A week has passed since Hurricane Florence made landfall and Louisiana first responders are still assisting in water rescues in South Carolina. Kevin Barnhart has the story.
Cut 1 (29) “I’m Kevin Barnhart”
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A 2015 incident where a McKinley High School Band member went to a Baton Rouge hospital after he was ordered to do 200 push-ups for being late to band practice ends with a 185,000 dollar settlement. Matt Doyle has more.
Louisiana’s unemployment rate worsened for a fifth straight month and reached five percent in August, but the number of people employed last month was the second highest number for a August in the state’s history. Louisiana Workforce Commission Director Ava Dejoie says any rise in unemployment can be attributed to a decline of jobs in the hospitality sector.
Dejoie says manufacturing continues to see the biggest job gains as that sector added 54-hundred jobs over the last year and there’s been an increase in the number of jobs related to the oil and gas industry
Dejoie says Baton Rouge and New Orleans metro areas saw the largest job gains, and chemical plant construction activity in the Lake Charles area also led to 2,600 new jobs over the last year….
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It’s been a week since the landfall of Hurricane Florence on the east coast. Although some have come back to the Bayou State, first responders from Louisiana are still in South Carolina helping with the aftermath of the storm. State Fire Marshal Butch Browning says the building collapse groups have been sent home.
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Browning says the Louisiana crew is made up of fire departments from New Orleans, Baton Rouge, Shreveport, and Monroe areas as well as Fire Marshal employees that assist in logistics.
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Browning says dozens Louisiana emergency personnel are in Horry County, South Carolina, helping local authorities and first responders with evacuations as waters continue to rise from Florence.
Browning says their deployment ends Tuesday, but could be extended.
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Saturday is National Hunting and Fishing day, a celebration of all things outdoors. As the Sportsmen’s Paradise, Louisiana has an interest in promoting the day, with events in four cities across the state. Delhi Senator Francis Thompson says a good time to remember just how much outdoors activities contribute to state coffers.
Thompson says the great outdoors supports tens of thousands of jobs, from the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries, to private hunting and fishing retailers.
The national event was first started in 1972 as a way to appreciate hunters and anglers contributions to conservation. Thompson says that’s certainly the case in Louisiana, as license fees along with excises on hunting and fishing equipment are the major drivers behind state conservation funding.
The events will be held in Baton Rouge, Haughton, Woodworth, and West Monroe.
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A former McKinley High Marching Band member was awarded 185,000 dollars for damages related to a 2015 incident where he required to do 200 push-ups. The incident led to a five day stay in the hospital for Tristen Rushing due to his urine turning coke colored. Rushing family attorney Sean Fagan says that’s because the hyper exertion caused Rushing’s muscles to begin to die.
Medical professionals who saw Rushing testified the injuries were potentially life threatening.
He was required to do the pushups in 15 minutes, about 13 push-ups a minute. Fagan says the band director pressured his client into pushing himself too far as a punishment for tardiness…
Fagan says the Rushing family hopes the settlement and public reaction to the event will send a message to other schools about disciplinary policies. He says in particular he hopes it sparks a policy shift from McKinley High administrators, who Fagan says backed the punishment at multiple levels.
The administration argued that the risk of injury was not reasonably foreseeable.