Area Briefs

Nordicfest event

tickets available

Tickets for the 2014 Nordicfest Coronation Dinner on Saturday, April 5, at the Veterans of Foreign Wars Community Room are now available.

Persons wishing to attend need only purchase them from the Libby Area Chamber of Commerce, the Venture Inn or from any Nordicfest Committee member.

This year marks the 30th anniversary of Nordicfest.

Baseball signup

comes this month

Little-league baseball registration is scheduled for 4:30 p.m. to 6:30 p.m. Monday, March 17, 3:30 p.m. to 6 p.m. Wednesday, March 19 and 3:30 p.m. to 6 p.m. Wednesday, March 26.

All signups are at Libby Elementary School.  

Starting age is 4 years old by March 30.

Contact Jen at 293-0569 or Joe at 291-5964 for more information.  

Lawmakers seek

flood plan details

BILLINGS — Federal lawmakers from states along the Upper Missouri River asked the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers on Wednesday to disclose steps it’s taking to prepare for potential spring floods as snowpack levels continue to climb in the Rockies.

So far this season, snowpack levels at high elevations in the Missouri River basin are comparable to 2011, when flooding devastated hundreds of thousands of acres of mostly farmland in North and South Dakota, Nebraska, Iowa, Kansas and Missouri.

It’s still too soon to say if the stage is set for a repeat this year. April, May and June historically are some of the wettest months in the basin.

But members of Congress from Montana, North Dakota and South Dakota said in a letter to Army Corps Brig. Gen. John Kem that it’s critical for communities along the river to be prepared.

Air Force copter

rescues two men

MINOT, N.D. — A helicopter crew from Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota came to the rescue of two men stranded in a truck on a flooded road in eastern Montana.

The base says the crew with the 54th Helicopter Squadron had just finished a training flight about midnight Monday when they received the call for help. The four crew members flew to the scene near Savage, Mont., where the men had been stranded by river ice jam flooding for about five hours.

The crew hoisted the two men into the helicopter and flew them to the airport in Sidney, Mont., where emergency medical workers were waiting. The men were fine.

Former physician

assistant sentenced

MISSOULA — A former physician’s assistant who prosecutors said prescribed large amounts of narcotic painkillers to people she knew or believed were addicts or dealers was sentenced to 2.5 years in federal prison.

Kelly R. Etzel of Lolo was sentenced on March 6 by U.S. District Judge Dana Christensen in Missoula.

Between 2006 and 2012, Etzel prescribed controlled substances to patients “without exercising due diligence to ascertain the true nature of their purported maladies,” the U.S. attorney’s office wrote in its sentencing memorandum.

Etzel, 52, was indicted in August on 11 counts of distribution of controlled substances. She pleaded guilty to two counts in December.