Serving Gogebic, Iron and Ontonagon Counties
Serving Gogebic, Iron and Ontonagon Counties
By RICHARD JENKINS
Hurley — The Iron County Board of Supervisors Finance Committee approved a request from the sheriff’s department for donations to two groups that assisted with the December search for a missing Iron Belt man.
The committee on Thursday approved a $500 donation to the Sawyer County Sheriff’s Department canine unit and $1,000 to Headwaters Search and Rescue as a thank you for the members of the organizations volunteering their time to help with the search for Alan D. Kangas.
Iron County Sheriff Tony Furyk praised the groups’ contributions to the search effort.
“They were a key ingredient in finding (Kangas),” Furyk said, adding volunteers came from all over the state, as well as other states, to assist with the search effort.
Headwaters, specifically, is an all-volunteer effort, Furyk told the Daily Globe after the meeting.
“They are very good at Headwaters, they are. I mean they do this all the time,” Furyk said. “I can’t give enough praise to those people for what they did. They drove up here from the south end of the state, from Minnesota, (from) Illinois, and they come up and donate their time.”
Kangas, 68, went missing Dec. 11, kicking off a multi-agency search of the area near his Iron Belt home.
The search, which included a number of K-9 units and around 80 community members, was called off Dec. 13 when Kangas’ body was found in a wooded area less than one mile from his home.
An autopsy determined hypothermia was the cause of Kangas’ death, according to Iron County Coroner Diane M. Simonich.
In other action, the committee:
—Agreed to keep the person who cleans the county forestry and highway departments as a contracted employee. The committee felt since the person only works a couple hours a week, it wasn’t enough to justify making the position a county employee.
—Approved $8,400 for law enforcement software.
