Local News from Upstate New York

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Fort Drum Remembers: Housing history.
With all of its history, since 9/11 and before, Fort Drum needed a place to house it all... and someone to take charge. The man who now runs it would have never even considered it - had it not been for 9/11 attacks.

FORT DRUM, N.Y. -- On that day in September, Kent Bolke was serving in the US Coast Guard. He waited and waited until that call finally came…two years later. He would be headed to the 1000 Islands to help install new homeland security measures. And it was on that trip, that he found his future.
"We decided to come down and visit Fort Drum and I saw the statue. I thought man, this is a division that has its history and understands its history. That statue later led me to, when the position came open at Fort Drum, that I decided to become the curator here," said Kent Bolke, 10th Mountain Division & Fort Drum Museum Curator.
The museum has become the place to look back on everything 10th Mountain and Fort Drum, and a whole lot more. The museum hits upon all major time frames in history, including the War of 1812 that brought the Army to the North Country, World War II and even the quiet years that followed. It also features Somalia, Haiti and of course, the current conflicts.
"Then we start to talk about OIF and OEF. Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom. The 10th Mountain Division were some of the early units into both these operations," said Bolke. But Bolke says this museum, isn't just words on a plaque, but rather a trip back in time. "We're not really going to present the overall, this unit went this date and this unit did that mission and such. What we're going to show is what living conditions were like. What equipment did they wear? What did they use throughout history," said Bolke.
It's all about educating the soldier, history repeating itself, learning about the past and mixing in the future. "My mission is soldier education. That is the primary mission of this museum. It's to let soldiers learn from their history. We have exhibits on display right now that talk about IED's and show you captured enemy weapons and give you an idea of what the fight's going to be like when you're there. We're working on an exhibit right now that's actually going to move beyond history and actually show you what you need to expect when you go to the fight," said Bolke.

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York basketball palyer speaks out about former coach.

Mike Falk was relieved of his coaching duties after he was accused of trying to lead a huddle chant of "1.. 2.. 3.. Tourette's." This happened as his team was playing against LeRoy, a district with about a dozen students who recently suffered from mysterious physical tics. As this student told YNN in this exclusive, none of the players thought the joke was funny.
Chris Jackson says it wasn't funny, and after months of dealing with a mystery illness that's hit more than a dozen students, no one in LeRoy was laughing either. When school officials in York heard about the remark, Falk was relieved of his coaching duties.
"I'm sorry for anything he said,” said Chris.
Falk is also an eighth grade math teacher at York. After the incident in LeRoy, parents have been calling on the district to fire him. Some parents have even accused him of bullying their children. "I think he deserves some of the negative attention - this isn't the first time he's screwed up in the past few years."
Chris Jackson says his team did nothing wrong, but the negative attention has had a damaging effect on his teammates. "No, I don't think everyone's gotten past it, but I think they try to bury it deep, work harder and get better," said Chris.
Jackson expected his coach to be a role model; to set a good example. He says Falk let him down. "I expected more of the guy, and I got cut short." Jackson said the new coach has been a "breath of fresh air." The team is starting to play better.
The attorney for the York school board has advised the board that based on the incident in LeRoy alone, there is not a case for termination.

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Miss New York visits hometown to talk bullying.

She represented beauty and grace before the world as 2011's Miss New York. Wednesday, Kaitlin Monte used her crown for another cause. "I believe in being bold. It's okay to wake up in the morning and be terrified that you're not going to get this right. It's okay to go into a test and be scared you're not going to get the grade you want, but don't let that stop you from giving it everything you have," said Monte, to a room full of students. She motivated students at Rochester STEM high school as she spoke about the topic of bullying.
"I thought I was going to be bored but it wasn't like that, I enjoyed it," said Royality Gavin, sophomore. "She's really down to earth,"
Over the next four days, Monte will take her anti-bullying platform to six schools in the Rochester area. "My fight against bullying, my fight to empower young people, is something that comes from me," said Monte. Monte also uses the stage to encourage students through her own non profit she started called Project Empower.
"Project Empower is a non-profit I started this year to help kids increase their scope of the world. We do career readiness, life readiness, we give them hands on opportunity to learn about the world outside of their school walls," said Monte. Monte has until June before she passes along her crown. After that, she says, the confidence that came with it is one she'll continue to promote.
She'll be at East Rochester High School Thursday. Anyone in the community will have the chance to meet Monte and discuss anti-bullying initiatives.

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FLCC hopes wine center will be ready by fall 2013 -- in Geneva or Canandaigua.
One viticulture building, two locations, and coming up with the money to pay for it. That’s the task facing Finger Lakes Community College officials in the months ahead. First up is the decision.
The college is considering two sites — one in Geneva and one in Canandaigua — for a $3.2 million viticulture center, which would include a small teaching vineyard, according to college Pres, Barbara Risser. The center would augment the college’s two-year-old Viticulture and Wine Technology program, which has the potential to be the college’s “number-one signature program,” Risser told the Ontario County Board of Supervisors. “The program has unbelievable potential,” Risser said.
The purpose of the college’s program is to train workers for the state’s 300-plus wine producers, many of which call the Finger Lakes region home. Eventually, Risser said she hopes the program and its graduates have an impact on the quality of wine in the region. The 7,000-square-foot center, which would include a winemaking lab with equipment, storage and classrooms, in addition to the vineyard, would help. But first a decision on location is a must, then seeking a grant through the State University of New York system and raising money through fundraising and donations to match the state funds, Risser said.

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#1056048gfr2ahr4mi#Headlines of Interest for March 12, 2012:

Wild boars with razor-sharp tusks invade upstate New York.

Officials aim to halt their progress, especially toward the six-million-acre Adirondack Park, the largest swath of pristine wilderness in the Northeast.
They roam by night, picking cornstalks clean, making off with apple crops. They have almost no natural predators, but they have razor-sharp tusks and a seemingly bottomless appetite for plants and animals. Their population can triple in one year. They are feral pigs, and while they have long plagued parts of the Southern and Western United States, now they have become a problem in the peaceful Champlain Valley of New York, an agricultural heartland on the edge of the Adirondacks.
Actually, they are rarely spotted. Since they hunt at night and steer clear of humans, few people ever see these pigs. But a pack of them was captured on camera foraging on Bob Rulf’s farm, their eyes eerily aglow in the light of the flash. “I have yet to see one myself,” Mr. Rulf, 82, said. He thought he had a deer problem, but when he dispatched a hunter to take care of them last spring, he learned the more disturbing truth.
Alternately called wild boars or feral swine, the pigs are not the gentle, pink cousins of Wilbur from Charlotte’s Web, E. B. White’s children’s classic. They start to breed as early as 6 months of age, bearing litters of as many as 10 piglets. They carry disease and can be aggressive toward people. They have even inspired a new television series, Hogs Gone Wild, about efforts to hunt them from Hawaii to Alabama. Perhaps most worrisome is their reputation as eating machines: the pigs devour ground-nesting birds and reptiles, fawns and domestic livestock, native vegetation and crops. Feral pigs have already proliferated in parts of western New York. But state officials are drawing a line in the topsoil, so to speak, determined to protect both the agrarian economy and the fragile ecosystem from the nascent herd — or “sounder” in swine-speak, “There’s a real sense of urgency,” said Ed Reed, a wildlife biologist for the state’s Department of Environmental Conservation. “Once the pigs get established, they are very difficult to eradicate completely.”
Hunting the animals is tricky, given their nocturnal nature. State officials have settled on trapping as the best way to capture an entire sounder of swine. To that end, two technicians have been slowly assembling traps on Mr. Rulf’s property — corrals, 30 feet in diameter, in which dried corn and doughnuts laced with Jell-O powder are luring the estimated half-dozen pigs troubling his farm. With each extension of the traps, the pigs here have grown wary, staying away for a couple of nights before returning to nibble the bait. Officials hope that by the end of March, the pens will be finished and the pigs sufficiently acclimated to allow technicians to set trip wires closing the gates. The traps are circular because feral pigs have been known to crowd into the corners of other traps and climb atop one another to escape. <Proving that pigs are among the smartest of animals.> Last year, the state set a similar corral trap too soon, catching only three pigs. After that, none of the others returned to the area, even after the trap was dismantled. “I’ve never worked with an animal this smart,” Mr. Reed said.
Farmers in the region are nervously following the clash between the boars and the bureaucrats. “With all the agriculture here, the pigs have plenty of food,” said Peter Glushko, supervisor of Peru, a town of 7,000 on Lake Champlain, nine miles south of Plattsburgh. “Who knows where they’ll end up? Other farms should be concerned.” Farmers in the region are nervously following the clash between the boars and the bureaucrats. “With all the agriculture here, the pigs have plenty of food,” said Peter Glushko, supervisor of Peru, a town of 7,000 on Lake Champlain, nine miles south of Plattsburgh. “Who knows where they’ll end up? Other farms should be concerned.”

The growing population has a number of origins: domestic livestock and pet pigs that were either released or escaped captivity; Eurasian boars imported for use on hunting ranches; and a hybrid between the two. Some researchers believe that pigs were most likely introduced to North America by Christopher Columbus in the West Indies; American settlers later brought more pigs as livestock. The practice by farmers of allowing pigs to roam on open ranges continued in some states until the 1960s, furthering their expansion into the wild. So far, feral pigs have infiltrated 5 of 62 counties in New York State. They first showed up about a decade ago in neighboring Onondaga and Cortland Counties, and the statewide population is estimated to be a few hundred, according to Justin Gansowski, a wildlife disease biologist with the US Department of Agriculture in Castleton, N.Y.
By contrast, the feral pig population nationwide is a staggering five million, with the animals present in 35 states. Texas, Florida, Alabama and California are among the states with the highest concentrations of pigs, which benefit from warm climates and year-round availability of food.
New York State’s swine population has grown more slowly, possibly because of the cold climate’s impact on litter size. The Peru group, once estimated at 18 pigs, has been whittled by collisions with cars, hunting and trapping. While most pigs weigh between 100 and 150 pounds, one pig captured in Peru was an impressive 300 pounds.
Wildlife managers and researchers nationally are exploring various control measures, from contraceptives and poisons to snares and aerial shooting. Some are even taking cues from the military by employing night-vision equipment and thermal imaging to track and kill the pigs. In New York, the state’s ordinarily strict hunting rules have been relaxed for feral swine. The Department of Environmental Conservation’s Web site advises those with small game licenses to “shoot and keep feral swine at any time and in any number.” Rumor has it that Mr. Rulf’s pigs are descendants of Eurasian boars raised by a local man to sell to hunting preserves, although state and local officials have not confirmed that. Regardless of their origin, officials are not taking chances in halting the pigs’ progress, especially toward the six-million-acre Adirondack Park, the largest swath of pristine wilderness in the Northeast. “They eat everything,” Mr. Reed said. “They’ll eat the understory in a forest and dig up plants by rooting the ground for insects and roots. They compete with wildlife for food. They’re the most destructive mammal out there.”
So all you hunters out there, have at it. I think that with the feral pigs, for once the animals may have a level playing field.

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4 volunteer firefighters shot, 2 killed, in apparent 'trap'

Firefighters Mike Chiapperini and Tomasz Kaczowka tragically lost their lives. Firefighters Theodore Scardino and Joseph Hofstetter were also shot. A trauma specialist at the University of Rochester, who says the two are in critical condition. An off-duty Greece police officer, John Ritter, was also hurt by shrapnel.

Authorities say that around 6 a.m., crews were called to a house fire on Lake Road in Webster, which is just east of Rochester. While they were fighting the fire, someone started shooting at them, possibly with a semi-automatic weapon. Police believe it may have been an ambush. "It does appear that it was a trap for responding, you know, first responders. Causative reasons, we don't have this time," said Webster Police Chief Gerald Pickering.

The fire spread to four other homes. 33 people were evacuated. No word yet if any of those neighbors were hurt. Police say that William Spengler, a 62-year-old convicted felon, had apparently set a trap for them. He was found dead at a nearby beach. Police haven't confirmed if he shot himself.

Despite being shot, one of the injured firefighters was able to flee from scene under his own power. But the others remained pinned down on the narrow strip of land between Lake Ontario and Irondequoit Bay until a SWAT team arrived. As police closed in, Spengler took his own life with a gunshot wound to the head, Pickering said. Spengler spent 17 years behind bars for manslaughter after the death of his grandmother, Rose Spengler, in 1980.

After the shooting, the fire grew to engulf at four homes and one motor vehicle. Another four homes were damaged. “These firemen are part of our family. You go into a fire with these guys. To see them go down with something like this is totally unexpected. We are in shock,” Billy Gross, fire commissioner for West Webster, told the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle.


Spengler could not legally own firearms, because he was a convicted felon.