UPDATE: Both firefighters sustained fractures and will need some time to recover, but they have been released from the hospital.
Early Sunday morning at 1:19 a.m. the Cedar Rapids Fire Department were dispatched to Westdale Court Apartments in southwest Cedar Rapids after a reports of smoke alarms going off and smoke in the kitchen of an apartment.
According to a media release from the city, when firefighters arrived to 3919 20th Avenue SW, they found a moderate amount of smoke in the stairwell leading to the second floor of the two-story complex. A fire crew then entered the apartment and began combating the fire but lost water pressure in the hose line. Around the time of the lost pressure, at 1:35 a.m, there was a catastrophic failure of the hose line that caused blunt force trauma resulting in serious injuries to two firefighters that were outside of the structure. One firefighter was struck in the head and rendered unconscious , while the other was struck in the chest an
COVID has taken so much
Darcy Havel-Sturdevant rubs her eyes while taking a break before a telemedicine appointment as her three-year-old daughter, Rayne, picks out books to read at their home in Iowa City on Thursday, Feb. 4, 2021. (Andy Abeyta/The Gazette)
Darcy Havel-Sturdevant makes a medical appointment on the phone while waiting for her neurologist to sign in to her telemedicine appointment as she sits on the couch with her husband Gabe, three-year-old daughter Rayne and their dog Sabrina at their home in Iowa City on Thursday, Feb. 4, 2021. Havel-Sturdevant averages two or three different doctor’s appointments a week now, usually done virtually. (Andy Abeyta/The Gazette)
In all likelihood, Iowans were simply scared into taking the virus more seriously. The experts I spoke with said they saw more people wearing masks in grocery stores and shopping centers as autumn turned to winter. Iowans stayed home more during the state’s fall surge than they had in September, and they remained there through December and early January, according to SafeGraph, a company that collects cellphone-location data. Road traffic decreased from October to November, and stayed steady, instead of increasing, through Christmas and New Year’s, Jeff Von Brown, a spokesperson for the Iowa Department of Transportation, told me. “It looks like people did heed advice” not to travel, he said. (Winter weather may have also played a role.)
The new study tools Disparities in remote learning grow
Across 13,000 public school districts:
60% of K-12 students in the U.S. started the 2020-21 school year fully remote.
20% of K-12 students started school with a hybrid remote/in-person class schedule.
Black and Hispanic students are more likely to be learning remotely:
69% of Black students learn remotely; 16% learn in hybrid models, 14% learn in person.
71% of Hispanic students learn remotely; 13% learn in hybrid models, 14% learn in person.
49% of white students learn remotely; 26% learn in hybrid models, 25% learn in person.
Student achievement assessment from fall 2020, sample by Curriculum Associates i-Ready Platform:
Students learned only 67% of the math and 87% of the reading that grade-level peers would have typically learned.
February 5, 2021
Iowa City, Iowa Iowa’s largest hospital used its entire week’s allotment of COVID-19 vaccines in a single day.
Wednesday was the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics’ first day of inoculating people over 65. Hospital CEO Suresh Gunasekaran says the quick rollout of one-thousand doses shows the Iowa City medical center is ready to scale up as vaccine supplies increase.
(As above) “Soon as we get the doses, we have the capability in this community to get that in people’s arms within a day or two,” Gunasekaran says. “Even if the number is 1,000 or 2,000 or 3,000, we really feel like we could do that in a single day.”