Gazette Daily News Briefing, October 24
This is Stephen Schmidt from the Gazette Digital News Desk, and I’m here with your update for October 24, 2023.
It'll be the hottest day of the week Tuesday, but there will also be a chance for rain. According to the National Weather Service there will be a high of 80 degrees Tuesday in the Cedar Rapids area. There will be a chance for scattered thunderstorms mainly between 3 pm and 4 pm, and it will be breezy, with wind gusts reaching as high as 35 mph.
Clouds will gather throughout the day and there will be a 30 percent chance of precipitation during the day and a 90 percent of precipitation Tuesday evening.
Citing deterioration of several more support beams, the Cedar Rapids school district announced Monday it has closed the domes at Taft and Harding middle schools, displacing students and staff from the buildings’ gyms, cafeterias and performing arts classrooms.
The two middle schools were constructed in 1965 using the same design that features two domes. On Oct. 11, school officials announced the evacuation and closure of Taft’s east dome after an inspection found it was unstable.
The domes will remain closed until repairs can be made. Raker Rhodes Structural Engineering, one of the companies working with the district, will have a structural repair plan ready to present to the district “as soon as possible,” according to the email notifying parents of the closure.
Until the domes can be reopened, the district is working to acquire portable buildings to provide additional classroom space at Taft. At Harding, classrooms will be rearranged to open up space for lunch, performing arts and PE classes.
A motorcyclist was severely injured in a crash that caused a traffic backup Monday afternoon in southwest Cedar Rapids.
The motorcyclist was taken to a hospital with potentially life-threatening injuries, according to Cedar Rapids police.
The crash happened at Third Street SW and Wilson Avenue SW — close to Wilson Middle School — at about 1:20 p.m., police said. The motorcyclist had been traveling east on Wilson Avenue and crashed into a vehicle traveling north on Third Street SW. The driver of the other vehicle was not injured.
Neither the motorcyclist nor the driver of the other vehicle were identified by police.
Over 10 percent more passengers traveled through The Eastern Iowa Airport in September than in the previous record-setting September before the pandemic struck.
The previous September record was set in 2019, with 107,049 total passengers at the Cedar Rapids airport. This September, the number jumped to 118,085. That’s also 22 percent greater than a year ago in the same period.
Airport Director Marty Lenss said in a statement that the strong passenger traffic is promising as the holiday travel season approaches.
