HURRICANE RELIEF
Hy-Vee announced Tuesday it is accepting customer donations and will match up to $100,000 to donate toward Hurricane Harvey victims. For more information, see page 2A. >>
SEASON OPENER
The Creston volleyball team fell in straight sets to ADM Tuesday night in the team’s season opener. For more on the Panthers, see SPORTS, page 8A. >>
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SHAW MEDIA GROUP SERVING SW IOWA SINCE 1879 BREAKING NEWS COVERAGE AT WWW.CRESTONNEWS.COM
WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 30, 2017
Creston natives in City applying Texas surviving Harvey CITY COUNCIL
for extra water improvement project Second project’s cost could be covered by the first
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By CARTER ECKL CNA staff reporter ceckl@crestonnews.com
Contributed photo
Pictured is the view from atop the parking garage at Trey Thomsen’s apartment complex in Houston. Thomsen, a Creston native, moved to Houston Aug. 18 to start optometry school at University of Houston. Houston has received more than 51 inches of rain since Saturday.
By SCOTT VICKER
CNA managing editor svicker@crestonnews.com
HOUSTON – When Creston native Trey Thomsen moved to Houston Aug. 18 for optometry school, nothing could have prepared him for what he’d experience over the next week and a half. Harvey made landfall as a Category 4 hurricane, with winds ranging from 130 to 156 mph, late Friday night near Corpus Cristi, making it the strongest hurricane to hit the U.S. in more than a decade. By Saturday, heavy rainfall hit the Houston area and, by Sunday, the world Thomsen had come to know in his short time in Houston looked entirely different. “I woke up Sunday morning and looked out and there’s like a bayou behind my place that was
completely overflowed and there was water covering every street Sunday morning,” said Thomsen, a 2013 Creston H i g h School graduate now attending the optometry school at Thomsen University of Houston. As he looked out his ground-floor apartment and saw the water rising above the parking lot, Thomsen started forming a plan in his head. “I was packing and ready to get up into my car, which is on the parking garage, or find someone on a higher floor I could stay with,” Thomsen said. “I was ready to move. I really thought it was going to get here eventually. I was ready for the worst, definitely.”
The water never reached Thomsen’s apartment and he did not need to evacuate. Thomsen considers himself one of the lucky ones, having not lost power or water. As of Tuesday afternoon, the storm had dropped more than 51 inches of rain on Houston, leaving 25 to 30 percent of Harris County’s 1,800 square miles of land flooded, according to Harris County Flood Control District Meteorologist Jeffrey Lindner. Growing up in Creston, the biggest natural disaster Thomsen had ever ex-
“I WAS ready to move. ... I was ready for the worst, definitely.”
__
TREY THOMSEN
2013 CHS graduate living in Houston
perienced was the April 2012 tornado that ripped through the northwest part of town. But, since his parents, John and Linda, had previously lived in Texas and warned him about the dangers of hurricanes, Thomsen began preparing for Harvey’s devastation. He went grocery shopping after his classes Friday to buy enough food to be able to wait out the storm. “I heard Saturday you could hardly find anything anywhere. If I had been a day later, I don’t know what I would have got. I was more prepared than a lot of people, I think,” Thomsen said. Meanwhile, 85 miles to the east in Beaumont, Texas, 2005 CHS graduate Tiffany Murphy has been delivering wall-to-wall coverage of Harvey for KFDM HARVEY | 2A
Approval of an application for a State Revolving Fund (SRF) sponsored project was passed unanimously Tuesday night at a special city council meeting. The application would allow the city to receive funding for a water quality improvement project as part of the waste water treatment plant improvement project. Approval of the application would be the first of its kind according to City Administrator Mike Taylor. If approved, the application would allow the city an extra 10 percent loan on the waste water treatment plant loan, at a lower interest rate. As an example, if the waste water treatment plant loan is $2.68 million, approval of the SRF project would give the city a $268,000 loan for another water quality improvement project. However, the funds will not be available until the completion of the waste water treatment plant project meaning the amount available for a SRF project could fluctuate. “If our project doesn’t take $2.68 million and it comes it at $2.2 (million) then its going to be $ 2 2 0 , 0 0 0 Taylor
that’s going to be eligible,” said Taylor. “We aren’t going to give money until the project is done.” Multiple projects are on the table, but one in particular was vouched for Tuesday evening. Chad Paup, a wildlife biologist for the Iowa DNR representing Union County spoke in favor of purchasing 160 acres of land north of the city limits of Creston, adjacent to Mitchell marsh and the Summit Lake watershed. The land is currently owned by the Wilker family. “The Wilkers, for a number of years have been wanting to sell that land to the Iowa DNR,” said Paup. “The Wilkers would like to sell sooner rather than later so without (the city’s) help, would probably not be able to make that happen.” There are programs in place for other organizations to purchase the land and hold it until the DNR has the available funds to buy it. In the past, the Iowa Natural Heritage Foundation has partnered with the DNR to do just that. Paup acknowledged the DNR would most likely not be able to purchase the land without outside help. “In this day and age, with the way funding is and just the way the DNR’s finances have been, we really have to work together to get these things accomplished,” said Paup. Paup’s concern was if the land was not purchased or maintained by the DNR, crop pasture may bump CITY | 2A
CNA photo by SCOTT VICKER
Accident: Creston firefighters and Greater Regional Medical Center paramedics respond CNA photo by ALEX FELKER
Clowning around:
A circus clown with Culpepper & Merriweather Circus performs a routine in front of a crowd Tuesday evening under the big top at the Adair County Fairgrounds in Greenfield. The Culpepper & Merriweather Circus came to town as a fundraising event for the Adair County Fair Board. Funds will be used to improve the fairground infrastructure.
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Volume 134 No. 64
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to the scene of an accident Sunday morning on Highway 34 west of Creston. According to a Creston Police report, Austin Jay Fricke, 25, of Lincoln, Nebraska, was pulling a 1998 Toyota on a trailer while driving a 1998 Toyota west on Highway 34 when the trailer began to fishtail and Fricke lost control of his vehicle, entering the south ditch and rolling over. No citations were issued after the accident. Damage estimates were $3,000 to the Toyota Fricke was driving and $500 to the Toyota he was pulling.
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Scott Vicker, managing editor