County ruling.
“When potential voters don’t understand whether they can vote or not, they tend not to show up. When there’s voter confusion, there’s voter suppression,” says Johnson.
Kansas Public Radio contacted Kobach’s office about the persisting discrepancies Monday. Spokesperson Samantha Poetter initially said the office would respond to questions about the language on the site, but hadn’t by Tuesday afternoon.
Kobach pushed for the proof-of-citizenship requirements and has defended them as a way to prevent voter fraud.
“Every time a non-citizen votes in an election, not only does it potentially swing that election if it’s close, it cancels out the vote of a U.S. citizen,” Kobach said in an interview last year.
Critics of the Kansas voter registration policies have said voter fraud is rare and the rules are preventing eligible voters from casting ballots.
Kobach is now taking his efforts to the national level. He’s vice chair of the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity created by President Donald Trump to study improper registration and voter fraud. The panel has attracted criticism and lawsuits, some of that prompted by a request from Kobach that states turn over voter information.
Stephen Koranda is Statehouse reporter for Kansas Public Radio, a partner in the Kansas News Service.
DAVIS, Okla. (AP) — Authorities say two people were struck and killed while changing a vehicle’s tire along an interstate in southern Oklahoma.
The Oklahoma Highway Patrol says the deadly collision happened Tuesday afternoon on Interstate 35 near Davis, about 70 miles (112 kilometers) south of Oklahoma City. According to a preliminary report, the car with a flat tire was parked on the shoulder of the northbound I-35 lanes, partially blocking the inside lane of traffic.
The highway patrol says a 17-year-old boy from Killeen, Texas, was struck and killed by an oncoming SUV, as was 47-year-old Shane Miller of Hutchinson, Kansas. Both were changing the car’s flat tire when they were hit.
The driver of the SUV suffered an arm injury and was treated and released from a nearby hospital.
