Bottom of the News… Friday, February 20, 2009

Good morning my fellow Rotarians. Well today we have some real news from the past couple of weeks. Our first story is from…

Syke, Germany: Where a fire station was destroyed – it burnt to the ground, along with all six of its fire engines worth $3.4 million. Investigators are unsure whether faulty wiring is the culprit, or if the firefighters themselves are to blame by leaving food cooking on the stove. The station was empty when the fire broke out because the firemen were away for the day at a training exercise. The station was only 15 years old; it had replaced the previous building, which was also lost to a fire. Investigators did discover two things that were missing in the building… It did NOT have fire sprinklers or smoke alarms!

Santa Rosa, CA: After a long heated debate with his wife, Arloween, about not liking the cold weather in northern California, Ed Barney, age74, decided he would run away from home heading to Arizona. He left town by walking on the southbound railroad tracks, and didn't bother to take any money or even a cell phone. After three days his wife finally figured out that maybe Ed wasn’t coming back so she filed a report with the police and they were able to track him down thru his ATM withdrawals. Ed was found in Eugene, OR, several hundred miles north of his home town. Police didn't detain him, because he had done no wrong, but they did report back to his wife that he had purchased a bus ticket to Utah, where he was going to visit his children. Of course Arloween never thought that Ed was serious in all of this, so as the local reporter described her, she was CLUELESS. She should have known that Ed, apparently a typical guy when it comes to asking for directions. He was not ask, especially his wife. And their local paper best described the somewhat happy ending for this couple by saying… “CLUELESS and AIMLESS are Reluctantly Reunited!”

Moenchengladbach, Germany: An unidentified 39-year-old man lost his keys and he was pretty sure he had accidentally tossed them into a public trash bin with some papers. Unfortunately, the top of the bin had a narrow opening and was welded so it could not be removed easily. The man however was able to fit his head and an arm into the opening, but he got stuck. Someone walking by saw him and called the fire department for help. Firefighters could not remove him from the opening, but they were able to widen the hole and then shoved him the rest of the way into the trash bin. From there they proceeded to cut off the top of the bin with a torch, which took another 30 minutes before they could rescue the man from the bin. A dirty, but smiling face emerged, happy that he had finally found his keys... in his pocket!

And that is the Bottom of the News for Friday, February 20th, 2009!
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