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Woman, 83, dies in mobile home as tornado strikes northeast Missouri

By MEREDITH RODRIGUEZ

The Kansas City Star

Missouri officials say one person was killed this evening in the northeastern part of the state as violent weather, including a tornado, struck the area.

The victim was an 83-year-old woman. She was killed in her mobile home near Milan in Sullivan County.

More severe damage happened near and in the northern part of Kirksville. Three people were moderately injured when a gust of wind overturned their car, pinning them inside. Other people were trapped in their basements, according to Susie Stonner of the State Emergency Management Agency. Flash-flooding and various minor injuries were also reported.

Thirty to 40 homes were damaged in the Bob White area of Kirksville, city police said. At a car dealership, windows shattered, vehicles were damaged and a gas leak was reported.

No damage or injuries were reported at Truman State University.

U.S. 63 reopened before 10 p.m. after a gas-line leak and downed power lines caused it to close.

More minor damage was reported elsewhere. To the east in Knox County, two miles north of Edina, trees and power poles snapped across Missouri 15. Damage to structures also was reported in that area.

One shelter opened at a church in Kirksville. A Highway Patrol Command center was also opened in Knox County south of the Kirksville-Edina area, Stonner said.

Storms had mostly cleared from the Kansas City area by 8 p.m. A watch over Cass County is expected to expire by 11 p.m.

Continued severe storms were expected all night, according to Andy Bailey of the National Weather Service. The cold front causing them is expected to move from the northeast to the southeast part of the state.

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I am amazed at how common tornadoes actually are.

UPDATE 13 tornadoes confirmed in the Ozarks from Friday’s storms

SPRINGFIELD — The National Weather Service confirms 13 tornadoes swept through the Ozarks as of Saturday evening.

EF0 (2):

Ebenezer, southeast of Mountain Grove in Texas County

EF1 (7):

Willard, Republic, Fordland, Garrison, north of Peace Valley in Howell County, north of Ava, near Mount Zion.

EF2 (3):

Lebanon, Good Hope and Charity

EF3 (1):

Pamona

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4 dead as heavy storms push through Midwest

By JIM SALTER – 9 hours ago

ST. LOUIS (AP) — Thunderstorms packing winds gusting to 120 mph pounded parts of the Midwest on Friday, leaving four people dead, collapsing a church and knocking out power to thousands, authorities said.

Two people were killed near Poplar Bluff, Mo., when wind knocked a tree onto their car. In Dallas County, a man in his 70s had a fatal heart attack after he and his wife were sucked from their home and thrown into a field 75 to 100 feet away, said county emergency management director Larry Highfill.

The wife was taken to a Springfield hospital. Her condition wasn’t immediately known.

A 54-year-old woman was killed in southeast Kansas when the mobile home she was in was blown off its foundation. Wilson County emergency management spokeswoman Cassandra Edson said it appears the mobile home was “wrapped around a tree.”

Wind in the area reached 120 mph, destroying the New Albany United Methodist Church, the town’s post office and at least one home, authorities said. Major damage also was reported to a high school in Cherokee, Kan.

National Weather Service offices in Springfield, Mo., and St. Louis received multiple reports of tornadoes from one end of Missouri to the other, mostly south of Interstate 44. The weather service sent out teams to determine if tornadoes had touched down.

Many counties reported wind of 80 mph and higher. Several people were hurt, mostly when wind damaged their homes or businesses, but a few from flash floods.

Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon declared a state of emergency.

“My primary concern is the safety of Missourians and this executive order makes state agency resources available to help communities respond to the storms,” Nixon said.

The storm system ransacked southern Illinois as well, peeling siding and roofs off homes and other buildings, blowing out car windows and tearing up trailer parks. About 52,000 Ameren customers were without power around 3:30 p.m., according to the utility company’s Web site.

A truck driver who had to be extricated from an overturned semitrailer was in serious condition after a “major trauma,” said Rosslynd Rice, a spokeswoman for Southern Illinois Healthcare.

About six other patients with minor injuries were being treated at Memorial Hospital of Carbondale, she said.

“It tore the hell out of things,” said Calvin Brown at the Cherry Street Pub in Herrin, a town of about 11,000 residents east of Carbondale. “It was wicked. I haven’t seen that in a long time.”

Carbondale Township Fire Capt. Mark Black said he wasn’t sure if a tornado touched down in his area but the “winds were just amazing. They were howling and the siding on the trailers was flying through the air and there was a pretty hard rain.”

Law enforcement agencies reported tornado touchdowns in the Jackson County community of Raddle and just south of Pinckneyville in Perry County, National Weather Service meteorologist Amy Seeley said.

Seeley said the strong line of thunderstorms began moving through the region Friday morning. Wind gusts in the Carbondale area reached 100 mph around 1:30 p.m., and sustained winds were as high as 90 mph.

Carbondale resident Eric Fidler said he rode out the storm in a basement room with his wife, 22-month-old daughter and their dog.

When they emerged, dozens of large, old trees had been snapped throughout his neighborhood — including an old oak blocking his front door — but there was little damage to homes. Even the cushions on his patio furniture were undisturbed.

“I was talking to a neighbor and saying, ‘This is just incredible. Everywhere I look, there are enormous trees down, but it missed everybody’s house,’” said Fidler, who walked a mile to the hardware store for a chain saw.

David Gugerty, 28, a graduate student at Southern Illinois University, said a tree crushed his car and a branch tore through the roof of his trailer, coming to rest atop his refrigerator.

“I’m sitting in the trailer park trying to decide which way to run,” Gugerty said.

In sparsely populated Dallas County, Mo., seven other people were also hurt as wind destroyed 50 homes. Highfill said all the damaged homes were in the same path, a strong hint that a tornado was to blame.

The storm system left tens of thousands without power, including — at the peak — 60,000 customers in the Joplin area. Hundreds of homes and businesses were damaged or destroyed.

In St. Francois County, 911 director Alan Wells said several people suffered moderate injuries from wind damage at their homes. Roofs were torn off of many homes and businesses. A tractor-trailer overturned on U.S. 67 near Park Hills.

Wind wasn’t the only problem. Many parts of Missouri received 3 inches of rain or more. Flash flooding forced authorities to rescue several people from cars and homes in St. Francois County. Flash flooding also closed roads from Springfield through Cape Girardeau.

In Joplin, strong winds toppled a big section of KSNF-TV’s tower shortly after 7 a.m., crushing a vehicle and damaging two homes. It appeared no one was hurt.

Keith Johnston told The Joplin Globe he was not at home when the tower collapsed, but his wife and two kids were.

“My wife said she heard the wind come up and got the kids into the closet,” he said. “They heard a booming noise and thought the tower fell.”

About a dozen homes in Laclede County were destroyed or had major damage, emergency director Jonathan Ayres said.

“It does look tornadic from the surveys we have done,” Ayres said. “Right now, we’re just trying to help these people salvage what they can before dark.”

Flooding caused widespread problems in Laclede County, shutting down several roads and washing away part of a railroad track.

Dan Wadlington, a spokesman for Rep. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., said roofs were damaged at two high schools near Springfield, at the towns of Ash Grove and Fair Grove. He said Blunt was prepared to seek federal aid if the damage was significant.

Storm spotters said a house in the Springfield area was flattened. An air-conditioning unit was blown off the roof of a Wal-Mart Superstore near Kimberling City, damaging the roof.

Fredericktown, about 85 miles southwest of St. Louis, reported damage to several businesses. Another eastern Missouri town, Potosi, reported baseball-sized hail.

Several communities — Joplin, Buffalo, Willard, Elkland among them — opened shelters for those left homeless by the storms.

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Rain opens up two Springfield sinkholes By: KY3 News

SPRINGFIELD — There are a couple new holes in the ground on Springfield’s northwest side.

All this rain caused two sinkholes to open up along west Division in front of Colorgraphic Printing and just across the street Willard South Elementary.

Greene County’s geologist discovered it’s actually an old sinkhole that has re-opened.

“There’s old foundation material and some remnants of farm machinery down there that have rusted out,” Greene County Commissioner, Dave Coonrod said. “(Decades ago) when you farmed, you had a big hole form-up, people would fill it in. Today, that’s not the thing to do.”

It took down a power pole when the ground gave way, and city utilities worked last night to get that repaired.

MoDOT will further examine the sinkhole Monday but says it doesn’t appear to cause any problems for the road.

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Pit Bulls. Shocker.

Dogs attack several at strip mall, at least 1 injured

COLUMBIA — One pit bull is dead and another escaped after attacking several people at a Columbia strip mall.

Columbia police shot and killed one of the dogs and arrested the dogs’ owner for assault and obstructing police operations.

Both pit bulls got loose in the Grindstone Parkway Wal-mart parking lot near Fudruckers hamburger restaurant.

Witnesses say the dogs attacked several people in the parking lot of a nearby Kohl’s department store.

Investigators have confirmed one bite victim and believe other bite victims have yet to forward.

Police continue their search for a gray pit bull with a white chest, possibly heading for his home at the Columbia Regency mobile home trailer park.

“The other owner that lives at the residence is aware of it,” said Columbia Police Sgt. Tim Moriarity. “They are supposed to notify us. Once we get a call, we will go ahead and go down there and try to, at least, take the dog under control to have it checked out by animal control.”

Investigators say the one confirmed bite victim diverted the attention of the dogs when they were chasing a woman through the parking lot.

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COLUMBIA – Two dogs escaped from their fenced yard off of Nifong Boulevard in Columbia on Wednesday morning.

By noon, they had already made their way to the Walmart parking lot off of Grindstone Parkway, where they proceeded to attack customers.

Bystanders attempted to defend themselves and others from the dogs, while warning others to stay inside their cars or inside the store. A few of those good samaritans sustained minor injuries. One man, Mark Adamson, spent over four hours in the hospital to tend to a leg wound that needed stitches.

Tony Caputa witnessed the attacks in the Walmart parking lot and got in his car to follow the dogs over to the Kohl’s parking lot. He said that he wanted to warn shoppers in the Kohl’s lot about the dogs before it was too late. When he arrived in the parking lot, police officers were already there attempting to seize the dogs along with Animal Control.

Caputa said the owner, 18 year old Dakota Crites, and a friend were also in the parking lot at that point and was trying to talk the officers out of hurting the dogs.

“They were yelling at the officers saying that the dog was just trying to play with them or anything like that but the dog had attacked a couple people in Walmart’s parking lot, so I don’t think that was the case,” said Caputa.

One of the dogs turned on the officer and started charging at him in a violent manner. Columbia Police Sergeant Chris Kelley said the officer the dog was charging at had no choice but to shoot the dog down in order to avoid a violent attack. The police department is not willing to release the name of the officer who fired at the dog until the case is internally reviewed by a professional standards unit.

Caputa said the shooting could not be avoided.

“You could tell when he backed off the first time that he didn’t want to shoot the dog, but he ended up having to do that,” said Caputa.

The other dog ran away from the scene after hearing the gun shots and Animal Control was not able to capture it. Columbia resident Vernon Niles said he is Crite’s neighbor. He spent all day looking for the other dog and finally found him around 6 PM. He said he took the dog to the Humane Society and Animal Control will decide the fate of the dog on Thursday morning.

Dogs Attack Columbia Shoppers

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Pit Bull Attack in Columbia

COLUMBIA - Police detained a dog owner after several people reported two pit bulls got loose near the Kohl’s Department store.

The Columbia Police Department and Animal Control responded to a call around noon Wednesday.

According to police, 27-year-old Mark Adamson, the manager of GNC, suffered an injury to his right calf that is non-threatening. Officers found the victim and the dogs near the Kohl’s store.

An officer shot one of the dogs, killing it, after police say it advanced on him in an aggressive manner. The other dog ran southbound and officers have not located it.

Police detained the owner of dogs, 18-year-old Dakota Crites, and have no determined charges yet. They say there were other reports of victims that have not yet come forward.

According to police, Adamson diverted the attention of the dogs when they were chasing an unidentified woman through the parking lot. Officials say his actions may have prevented other people from being injured.

Anyone with information is asked to submit a tip to the Crimestoppers website at 875tips.com.

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Are cougars returning to Midwest? w/ Missouri mountain lion sighting info

— By Andy Ostmeyer
aostmeyer@joplinglobe.com
Earlier this year, a young Barton County boy reported being attacked by a mountain lion.
“He was knocked off his feet, he claimed, and actually dragged by his sleeve by a mountain lion,” said James Dixon, a wildlife damage biologist for the Missouri Department of Conservation.
It’s Dixon’s job to check on such reports, and this time, the boy also claimed he had managed to stab the animal with a pocket knife.
Both the coat and the knife were sent to a laboratory to test for DNA evidence, but none was confirmed.
Although attacks are rare, Dixon said reports of cougars are increasingly common in Missouri, and they’re also growing throughout the Midwest.
“We get thousands — I’m talking literally thousands — of reports each year,” Dixon said.
Many come after heavy snows when people report finding large tracks, but those almost always turn out to be cases of misidentification: bobcats, dogs and even house cats. 
Still, there have been some positive identifications in Missouri.
“Across the entire state, we have had 10 confirmed mountain lions since 1994,” said Dixon. 
Some mountain lions, which also are called cougars and pumas, may be making their way into the Midwest by migrating from the Black Hills of South Dakota, which has a stable population, or perhaps from west Texas.
A cougar was shot and killed by police in Bossier City, La., in December. In April 2008, Chicago police shot and killed a 122-pound cougar in the city’s North Side. And in 2007, the first documented cougar in Kansas in more than 100 years was killed near Medicine Lodge.
In Missouri, cougars have been hit by cars in Kansas City and Fulton, captured on game cameras, and treed by hunting dogs in one instance. 
The closest to Joplin was a confirmed sighting in Christian County in the winter of 1997, but Dixon said that animal, which was caught on video, was believed to have been a captured animal that either escaped or was released, based on its behavior.
Aside from a small population in south Florida, Texas and the Black Hills have been the eastern boundary of the cougar’s breeding range.
Like Missouri, Wisconsin game managers get scores of reported sightings each year and have to determine which are false.
Only two cougars have been confirmed in the state. The cougar killed in Chicago was seen months earlier in the Milton area of Wisconsin’s Rock County, 100 miles away, in January 2008. 
Ken Jonas, a wildlife biologist supervisor with the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, said the only ways to confirm sightings are with photos, good tracks or other physical evidence. In the case of the confirmed sightings, blood, hair, urine and droppings were recovered.
Researchers learned a lot from the cat that roamed the Milton area for three months before being shot, said Eric Anderson, a professor of wildlife ecology at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point.
“Here’s a cat wandering across the landscape of southern Wisconsin and northern Illinois, a fairly heavily populated area, and nobody saw it,” he said.
Male cougars like that have been moving out from the Black Hills. Anderson said an estimated 20 to 25 young males are believed to leave there each year, looking for females as well as food. Some wander hundreds of miles.
He expects Wisconsin will eventually have resident cougars.
Dixon said the animals are shy and secretive, and rarely seen, let alone confirmed. 
Still, the department takes the reports seriously and will investigate when there is some evidence left behind, such as tracks or a kill. And the prey base has grown in Missouri and other states, which have large deer populations.
“We do know that occasionally a mountain lion does wander into Missouri, but we do not believe we have a reproducing population,” Dixon said. Only one female was identified among the 10 confirmed sightings in the state, and no cubs have ever been found.
Dixon and others say that if their states had breeding populations, they would expect more cougars to be killed on roads and found feeding on livestock, and more evidence would be found in areas where the animals spent time, Jonas said. South Dakota, said Dixon, which has a much lower road density, has a much higher percentage of road kills.
The Missouri Department of Conservation also has established a Mountain Lion Response Team, which goes to sites and collects evidence when a credible report that might offer hard evidence is filed.
Jeff Beringer, large mammal biologist with the Missouri Department of Conservation and a member of the response team, confirmed that sightings are extremely rare, even for biologists and experienced outdoorsmen. He said he has been on tracking teams in New Mexico and has received additional training in the Black Hills, yet, he added: “I have never seen one in the wild.”
The Associated Press contributed to this story.

Last natives
Prior to 1994, the last mountain lion documented in Missouri was in 1927. They were gone from Iowa by 1867 and from Nebraska by 1890. Until recently, they were last seen in Wisconsin in 1908 and in Kansas in 1904.

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Science of sinkholes

Tara Muck
News-Leader

Nixa — It’s just an empty lot now. Any sign of what used to stand there is long gone. Cars pass by without a second thought about what happened nearly three years ago.

The 75-foot deep, 60-foot wide Nixa sinkhole that swallowed up Norm Scrivener’s car, garage and part of his house in August 2006 has baffled geologists. Never in southwest Missouri had such a phenomena occurred in an urbanized area.

After a couple years studying the formation, Missouri State University Professor Doug Gouzie tried to provide some answers to the area’s most infamous sinkhole.

Surprise

The beauty of southwest Missouri’s landscaping also contains very porous rock — limestone.

Limestone, made up of calcium and carbonate, dissolves where water flows because of the acidity in rain water, Gouzie, a geology professor at MSU told a crowd of about 40 last week at a lecture at MSU.

About 60 percent of Missouri is underlain with this rock, which is why the state boasts elaborate caves.

It’s also why sinkholes are so common.

As groundwater moves through the soil over time, top rock is eroded away first and then dirt, leaving a hollow hole in its place, Gouzie said.

Gouzie, who has studied sinkholes for nearly 30 years, said Scrivener’s sinkhole was surprising on a couple levels.

A study conducted by an MSU professor in the 1970s documented about 270 sinkholes in the Nixa Sinkhole Plain, which runs from Missouri 14 north to where James River crosses U.S. 60, Gouzie said. But of those 270 identified, only about 10 were collapsed sinkholes, where the soil actually collapsed in, rather than a gradual sinking.

A gradual sinkhole would have the appearance of a saucer, while a collapsed sinkhole is more thought of as an ice cream cone shape, Gouzie said.

“When you see any collapse that’s significant in size — 15 to 20 feet in diameter — then that’s pretty unusual right there,” Gouzie said. “That’s maybe 5 to 10 percent of the total number that anybody studies is the collapse.”

But it was one missing element that really baffled the geological crew at the site — rock.

Gouzie said the most surprising thing to him and other geologists was there was no rock to be seen anywhere in the sinkhole. Dirt erodes much faster than rock, so if the rock is gone, the soil should be as well.

“We’ve seen some thick soil around here … but for the most part 10 or 15 feet is pretty good,” Gouzie said. “If you have the irregular top of the bed rock, you might get 30 feet of soil somewhere, but to have 75 (feet), it’s probably twice than what we would have expected anywhere.”

Origins

Many times, large sinkholes, such as the one in Nixa, open up to a cave and are formed by underground moving water.

Tests usually performed to find origins of sinkholes weren’t plausible in Nixa, Gouzie said. That’s because Scrivener’s garage, along with his car, went down the hole, making it impossible to run dye into the bottom of the hole and detect it in area springs.

Another way would to be to go through a cave in the vicinity to see where it led. But the cave Gouzie and other geologists feel lead to Nixa’s sinkhole — the Saunders Valley Cave — hasn’t been searched deep enough.

So Gouzie and other professionals made an educated guess that the sinkhole drains out to Blue Spring, northwest of the site near the Saunders Valley Cave.

But while that’s the geological origins, there are also other factors Gouzie feels could have expedited the process in Nixa.

Perfect storm

Because Scrivener’s home was built in 1969, it originally had a septic tank, Gouzie said, which was visible after the garage collapsed into the sinkhole.

If the septic tank leaked even after it was closed off in the early ’70s, it could have helped the erosion process already in play by rainwater, he said.

Also exposed around the sinkhole were tree roots that lead to the stumps of two directly behind the house that had been cut down years earlier. Gouzie said when the tree roots’ water source died because of the trees being cut, the roots eventually shriveled up, leaving more empty spaces.

There was also a rain gutter hose that was placed on the uphill side of the house, which meant rainwater washed sediment down to the other side of the house. It was on the uphill side of the house that the sinkhole occurred, Gouzie said.

That doesn’t mean Scrivener or the builder is to blame.

“I think this collapse was going to happen anyway,” Gouzie said. “Whether it would’ve happened in 20 years or 50 years or a hundred years or a thousand years, that’s unfortunately where I’m still doing research.”

sinkholes today

The hole has been filled — on top of Scrivener’s car and parts of his garage — with 165 truckloads of rock.

Patches of grass grow over the once-hollow ground.

And while homes are still occupied on both sides of the former house, the earth continues to settle over time, causing two small sinkholes to appear.

“When you fill it up like that, there’s usually some settling that occurs the first couple of years,” Gouzie said of the rock that filled the hole.

“What’s happened is the soil that was put on the very top as the very last thing … is still washing down into the rock, and that’s going to happen for a while.”

The idea of that type of formation occurring again in the area is of concern. Could the spring that caused the original sinkhole create another along its path?

Possibly, Gouzie said. But sinkholes are more likely to develop farther down the stream as the water gains momentum. That is why the Nixa sinkhole was so surprising, because it was actually on the ridge of the Nixa Sinkhole Plain.

But planners at the city and county level are using technology to spot sinkholes, such as Ground Informational System, which the county uses, said Bob Atchley, Christian County’s acting planning and zoning administrator.

With this, the county is able to detect sinkholes so development of water and sewer, streets, and buildings can avoid a potential hazard. According to county ordinances, no new construction is allowed within 30 feet of the rim of a sinkhole.

“Any time we have any type of proposal in the county … we do a brief environmental assessment before we issue a permit,” Atchley said. “That starts with looking on the GIS system to see if it shows any mapped sinkholes.”

In Nixa, the city has looked to updated technology to help open up more space for development. The city’s use of a Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR) enabled the city to change its setback ordinance from prohibiting construction 30 feet from a sinkhole rim to 10 feet.

That’s because the GPR is better able to detect the precise location of sinkholes, City Planner Travis Cossey told the board in October when the ordinance was passed.

Still, Gouzie and Atchley both said the best way to prevent a sinkhole disaster is to be vigilant regarding water runoff, as well as look for signs of sinking or cracking in the soil or foundation.

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Missouri’s geology susceptible to sinkholes

Hot Topic – Expert Source

Geology professor hosts public lecture April 13

Date: April 9, 2009
Contact: Dr. Douglas Gouzie
(417) 836-5228
douglasgouzie@missouristate.edu

Dramatic images of a home falling into a sinkhole are fresh in many southwest Missourians minds due to a 2006 incident in Nixa. Dr. Douglas Gouzie, assistant professor of geography, geology and planning at Missouri State University, studies sinkholes and will be giving a free public lecture on the subject Monday, April 13.

Missouri is one of many states where sinkholes are common, which can partially be attributed to the limestone foundation, according to Gouzie. Sinkholes tend to form wherever these carbonate rocks are found (limestone is a common carbonate). Approximately 60 percent of the rock underneath Missouri is carbonate, according to the Missouri Geological Survey, compared to 20 percent worldwide.

“Combining these limestone rocks with Missouri’s moist climate gives us conditions very favorable for forming sinkholes,” said Gouzie. Rainwater, which gains acidity as it seeps through soil and plant roots, actually dissolves the limestone and absorbs the calcium, causing carbon dioxide gas to bubble into the atmosphere.

“Although this is a relatively slow process, over the millions of years that geologists study, this can remove quite a bit of rock. Anyone who has noticed the ‘hard water’ or who has a shower-head that has crusted up with calcium or lime deposits knows that our water usually carries a significant amount of dissolved calcium,” he added.

After the rock has dissolved, a fracture or cave forms, he noted.

“Sort of like a bean bag chair or a down pillow – if too much weight or pressure is put on top of the rock, the empty spaces will be squeezed out. When this happens, the land surface sinks in and we call it a sinkhole. Sometimes it just makes the ground sag in a gentle low spot that develops over the years, while other times, it collapses in all at once – like the one in Nixa,” Gouzie said.

Since the incident in Nixa, sinkholes have gained attention around the area, and Gouzie hopes to help people understand how sinkholes form, how common they are and how uncommon the collapses like the one in Nixa are. His lecture will also include information on warning signs in their own yards that may help them avoid sudden sinkhole collapses or surprise problems.

“Sinkholes are a part of life in southwestern Missouri,” Gouzie said. “There is no particular place I can point to right now and say it is at greater risk than another. I am working on trying to understand what factors might increase the risk – why the limestone dissolves faster in one area rather than wearing away all the rock evenly – and hope to be better able to identify areas at risk.”