(Radio Iowa) – In recent years, Iowans have dealt with deadly tornadoes and historic flooding, but the biggest disaster for the Iowa chapter of the American Red Cross during 2025 has been house fires. Josh Murray is spokesman for the agency in Iowa and says fires are breaking out somewhere in the state almost daily, sometimes two a day, and it only gets worse during the winter. “So far in 2025, we’ve responded to just about 600 home fires. That’s affecting more than 2,000 people,” Murray says. “We’re thankful to our volunteers who get out there and help those people, whether it’s finding them some temporary accommodations, giving them some blankets and snacks, something to take care of them, trying to help them as they sit there and sift through and figure out what their next steps are.”

Murray says Red Cross home fire responses spike nearly 20-percent nationwide during the holidays, when families face increased risks of fire. “That continues to be where we do see most of our time spent in the disaster response world, it’s those home fires that are happening every day, and not just single home fires, apartment fires happen, too,” Murray says. “This is that time of year when people are inside more, they’re cooking more, they’re using heating supplies more, they’re using space heaters or starting up their fireplaces more. That’s when we oftentimes see that pickup.” In an effort to prevent more home fires, the agency installed more than 16-hundred free smoke alarms in Iowa this year, and checked the batteries in hundreds of existing smoke alarms.

KJAN file photo

“People didn’t know they didn’t have them or, ‘I have them, they’re there,’ but then when we went and checked them, they didn’t work,” Murray says. “We want to make sure we are able to have those, that you have working smoke alarms. Those are really lifesavers — if they work. We want to make sure we have those available and anybody who needs it or wants us to check it, go to redcross.org, find out how you can have someone come out and help you with that.”

This holiday season, Murray urges Iowans to visit redcross-dot-org to make a financial donation — or to give back through volunteering.

(Griswold, IA) – The Griswold School Board continued discussion Monday evening (Dec. 15th), with the possibility of a four-day school week. Superintendent Dave Henrichs told KJAN News the Board heard from a committee selected to explore the proposal.

Henrichs said it was difficult for the committee to respond to all of the Board’s questions.

At the end of lengthy discussion, no action was taken, because the Board wants more, in-depth research and answers.

Until the stakeholders have more of a concrete idea on what the schedule of a four-day week would look like, it’s hard for them to say whether they would be in-favor of it or not. Dave Henrichs said what it comes down to, is that the likelihood of a four-day school week is becoming less and less of a possibility right now, and it would most likely not be in the picture for the 2026-27 school year.

In other business, the Griswold School Board elected new officers for the 2025-26 school year.

Superintendent Dave Henrichs said two members of the 2024-25 school board who chose not to run for re-election this past November.

The board welcomed two new members and a returning board member, during their meeting, Monday evening.

(Radio Iowa) – An Iowa-based author, folklorist and photographer is releasing a new book that chronicles life on the Mississippi River during the 20th century though the words of a commercial fisherman. Sherry Pardee, of Iowa City, says “Back Them Days – Reflections on a Life on the Mississippi River” tells the story of the late Clinton “Bus” Downs, who lived in the tiny river town of Meyer on the western-most tip of Illinois, and his life revolved around the river.

Pardee says, “Bus was one of those special people that you meet in life that you realize, this is an exemplary human being, and someone who’s just lived honorably, lived well, and just has done amazing things with their life in a way beyond what normal people do.” Bus was a third-generation fisherman, born in 1915. As a boy, he was nicknamed Buster, which was shortened to Bus, and that’s the name everyone knew him by. Pardee says she’s spoken with fishermen “way up north on the Mississippi” who know of Bus, respected him, and consider him a legend.

“He was almost like a Daniel Boone figure,” Pardee says. “He would trap and hunt with his father when they weren’t fishing. He and his father would trap and hunt from Canada all the way down to Mississippi, way beyond what the normal fisherman or hunter would do.” Pardee first met Bus in the summer of 1987, when the Illinois Arts Council hired her to survey traditions of commercial fishermen on the Upper Mississippi, and she repeatedly returned over the next four years to record his fascinating stories. “Back Them Days” is largely told in Bus’ own words. “Bus had a great sense of humor,” she says, “was very philosophical, tells great stories of big hauls of fish, game wardens, floods, people that were traveling up and down the river, stories of giant catfish.”

Pardee’s black-and-white photographs add a timeless element to the pages. In the 1930s, prior to the locks and dams on the Mississippi, Bus told how the river was about 100 feet deep, while often now it’s only about six feet deep. Over the decades, Bus witnessed the pollution caused by chemical runoff from farms, and how the fish population fell. He moved to Quincy, Illinois, after the flood of 1993 devastated Meyer, and died in the Quincy Veterans Home in 2008.

(Red Oak, IA) – A man from Mills County and a woman from Montgomery County were arrested Monday afternoon, in Red Oak. According to the Red Oak Police Department, 36-year-old Christopher Lee McDaniel, of Pacific Junction, was arrested for Violating a Protection Order, and, 28-year-old Priscilla Marie Cline, of Red Oak, was arrested for Aiding and Abetting the Violation of a Protection Order.

The pair were taken into custody a little after 3-p.m., Monday in the 100 block of N. 2nd Street. They were being held in the Montgomery County Jail on $300 bond, each.

(Radio Iowa) – Iowa First District Congresswoman Mariannette Miller-Meeks joined the House Republican leadership as they introduced their version of a healthcare bill Monday. The Republican from Ottumwa says the bill includes provisions that would allow small businesses and self-employed workers to more easily purchase health care together.

“This bill puts patients and their doctors over the profits of insurance companies. The Democrat solution is to continue riding taxpayer funded blank checks to large insurance companies,” Miller-Meeks says. Miller-Meeks says there needs to be an alternative to extending the tax credits paid out under the Affordable Care Act. Democrats favor the extension.

“It hides the fact that premiums are going up by shifting who pays for those increase in premiums rather than getting to the root cause of actually lowering healthcare costs,” she says. “We want to make the, you know, all Americans, families and patients, the C-E-O’s of their own healthcare decisions.” Miller-Meeks says the Republican House plan would also require pharmacy benefit managers to share more data on the actual cost of prescription drugs.

“Just the transparency alone what the fees are, where the fees go, what the rebates are, what the list price of a drug…I think transparency is the first step in that, but it’s not the only step,” she says. Miller-Meeks is running for re-election. The

Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee spokesperson Katie Smith released a statement that says “Mariannette Miller-Meeks has spent her entire year attacking Iowans’ health care, from voting for the largest Medicaid cuts in history that will decimate rural hospitals, to opposing plans to prevent Iowans’ health care costs from skyrocketing. Now, Miller-Meeks has made herself the face of Washington Republicans’ so-called ‘plan’ that does nothing to lower costs, and Iowans will hold her accountable for failing them next year.”