75 cents
Breaking news at Daily-Chronicle.com
Serving DeKalb County since 1879
Wednesday, April 30, 2014*
RAISE YOUR GLASS • FOOD, C1
PRO BASKETBALL • SPORTS, B1
Cult brands showing proof of bourbon’s renaissance
NBA bans Clippers owner for life
Virus kills local pigs
‘We all deserve to be safe’ Domestic, sexual abuse awareness focus of march By ANDREA AZZO aazzo@shawmedia.com
Photos by Danielle Guerra – dguerra@shawmedia.com
Malta pig farmer Ed Arndt selects pigs Tuesday from his six-month-old brood that he will send to the Farmland market in Monmouth later this week. Arndt marks his Farmland pigs by spraying them with a blue food coloring mixture. These pigs were infected by the porcine epidemic diarrhea virus in February but were old enough at the time to survive. PED claimed about 1,000 newly born pigs on Arndt’s farm in a month. BELOW: Week-old piglets suckle on a sow in the birthing center at the farm. By KATIE DAHLSTROM
Facts about the PED virus
kdahlstrom@shawmedia.com KINGSTON – A deadly pig virus killed 6,500 piglets in a month at Illini Swine in Kingston. At Ed Arndt Jr.’s farm in Malta, the virus claimed 1,000 more. Local swine specialists estimate porcine epidemic diarrhea has killed more than 30,000 pigs in DeKalb County since December, leaving local pork producers scrambling to protect their farms and hoping for a vaccine. “We’ve never seen anything like this,” said Noel Garbes, a swine specialist with Bethany Animal Hospital. “We’ve seen nothing like this that kills this amount of pigs.” The virus, never before seen in the United States, has killed about 7 million pigs in 27 states since May 2013, the U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates. About 30 percent of swine farms in the county are infected, said Noel Garbes, a swine specialist with Bethany Animal Hospital. Piglets that have not been weaned from their mothers are most susceptible to the virus, which kills them from dehydration. It does not affect
n Infected about 30 percent of DeKalb County swine farms n Nearly 100 percent mortality rate n Nursing piglets are most susceptible n Humans and other animals not susceptible
Sources: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Bethany Animal Hospital humans or other animals.
ty rate for infected piglets has been about 100 percent in young pigs SPREADING since the virus first hit, Garbes said. About 535 Illinois farms have About 30 percent of the swine farms reported being affected by the vi- in the county are infected, although rus through this month, said Tim he said that number varies from Maiers, director of industry and week to week. public relations for the Illinois Pork Farmers struggle to control the viProducers Association. rus because little is known about how “We’ve seen this disease all over it spreads and there’s no vaccine. The the state,” Maiers said. “It’s affected U.S. Department of Agriculture last large farms, small farms. We’ve seen week ordered farms to start reporting it all over.” In DeKalb County, the mortaliSee VIRUS, page A3
Voice your opinion Have rising prices inspired you to buy less bacon or pork products? Vote online at Daily-Chronicle.com.
DeKALB – Self-professed quiet speaker Holly Benson marched Tuesday holding a poster in honor of friends who have been affected by domestic and sexual violence. Benson, an Elburn resident, said participating in Safe Passage’s Take Back the Night event was the least she could do to be a good friend. “I know entirely too many people that this has happened to,” Benson said. Participants started their march Tuesday evening at the First Congregational United Church of Christ, 615 N. First St., DeKalb, and walked along North First Street to downtown DeKalb then back to the church. A DeKalb police car followed the marchers as a few cars honked their horns in support. Marchers also shouted four different chants during the walk such as, “End it, end it, end the silence; stop it, stop it, stop the violence.” The event, held during Sexual Assault Awareness Month, also invited victims, or survivors, to speak out about their personal experiences with domestic and sexual violence. T-shirts of local victims and those who know victims hung along the periphery of the church basement as part of the Clothesline Project. Three white shirts marked a death because of domestic or sexual violence. “This is such a powerful way to demonstrate how sexual assault and violence in general is affecting our community,” said Lisa Jensen, client services director at Safe Passage. Statistics gathered by Safe Passage show 4 million women are physically abused by their husbands or live-in partners each year. About 95 percent of domestic violence perpetrators are men. Sycamore resident Bob Self, who calls himself a feminist, was marching along with the rest of the crowd, many of whom were women.
See MARCH, page A6
Twisters take aim at South again At least 35 deaths tied to violent weather The ASSOCIATED PRESS LOUISVILLE, Miss. – Ruth Bennett died clutching the last child left at her day care center as a tornado wiped the building off its foundation. A firefighter who came upon the body gently pulled the toddler from her arms. “It makes you just take a breath now,” said next-door neighbor Kenneth Billingsley, who witnessed the scene at what was left of Ruth’s Child Care Center in this logging town of 6,600. “It makes you pay attention to life.”
Bennett, 53, was among at least 35 people killed in a two-day outbreak of twisters and other violent weather that pulverized homes from the Midwest to the Deep South. The child, whose name was not released, was alive when she was pulled from Bennett’s arms and was taken to a hospital. Her condition was not known. As crews in Mississippi and Alabama turned from search-and-rescue efforts to cleanup, the South braced for a third round of potentially deadly weather Tuesday. Tornadoes usually strike in the late afternoon and evening. One of the hardest-hit areas in Monday evening’s barrage of twisters was Tupelo, Miss., where a gas station looked as if it had been stepped on by a giant.
Francis Gonzalez, who also owns a convenience store and Mexican restaurant attached to the service station, took cover with her three children and two employees in the store’s cooler as the roof over the gas pumps was reduced to aluminum shards. “My Lord, how can all this happen in just one second?” she said in Spanish. On Tuesday, the growl of chain saws cut through the otherwise still, hazy morning in Tupelo. Massive oak trees, knocked over like toys, blocked roads. Neighbors helped one another cut away limbs. “This does not even look like a place that I’m familiar with right
See WEATHER, page A6
AP photo
Kayla Holcey holds her 8-month-old son, Kristian Hampton, as she looks at the debris that was once her home Tuesday in Crawford, Ala. Holcey said that she was terrified that her son had been killed until she heard his cries under the rubble. A tornado tore through the Crawford community before dawn.
Weather
Inside today’s Daily Chronicle Lottery Local news Obituaries
A2 A3-4 A4
National and world news Opinions Sports
A2, A6 A7 B1-4
Advice Comics Classified
C5 C6 C8-10
High:
54
Low:
42