Author: KMIZ

Matthew Sanders

The showdown over the flashpoint Strait of Hormuz continues into another week as the end of the current, temporary ceasefire draws near.

On Sunday, the United States announced that it had seized an Iranian ship, while the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps said it had once again closed the strait to shipping. Meanwhile, the U.S. Navy continues its blockade of ships heading into Iranian ports.

And a ceasefire that has somewhat eased tensions over the past two weeks is almost over.

Do you think a lasting deal can be reached to open the strait this week? Let us know by voting in the poll.

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Alison Patton

COLUMBIA, Mo. (KMIZ)

The Missouri Department of Transportation is scheduled to shut down the U.S. 63 northbound on and off ramps at Grindstone Parkway in Columbia on Monday, according to a MoDOT press release.

The closure is expected to last until the end of June while crews work to build the on and off ramps to the new northbound loop, according to the release.

The portion of East Haven Road after the Grindstone ramps and Lenoir Street will also remain closed during construction for electrical work, drainage improvements, roadway reconstruction and new traffic lights on New Haven Road, according to the release. The road is expected to reopen when the U.S. 63 ramps open as well.

Columbia resident Randy Nichols tells ABC 17 News he is worried it will create traffic.

“It’s probably going to cause a lot of traffic in other areas until they get finished, so it’ll probably be a while,” Nichols said. “If it’s for improvement, I’m all about it. I guess you have to get through the storm to get to the calm.” 

He also lives near the St. Charles road overpass, which was demolished about a week ago. Nichols said it now takes him an extra seven to eight minutes to get to work because he can’t cross the bridge anymore.

Interstate 70 is also undergoing construction as MODOT works to widen the highway to three lanes in both directions from St. Louis to Kansas City as part of the Improve I-70 project.

University of Missouri student Leighton Morris occasionally makes the trip back home to St. Louis and takes I-70 the whole way. He said the construction can make driving difficult.

“It’s like one lane the whole way, pretty much, but sometimes it’s better, sometimes there’s two lanes,” Morris said. “It’s super tight, I swear. I keep thinking the semis are going to hit me every single time.”

Ashland resident Kaz Hazel said she hopes the construction and everything that comes with it will turn I-70 into a faster road.

“Hopefully, it helps to make it a lot faster with the roundabouts and everything that they’re creating. It looks really cool from the stuff I’ve seen,” Hazel said. “It is very much chaotic right now, where we’re getting the backups on Broadway and all.”

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Jessica Hafner

The National Weather Service in Springfield on Monday confirmed a third tornado in Morgan County following Friday night’s severe weather. This tornado brings the total to five between Benton and Morgan counties, with surveys being done farther east in Callaway, Cole, Boone, and Moniteau counties by NWS St. Louis.

The survey team confirmed a pair of tornadoes that touched down in Morgan County shortly before 8:00 p.m.

An EF-1 tornado with maximum winds of 90 mph struck north of Gravois Mills, where several trees were uprooted, two out buildings were damaged, and a home lost a window. The tornado was about 300 yards wide and traveled for about 2.6 miles.

Another short-lived EF-0 tornado tracked north of Barnett, producing winds of up to 85 mph. It traveled for about 1.3 miles and had a width of 150 yards. Meteorologists found tree damage and bent metal rods that were sheltering hay bales.

The team confirmed a third, short-lived EF-0 tornado northwest of Gravois Mills that had wind speeds of up to 80 mph and found uprooted trees and damage to a barn along McCasland Rd.

The team was out on Monday working to finish surveys in Benton County to potentially extend tornado tracks and confirm more wind damage.

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Olivia Hayes

COLUMBIA, Mo. (KMIZ)

Columbia Police was on the scene of a crash involving two cars at the intersection of Elm Street and Providence Road in Columbia.

The road was partially blocked off for about an hour Sunday night.

CPD Sgt. Matthew Nichols told an ABC 17 News reporter on scene the crash happened around 6:20 p.m. Sunday. The intersection was partially closed off shortly after.

Nichols said one person was taken to a local hospital from the scene, but would not say the extent of their injuries.

At 7:05 p.m. the road was still facing a partial closure, but according Nichols police expect it to be cleared and fully opened back up shortly.

Check back for updates.

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Olivia Hayes

COLUMBIA, Mo. (KMIZ)

Route K in Boone County opened back up about 20 minutes after being closed due to an accident between a car and a motorcycle.

First responders were called around 5:40 p.m. Sunday to the area of Route K. One lane of the road was closed down shortly after. An ABC 17 News reporter saw crews clear the road and open it back up shortly after 6 p.m.

Missouri State Highway Patrol Sgt. Kyle Green tells ABC 17 News the extent of the injuries from the crash are unknown at this time.

Check back for updates.

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Marie Moyer

COLUMBIA, Mo. (KMIZ)

State and local governments will be given one more year to update their websites and apps to match requirements of the Americans with Disabilities Act following an extension by the Department of Justice.

The Department of Justice announced the initial order on April 24, 2024. Local governments with a total population of 50,000 or more were required to make web and mobile applications compliant with the ADA by April 24, 2026.

Effective April 20, 2026 the new deadline will be April 26, 2027. Local governments with a population of 50,000 and below will also get a deadline extension from April 26, 2027 to April 26, 2028.

The requirement falls under Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act. The title focuses on the nondiscrimination based on disability in state and local government services. This includes how local governments communicate with people with disabilities. This also includes all public entities within the local government like county departments and public school districts.

Accessibility improvements are intended to support people with a broad range of disabilities, including visual, auditory, neurological, and physical conditions.

Visual accessibility improvements may include increasing text spacing and using sans-serif fonts to enhance readability. Governments may also adjust color contrast to ensure text stands out clearly against backgrounds. Websites are also recommended to avoid relying on colors like red and green for buttons or links that may be hard to distinguish for color-blind users.

Visually impaired users may also use screen readers, which read website pages to the user. These often follow the page from top to bottom and rely on a clear website order and headlines.

“It’s doable, it’s not impossible, but it’s really, really difficult,” Julie Brinkoff, Project Director of Great Plains ADA Center said. “By adding this one thing, all of a sudden you just change the ability for someone to go through a document easily, to find content, to go back and review content.”

Other additions include making websites friendly for keyboard users who do not use a mouse and including an option to add more time when filling out forms. Alternative text may also be added to describe images on a website through screen readers.

Brinkoff adds that when training organizations in following ADA guidelines, online forms often have many errors.

“When you’re having difficulty with a form or a form can’t be submitted, there should be a pop-up or some type of way that the user is informed that there is a difficulty and what that difficulty is, how it can be remediated,” Brinkoff said. “Think again for the blind user who’s getting no information and, you know, they don’t have a way to even know if the form went through or what’s going on.”

The Boone County government tells ABC 17 NEws website accommodations are moving along smoothly. According to the last U.S. Census from 2020, Boone County has a population of over 183,000. They were initially notified of the updated deadline on April 17.

“It’s a continual effort to make these improvements,” Boone County Southern District Commissioner Justin Aldred said. “When we implement these changes for ADA, it also makes things better for the wider group of users and the community at large that uses it.”

Aldred adds that many changes, like descriptive text, are also helpful for rural residents with limited internet.

“This is something that we want to make really, really good for our users because ultimately for a lot of people that live across the county, this may be their first time interacting with local government,” Aldred said.

The Boone County Government reports to have been working on overall website improvements since 2007, focusing specifically on ADA guidelines after the order in 2024. The team has updated around 455 web pages.

Aldered adds that the changes have not resulted in additional costs, just extra hours for those working on Boone County Government websites.

“We have our local government here with 13 independent elected officials, all sorts of individuals that have different offices, different goals, different objectives,” Aldred said. “Ultimately we have a wonderful I.T. team that supported them and putting changes together and making sure that everything is up to date.”

With the additional time, Boone County’s current plan is to manage how the county’s website interacts with third-party products.

“Just making sure that everything talks to each other properly and that everything works as it should,” Aldered said.

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Marie Moyer

COLUMBIA, Mo. (KMIZ)

Strong winds and heavy storms Friday night left thousands without power and caused one house to catch on fire.

On Saturday morning, the Association of Missouri Electric Cooperatives’ Statewide Outage Map reported over 2,000 people in Morgan County without power.

Gravois Fire Protection District Chief Dustin Hancock reported that crews responded to around 10 weather-related incidents, including vehicle crashes, blocked roads and downed powerlines.

This included a house fire just north of Gravois Mills after a nearby tree was struck by lightning, catching a house on fire at around 6:40 p.m. Friday.

An ambulance was sent to a nearby station to shelter as six GFPD fire personnel moved to the basement of the home they were responding to. Crews used a ventilation fan and oxygen tanks to manage smoke when inside the home.

The two residents inside the home were able to escape safely, taking shelter at a nearby residence. The storm picked up at around 7:15 p.m. as crews were putting out remaining hotspots of the home.

“I haven’t had to do that in my career up until this point,” Hancock said. “We kind of talked about it and said like, ‘Hey, we can’t leave, we’ve got too much going on here still, and we’re not confident that the fire’s out, so what we’re going to do is we’ve got a full basement here.'”

There were no reported injuries from fire crews.

Following the storm, local dispatch was also overwhelmed with calls, leading to Hancock routing non-life-threatening emergency calls to his own phone to dispatch teams while area command handled more critical calls.

“We set up an area command post here across the street, utilized a Sunrise Beach as a mobile command trailer, so that was super helpful,” Hancock said. “It took some load off of our dispatch center, because they were dealing with Stover and Versailles and everybody else around us.”

Residents in Stover were also cleaning up Saturday as more than 600 residents saw outages starting around 8:30 p.m. Friday.

Ameren crews were seen by ABC 17 News in the area starting Saturday morning, with workers expected to continue operations through the night after several trees fell on power lines in town.

“It sounded like a train almost, and then it was just about five minutes, you couldn’t see nothing, it was real, real scary,” Stover resident Tommy Remington said.

ABC 17 News saw several large trees being broken down and collapsed roofs on a few buildings in Stover.

“My boss’s sawmill just down N Road here, it’s upside down and the tire shop, Menning’s Tire over here, the roof got torn off,” Remington said.

Stover Resident Lynette Black was in Versailles with her family when the storm blew through town.

“As we were driving in last night after the storm had passed, it was a very eerie kind of feeling, there was no power in town and everything was very dark,” Black said.

Throughout the day Saturday, Black began handing out water bottles, freshly-grilled hot dogs and snacks to first responders, linemen and other residents in the area.

“We’ve been without power since about 8:30 yesterday evening,” Black said. “So nobody is able to cook meals for themselves and this is a way that community members can come and have something that’s warm to eat.”

Black adds that community members often come together in times like these following storms.

“We have a very tight knit community and everybody’s always pitching in to help each other,” Black said. “People have come from other towns and are helping just clean up, I’ve had people from neighboring towns in Cole Camp and Versailles drop off chips and cookies and water.”

According to Ameren’s website at around 8:45 p.m. Saturday, power in Stover is expected to be restored by 9:30 p.m. Ameren officials however, tell ABC 17 News work is moving slower than expected with multiple downed trees in the area.

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Jessica Hafner

The National Weather Service in Springfield has confirmed two tornadoes touched down around Warsaw in Benton County Friday night.

Severe weather spanned the entire region, with these two tornadoes touching down and lifting between 7:23 p.m. and 7:26 p.m.

An EF-1 tornado with winds of up to 90 mph tracked east across the northern side of Warsaw for a little over two and a half miles, stopping near Highway 65. It had a width of about 300 yards and flipped multiple mobile homes that were sitting on cinder blocks. Several trees were uprooted and snapped. Meteorologists who surveyed the damage noted that the damage likely extends farther southwest and northeast, and there are plans to go back and examine more of the track.

A second EF-0 tornado was caused damage to building on Highway 83 and Highway MM southeast of Warsaw. There was heavy tree damage in this area, and further surveying is also planned for this track. The maximum winds were recorded at 80 mph, and the tornado’s width was around 200 yards.

As of 9:00 p.m. Saturday night, there were still a few hundred to 1000 customers without power in the region stretching toward the Lake of the Ozarks.

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Olivia Hayes

COLUMBIA, Mo. (KMIZ)

The Warsaw R-IX School District will be closed Monday due to storm damage clean up, according to a social media post from the district.

The district said no students or staff were hurt on school campuses.

District staff may access the South Elementary building if needed. The school district said it hopes to resume classes on Tuesday.

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Ryan Shiner

COLUMBIA, Mo. (KMIZ)

Columbia Public Schools announced in a Friday press release that Douglass High School Principal Eryca Neville has been named the district’s executive director of alternative education.

Neville has been the principal at Douglass High School since 2011 and was a teacher in the district before, the release says. She serves with the Heart of Missouri United Way, Heart of Missouri CASA, the Flourish Initiative, the release says.

The release says the new position “is designed to strengthen the district’s ability to support students with diverse academic, behavioral, and social-emotional needs through a comprehensive and aligned K–12 alternative education model.”

“The position will enhance coordination of services, ensure compliance with state and federal requirements, and improve student outcomes through focused leadership, data-driven decision-making, and strong partnerships with staff, families, and community agencies,” the release says.

Exact salary information for Neville’s new role was not announced on Friday, but Board of Education documents indicate it is classified as “professional support staff” with a Grade 9 salary schedule, ranging from $136,917.76 to $201,149.76.

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