Moving soon to “Extreme”? Volunteer firefighters are standing by to heighten the alert from “High” to “Extreme” if the potential for wildfires worsens around Taylor in Jackson County. Caution has been encouraged with campfires and even outdoor grilling — and also industrial operations like the Badger Mining pits across U.S. Highway 95. Image: Steve Lunde

Red Flag fire warning for northwest counties

SUPERIOR, Wis.  —  State foresters posted a Red Flag warning for five northern Wisconsin counties where almost countless small wildfires have broken out. Firefighters responded to more than 130 wildfires in the past week. These were mostly in Burnett, Douglas, Sawyer and Washburn counties. This means that a confluence of high temperatures, low humidity, gusty winds and dry forest fuels can result in catastrophic fires. So far the fires have been small and easily contained. The largest, the Swiss Complex Fire in Burnett County, consisted of two fires that came together and burned 60 acres and one structure. In southwest Wisconsin, the Warthog Fire in Juneau County burned 130 acres. Homes were evacuated in the Mather area of Kingston township, population 280.

WINONA, Minn. – A Wisconsin driver whose blood-alcohol tested at 0.09% was booked for driving drunk. Evan John Fuller, 20, of Nelson, had been stopped about 1:15 a.m. near Fifth and Huff streets. At 0.09%, his blood was carrying about 15% more octane than the law allows.

WINONA, Minn. – A Twin Cities driver was booked for intoxicated driving after a citizen complaint about burn-out stunts near the Hiawatha Valley Mental Health Center on East Sarnia Street. Logan Daniel Fletcher, 22, of suburban Ramsey, was arrested about 10:25 p.m.  Officers said that Fletcher refused a test for blood alcohol but showed impairment symptoms: Bloodshot eyes, slurred speech, instability on his feet, and awkward dexterity. He also smelled drunk, officers said.

Baseball: UW-LaCrosse 4, Bethany io Minnesota 2

Softball: Saint Mary’s 3, Simpson 1

MINNEISKA, Minn. – During a traffic stop a Winona County deputy determined that the driver was not only drunk but had three children, all under 10, in the car. Adrian Phillip Schoen, 39, of Hudson, Wisconsin, was arrested. The children were released to the care of their grandmother.  The arrest was about 7:40 p.m. on Highway 61 at Minneiska, 15 miles upriver from Winona. A chemical test found Schoen’s kevel of impairment was 0.23%. That blood-alcohol measure is almost three times more than the break point into inebriated driving.

Schoen. Charges include thee counts of child endangerment.

Investigation in progress. The collison was just east of I-90 exit 242 into Lewiston on Conty Road 29.  Image: Andy Frank

Head-on collision across median strip

LEWISTON, Minn. – Two drivers were killed in a collision on Interstate90 at the high bridge over Rush Creek. Killed instantly:

> Hadley Edwin Thompson, 83, of Pine Island.

> Warren Russell Hacker, 70, of Appleton, Wisconsin.

A passenger in Hacker’s vehicle, Patricia Rose Hacker, 71, also of Appleton, was taken 34 miles to a Rochester hospital. She was in critical condition. The accident was about 3:30 p.m. near the Enterprise rest stop. State troopers said that Thompson, in a 2022 Buick Enclave, was headed west toward Rochester. For reasons not immediately known, Thompson lost control and crossed the grass median into the oncoming Hacker vehicle The Hackers were eastbound toward Wisconsin in a 2023 Toyota Rav4. Pavement on both directions of four-lane I-90 was dry.

ST. CHARLES, Minn. — A 12-gauge shotgun was reported missing, possibly stolen, from a home southeast of St. Charles. A sheriff’s investigator was told the weapon was last seen in September but not missed until recently. A man said his grandson had leaned he gun against a building while unpacking from a day of duck hunting. Shortly thereafter, not seeing the gnn, the grandson assumed that a hunting companion had put it away for him. Now, nine months later and not finding the gun anywhere, the grandfather notified the sheriff. This was about 1:30 p.m. in the 11000 block of County Road 35. The gun now has been added to a national registry of missing guns in case it shows up in a pawn shop or a gun swap or a crime.

WINONA, Minn. – Police want to know who made two false emergency calls to an apartment in the 750 block of East Belleview Street.  Police found nobody home. They contacted the tenant. She was at work and said that she was unaware of the calls, that she was OK, and that her three children were being cared for elsewhere. This was abiut12:30 p.m.

WINONA, Minn. – A volleyball champion at Winona State 20 years ago, Jennifer Flowers, appointed the university’s athletics director. Most recently lowers has been athletics director at Southwest Minnesota State in Marshall. .  As Winona State athletic director she succeeds Eric Schoh, who resigned for a corporate job in selling school sports upgrades and turfs. Flower’s salary is $150,000. At Southwest her athletes averaged grades of 3.31 on a 4.0 sale last fall — a point she emphasized in on-campus Winona interviews. Flowers was at Southwest three years. Her career has been built around sports:

> Commissioner for the Western Collegiate Hockey Association, 2019 to 2022.

> Historically the largest sponsorship deals for the hockey league’s championships.

> Assistant commissioner for membership

> Created the Northern Sun women’s coaches symposium.

> Created the Northern Sun Elite 18 award.

> Member if the NCAA Division II Management Council.\>

> Assistant to the associate athletic director in college at the University of Minnesota.

> Assistant women’s basketball and volleyball coach at Simpson College in Iowa.

 > Twice a Northern Sun all-conference honoree and thrice all-conference choice at Winona State.

She holds a University of Minnesota master’s degree in education, recreation and leisure. At Winona State she earned a degree in high school math teaching.

Earlier: Corporate job lures Schoh as WSU sports chief

Earlier: WSU’s head football coach mantle to Curtin

Flowers. First female at Winona state to oversee both men’s and women’s programs. Age 45.

TREMPEALEAU, Wis. – Fire destroyed an old timber railroad bridge over Tank Creek on the Great River State Trail. Because the remains were unsafe to traverse, the state Natural Resources Department installed barricades at both ends. Bikers and hikers now can go olky halfway on the 16-mile trail between Trempealeau and Onalaska. The route has 21 such low bridges through the marshlands and swamps of the Trempealeau River delta into he Mississippi. The state hopes to have the span replaced by snowmobile season.

Origins of the fire haven’t been determined. The fire occurred overnight and was hidden by a dense forest canopy. Image: Wisconsin Natural Resources

Atop a porch lantern. Her first two chicks are hatched. A third is still incubating under mama’s wonderfully warm belly. The lantern has been a nesting site for generations of robins. Image: Steve Lunde

WINONA, Minn. – A Winona driver, Austin Blaise Halbakken, age 29, was charged with drunken driving after a traffic stop on the Near West Side about 1 a.m. Halbakken had been failing to maintain his lane, said the arresting officer. The officer said he then smelled alcohol from the vehicle. Halbakken’s inebriated state was confirmed by his glassy eyes, mumbled speech and roadside sobriety performance, the officer said. This was near Sarnia and Olmsted streets. A jail test found Halbakken’s s blood-alcohol at 0.14%, approaching double the legal limit. Records showed this was his second DWI arrest.

Softball: Saint Mary’s 5, Husson 2

MINNESOTA CITY, Minn. – Social media chatter about animal cruelty at the Hidden Valley trailer court prompted sheriff’s officers to check it out.  Reportedly a man was trapping cats in coil-spring metal traps and killing them. Deputies walked the neighborhood but found no traps. This was about 6 p.m. The accused man denied the stories.

ROLLINGSTONE, Minn. – A hay bale caught fire, apparently from spontaneous combustion, and destroyed three outbuildings. The blaze was a serious grass fire by the time firefighters arrived. This was about 5:20 p.m. on Whitman Deering Road north of Rollingstone off State Highway 25. No injuries were reported. Firefighters called for reinforcements as strong winds, with gusts of 6o mph, spread flames out of control. It was not until four hours later that most fire crews cleared the scene. First-responders, including a brush fire unit, responded from Altura, Lewiston, Kellogg, Minnesota City and Rollingstone. At dawn the smoke still lingered in the air as far as 14 miles away in Lewiston. The fire was at 21000 Whitman Deering Road.

NOTE TO READERS: Photos are welcome as email attachments at winonajournal.com

Black smoke obscures a forested slope. Strong winds in weather forecasts are worrying firefighters. Image: Superior National Forest

Forests vulnerable after unusually dry winter 

FAIRBANKS, Minn. – A hotshot firefighting team from Tennessee arrived to help battle three giant wildfires in parched northern Minnesota. So far 37,000 acres have been ravaged. Some 140 structures, mostly seasonal cabins, have been destroyed. There have been no fatalities. Residents have been ordered to evacuate. Many roads are closed to facilitate forestry crews and their equipment. The fires all are in the Minnesota Arrowhead:

> Jenkins Creek Fire (near Fairbanks, population 10 year-round): fire at 15,570 acres.

> Camp House Fire (near Brimson, population 40 year-round): 14,980 acres.

> Munger Shaw Fire (near Cotton, population 60 year-round)): 1,700 acres.

The fires are separated by many miles. A convergence seems unlikely. There are dozens of lesser wildfires in the state. The only southeast Minnesota wildfire has been at Log Deck a few miles west of Frontenac in Goodhue County at less than an acre.

Remote but not unpopulated. The largest fires are in St. Louis County, which stretches from Duluth 140 miles north to Canada.

MINNESOTA CITY, Minn. – A Hidden Valley woman told investigators that she was bamboozled out of $2,000 in an online scheme. She said her computer screen froze, followed by instructions to call for a fix. She did — and was told to buy gift cards and call back She did — and provided numbers from the gift cards to unlock her screen. A day later, realizing she had been scammed, the woman called the sheriff.

WINONA, Minn. – A Winona driver whose blood-alcohol level tested at 0.15% was charged with drunken driving. Curtis Andrew Harrison, age 31, had been stopped about 1:15 a.m. for speeding at 40 mph in a 30 zone at Fifth and Fairfax streets on the Far West End. The vehicle’s interior smelled of alcohol, the arresting officer said: Also Harrison’s eyes were bloodshot and watery and his speech slurred. He failed field sobriety exercises, the officer said. At 0.15%, his. blood-alcohol was almost twice what law   permits.

Spilled ammonium nitrate. Impact dissected truck’s trailer, but the cab was already across the tracks. The rig was heading into Nelson from Minnesota. Clean-up took six hours.  Image: Buffalo County sheriff

Witness: Driver ignored crossing gates

NELSON, Wis. – The truck driver whose trailer was sliced in half by a Burlington Northern train escaped injury. So did the two-person crew in the locomotive cab. Sheriff Michael Osmond said his investigation was incomplete. A witness, he said, reported the trucker had driven through flashing lights and crossing gates – right into the train’s path.  Sheriff Osmond identified the driver only as 65 years old and from Durand, 16 miles up the Chippewa River from Nelson. The semi-trailer was hauling 224,000 pounds of the nitrogen-rich agricultural fertilizer. Crews spent six hours sweeping up the mess. Traffic was blocked on U.S. Highway 25 across the Mississippi River to Wabasha in Minnesota.

Fertilizer profile

Ammonium nitrate, a white crystalline salt, is highly explosive during manufacture. Thousands of workers died in factory explosions before government regulations were established. It remains a tool of choice for terrorist attacks such as the 1970 Murrah federal building explosion in Oklahoma City. It is inert in agricultural applicatoons as a water-soluble fertilizer. although should should be kept away from combustibles. In typical farm use it’s not hazardous to human health.