Gladbrook-Lincoln Ambulance Director Kern Kemp, left, and Gladbrook Fire and Rescue Chief Matt Koester, right, pictured recently with their departments’ respective $10,000 donation checks from MidAmerican Energy. PHOTO COURTESY OF CRAIG SASH

GLADBROOK – In the wake of a highly successful wind turbine safety training that took place this past August in the Vienna Wind Farm’s footprint south of Gladbrook, MidAmerican Energy has made separate donations worth $10,000 each to two local first responder groups.

Gladbrook Fire and Rescue along with Gladbrook-Lincoln Ambulance both recently received a $10,000 donation check from MidAmerican, Vienna Wind Farm’s operator.

“We did not apply for the money,” Craig Sash, lieutenant and training officer for Gladbrook Fire and Rescue, told the newspaper of the donations. “[We] were not expecting it either but greatly appreciate it!”

While Sash said Gladbrook Fire has allocated its donation toward the department’s truck replacement fund in hopes of purchasing a new rescue truck in the near future, he was unsure just yet how Gladbrook-Lincoln Ambulance planned to utilize the donation.

Roughly 30 of Vienna Wind Farm’s turbines are located in Gladbrook’s territory. Last August, MidAmerican and Mortenson Wind Energy in cooperation with the University of Iowa’s Air and Mobile Critical Care Service (AirCare), Tama County 911, Gladbrook Fire and Rescue, and Gladbrook-Lincoln Ambulance participated in safety training in and around a wind turbine southwest of Gladbrook following the farm’s repowering (upgrading) project.