Month: June 2021

Friday will be our hottest day of the year so far, with temperatures into the upper 90’s and heat index readings as high as 100 to 109 across southwest Missouri.

A Heat Advisory runs through 7 p.m. Friday, covering all of the Ozarks.

The National Weather Service says the maximum heat index in Springfield should reach 105 Friday.

Forecasters say it will still be hot this weekend, but a few degrees cooler with heat indices around 100 or less (looking at a heat index of 95 on Saturday in Springfield).

There will be only slight chances for rain through the weekend.

To ensure you stay safe in the heat, you’re asked to limit outdoor activities, drink plenty of water, avoid alcohol, wear light clothing, wear sunscreen while outdoors in the sun, and work outdoors early or very late in the day.

Duck boats won’t be back on Table Rock Lake this year.

Branson Duck Tours, who planned to return the controversial vessels to Table Rock Lake for the first time since the July 2018 Duck Boat incident where 17 people died, posted on social media they won’t be able to open this year.

“As is common with new businesses, we have met some unexpected delays during this process,” Branson Duck Tours posted on Facebook.

The company says they want to be “fully prepared” to provide a “fun and safe” experience and so they will not begin operations until 2022.

The United Way of the Ozarks is having not one, but two “days of caring” in 2021.

The organization encompassing a number of charities in the Springfield area cancelled last year’s event because of the coronavirus pandemic.

The first event is taking place Thursday, with a second “day of caring” set for September.

More than 500 community members are volunteering their time painting buildings, cleaning, and gardening.

There are 92 projects volunteers are working on around Springfield.

The Springfield-Greene County Health Department has launched a new web page with an interactive map allowing residents to find their closest source for a COVID-19 vaccination.

The map will allow users to search their home or work address against a number of criteria including vaccine type and clinic setting such as a community health event or pharmacy. Clinics hosted by the Health Department or area hospitals are also going to be included on the map.

“This is a great resource for people to access vaccine close to where they live or work,” Acting Director of Health Katie Towns said in a statement. “With variants circulating in our community and greatly impacting individuals who are not vaccinated, it is vital that people seek vaccine as quickly as possible. Opportunities are available daily.”

The map is currently limited to Greene County.

The searchable map is available through THIS LINK.

The Highway Patrol has pulled 35 gambling machines from a business in the Plaza Shopping Center at Sunshine and Glenstone in Springfield.

Troopers got a search warrant and confiscated the machines from Lucky Lynn’s Internet Cafe.

They believe the machines may be illegal.

Several other businesses in the shopping center had apparently complained about the gambling machines.

Police in Springfield say a teenager with an airsoft gun caused alarm at the Battlefield Mall on Monday.

A group of teenagers entered the food court and one of them had an airsoft gun.

It’s unclear if the gun was fired, but employees and customers were alarmed by the sight of it.

Mall security asked the teens to leave, but they refused, so police were called in to hold them until their parents arrived.

An email leaked to the website Reddit shows that Mercy is having troubles with their transition to outsourced diagnostic testing by Quest Diagnostics.

Mercy verified the validity of the letter from CEO Lynn Britton to staff that was posted online Saturday. The letter states that “you are all acutely aware that since the conversation of our outreach lab service to Quest, we have experienced numerous service failures impacting our patients.”

The letter goes on to say that there are three major issues:

• Technical or data interface failures between Mercy and Quest;
• Staffing shortages at draw sites and different ways patients must sign in and register that result in poor customer service;
• Confusion about workflow changes.

“I realize the poor execution of this transition has placed you in very difficult situations with Mercy patients,” Britton wrote.

KWTO reached out to Mercy about the letter, and was sent the following statement:

We recognize the challenges that our patients have endured with the transition of Mercy’s outreach lab services to Quest. Initially, we found our electronic health record was not sending physician orders for lab tests correctly. While we had successfully tested the physician order interface before the transition, it did not work as intended when it counted for our patients. The interface is working correctly now, physician orders for tests are successfully reaching the appropriate lab and Mercy and Quest continue to work together to resolve previously unanticipated changes in staffing and workflows.

Once we complete this work, patients will experience the benefits Mercy sought through this transition: to lower the costs of lab testing for our patients, provide additional locations for lab services in many communities and providing patients and their doctors with the high-quality testing they desire.

Here is the original letter as posted to Reddit:

College of the Ozarks is appealing their dismissed lawsuit against the Biden administration to the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals.

The school believes a recent directive from the Biden administration to HUD will require the school to allow situations like men living in women’s dorms, and using women’s shower facilities and restrooms.

“We will not let a radical executive order or agency directive strip us of our core religious values and force us to allow members of the opposite sex to infiltrate our women’s dorms and showers,” College of the Ozarks President Jerry Davis said in a statement. “The Biden administration overstepped the boundaries of our constitutionally protected religious freedoms.”

The school is being represented by the Alliance Defending Freedom who said in a statement it’s unconstitutional to force religious schools to violate their sincerely held beliefs on issues such as sexuality.

“President Biden is punishing religious schools, organizations, and churches simply because of their beliefs about marriage and biological sex,” ADF Senior Counsel Julie Marie Blake said in a statement. “Schools like the College of the Ozarks are free to follow the faith tradition they represent. That’s why we are asking the 8th Circuit to halt enforcement of this unconstitutional directive while our lawsuit proceeds.”

A Cassville woman is dead after dry drowning at Table Rock Lake on Sunday.

The Missouri State Highway Patrol says Leah Moss, 50, was swimming in the lake and then said she started to feel sick. She was taken to a nearby fire station where she began to show the signs of dry drowning: coughing, chest pain, trouble breathing, extreme fatigue. She was pronounced dead soon after arrival.

While the term “dry drowning” is not medically recognized, the term has been applied to someone who dies because of water in the airways but not the lungs. The water causes spasms in the vocal cords, which then close and block breathing.