Gazette Daily News Briefing, February 2
This is Stephen Schmidt from the Gazette digital news desk and I’m here with your update for Thursday, February 2.
Thursday will feature some of the continued warmth of the week while declining in the brief return to cold to come on Friday. According to the National Weather Service there will be increasing clouds in the Cedar Rapids area, with a high near 25 degrees. On Thursday night it will be cloudy as well, with a low of around -8 degrees. Wind gusts could blow as high as 25 mph.
A man was found dead Wednesday afternoon when firefighters responded to a fire at a southwest Cedar Rapids hotel, authorities said.
Emergency crews were dispatched to the Rodeway Inn, 4011 16th Ave. SW, at 4:20 p.m. Wednesday, according to a news release issued by Cedar Rapids public safety communications specialist Mike Battien.
Crews found heavy smoke coming from a single room at the hotel, the release states. Inside the burning room, they found the man, who was dead. His cause of death and the cause of the fire are under investigation.
One room in the hotel sustained substantial damage, but the rest of the building had only minimal damage, authorities said. Guests who were evacuated will be able to return to most of the hotel when the investigation is complete.
Iowa head football coach Kirk Ferentz anticipates “no changes to our staff moving forward” despite the Iowa offense ranking among the worst in the country in 2022.
“We do have a terrific staff, and I thought they did a great job last year in tough circumstances,” said Ferentz, who finished his 24th season as Iowa’s head football coach.
Most notably, that means no plans to part ways with Brian Ferentz, the offensive coordinator and Kirk’s oldest son.
Iowa athletics director Gary Barta, technically Brian Ferentz’s supervisor to comply with university nepotism rules, reaffirmed Kirk Ferentz’s comments Wednesday.
“The plan right now is for all of the staff to be intact,” Barta said at the Hansen Football Performance Center following Kirk Ferentz’s news conference.
Iowa Republican U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley is back to work this week at the U.S. Capitol after undergoing surgery Jan. 11 to repair a fracture in his hip.
The 89-year-old appeared Wednesday in a wheelchair at a Senate Agriculture Committee. Arkansas Republican U.S. Sen. John Boozman, ranking member of the committee, said “Grassley made a great effort to be here.”
On a conference call with reporters afterward, Grassley said he “did a stupid thing” while in the kitchen of his Washington, D.C., town house to injure himself.
“It didn’t work and I fell and broke my hip,” he said. “Three weeks ago today I had an operation to fix it, and that’s it.”
Grassley said he is on the way to a full recovery and never missed a vote in the Senate since the injury. The senator’s office told The Gazette that he is having his routine post-op physical therapy appointments in the U.S. Capitol so he can continue his work.
