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WEDNESDAY • JULY 6 • 2011
Athlete claims 4 medals in Greece
City seeks answers on SRS shutdown
2 injured in west Lawrence fire
By Andy Hyland ahyland@ljworld.com
Lawrence’s accomplished Special Olympian Brady Tanner can add another title to his list of achievements: world champion. Tanner, a powerlifter, traveled to Athens to compete in this year’s world games and took home the gold in the dead lift, lifting 522. 5 pounds; gold in the bench press, lifting 335.5 pounds; and silver in Tanner the squat, lifting 495 pounds. He also earned another gold medal for his combined total in all three categories, which equaled 1,353 pounds. Danny Lenz, a program coordinator for Special Olympics of Douglas County, said he had heard from Tanner’s relatives, who were traveling in Greece, and said they were “just ecstatic.” “Brady is the happiest person I’ve ever met in my life,” Lenz said of the athlete, who frequently jokes around with coaches and teammates. “But then he gets into powerlifting mode, and I’ve never seen anyone more focused or serious, either.” Members of the public can greet Tanner as he arrives home from Greece today at Kansas City International Airport. He is scheduled to arrive with his Kansas and Missouri teammates at 11:30 a.m. on Southwest Flight No. 3751. Lenz said he was planning a separate welcome-home celebration for Tanner in Lawrence, but the details hadn’t yet been set. Donna Zimmerman, senior vice president of communications for Special Olympics Kansas, said Tanner represented Team USA well. “We’re just delighted with how the Kansas delegates performed,” at the world games, she said. — Higher education reporter Andy Hyland can be reached at 832-6388. Follow him at Twitter.com/LJW_KU.
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By Karrey Britt kbritt@ljworld.com
in 15 minutes, Bradford said. Ted Faucher was treated at the scene for his injuries and then taken to LMH for observation, where he was doing f ine, according to Ted DeBoard, his son-in-law.
Local legislators are planning a public forum — possibly next week — about the Kansas Department of Social and Rehabilitation Services’ decision to close the Lawrence office. SRS announced Friday it was restructuring its offices statewide, a process that will include merging six regions into four, and closing nine offices to save money. It said the employees will be reassigned to neighboring offices, including the 87 in Lawrence. By far, the Lawrence office is the largest on the closure list. SRS did not respond Friday or Tuesday to the Journal-World’s request for information about the number of cases at the Lawrence office. The agency TODAY also did not respond to about Gov. Sam Browna dozen other questions. House Democratic leader back will discuss his Paul Davis, D-Lawrence, and first six months in Sen. Tom Holland, D-Bald- office during a news win City, also want answers conference today. Brownback, a about why Lawrence was Republican and former picked. “We need to understand U.S. senator, took the scope of the caseloads. office in January after How much work is really a landslide election there and can it really be sup- victory in November. At the 11 a.m. news ported by redirecting them to other offices?” Holland conference in his ceresaid. “I want to make darn monial Statehouse sure that those caseloads are office, Brownback will not going to be interrupted.” be joined by Cabinet The outcry over closure of secretaries and the local office — SRS pro- agency executive vides a variety of services for directors. low-income children and families, as well as for people with disabilities — has been intense, Davis said. “I’ve certainly gotten a lot of phone calls from people who are upset,” he said. “There is widespread concern about this.” Tuesday, District Attorney Charles Branson described the closure as potentially devastating. “It sure seems like there’s intent here to make Lawrence an unlivable community,” he said. His office works closely with SRS. For example, SRS workers help interview children who may be the victims of abuse or neglect. Those interviews play an integral part in deciding whether his office can file charges. “This doesn’t just fall upon children of low social economic groups. This covers a broad spectrum of children who could be abused and neglected for various reasons,” he said. Branson said his office hasn’t been contacted by SRS. “There’s just a ton of things right now that are in limbo for us,” he said. “We really don’t have any idea and nobody has even bothered discussing with us what the implications of these things mean.”
Please see FIRE, page 4A
— Health reporter Karrey Britt can be reached at 832-7190.
Richard Gwin/Journal-World Photo
A LAWRENCE FIREFIGHTER works the scene of a house fire Tuesday in the 1100 block of Cynthia Street. See the video at LJWorld.com.
House significantly damaged By Jonathan Kealing and Mark Fagan jkealing@ljworld.com, mfagan@ljworld.com
A fire in a west Lawrence home caused “significant” damage and sent two people to Lawrence Memorial Hospital
with minor injuries, Lawrence Fire Chief Mark Bradford said. The fire at the home of Ted and Ola Faucher was reported about 3:25 p.m. A second alarm, or a request for additional manpower and units, was called. Firefighters had the blaze under control with-
Populations around American nuclear power plants soar By Jeff Donn Associated Press Writer
BUCHANAN , N.Y. — As America’s nuclear power plants have aged, the once-rural areas around them have become far more crowded and much more difficult to evacuate. Yet government and industry have paid little heed, even as plants are running at higher power and posing more danger in the event of an accident, an Associated Press investigation has found. Populations around the facilities have swelled as much as 4.5 times since 1980, a computer-assisted population analysis shows. But some estimates of evacuation times have not been updated in decades, even as the population has
This series This is Part Three of a fourpart series looking at the aging nuclear facilities in the United States. Part Four will examine how the nuclear industry has rewritten crucial safety rules. increased more than ever imagined. Emergency plans would direct residents to flee on antiquated, twolane roads that clog hopelessly at rush hour. And evacuation zones have remained frozen at a 10-mile radius from each plant since they were set in 1978 — despite all that has hap-
Please see NUCLEAR, page 2A
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pened since, including the accidents at Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima Dai-ichi in Japan. Meanwhile, the dangers have increased. More than 90 of the nation’s 104 operating reactors have been allowed to run at higher power levels for many years, raising the radiation risk in a major accident. In an ongoing investigative series, the AP has reported that aging plants, their lives extended by industry and regulators, are prone to breakdowns that could lead to accidents. And because the federal government has failed to find a location for permanent storage of spent fuel,
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COMING THURSDAY We’ll tell you about plans for a community bicycle ride that’s on tap for next week.
IN THIS DEC. 16, 2009, FILE PHOTO, reactor containment domes of the Indian Point nuclear power plant in Buchanan, N.Y., rise above nearby houses. Populations around nuclear plants have soared since 1980, making effective evacuations unlikely in many once-rural emergency planning zones.
Vol.153/No.187 26 pages
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