A healthy addition to community
Flathead Valley residents can tour Kalispell Regional Medical Center’s new surgical center this weekend and see firsthand what $42 million buys these days in the way of new surgical space and equipment.
Tours are from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturday and 1 to 4 p.m. Sunday.
The new four-level surgical tower does much more than alter the skyline on Buffalo Hill. Its eight operating rooms, 18 same-day surgery beds, 18 post-anesthesia care beds, two endoscopy and two fluoroscopy procedure rooms, plus a shell for 30 future patient beds and shells for four more operating room, is a sizable addition and further positions Kalispell as a regional center for health-care services.
The new center has 11,404 tons of red iron, 138 tons of rebar and more than 100 miles of electrical wire and took 20 months to build.
KRMC’s surgical tower greatly expands the medical care that will be available here, and it also gives the Flathead an economic boost as more people travel here for their health-care needs. It’s a great addition to our community.
TSA has got to be kidding!
So, after a decade of incrementally banning items from airplanes and becoming obnoxiously intrusive with passengers, the Transportation Security Administration now wants to open airlines up to small knives, souvenir baseball bats and hockey sticks.
Really?
How much longer do we have to deal with this schizophrenic “security agency” that can’t seem to catch real threats to airlines but can manage to offend passengers in so, so many ways.
Because of the way the TSA has operated, the traveling public is pretty well trained not to bring along things that might be threatening. But now we should add a layer of confusion to the terminals by allowing items that clearly could be used to harm others?
The TSA ought to bag its new policy and concentrate on providing security with as little confusion and interference as possible.
A pope of historic firsts
With a new pope comes new hope.
Catholics around the world as well as non-Catholics welcomed a new pontiff Wednesday when an Argentine cardinal became Pope Francis.
He is already being called “the pope of many firsts” for a variety of reasons, including that he is the first pope from the Americas, the first Jesuit pope and the first one to name himself after the saint of Assisi.
This new Francis ascends to the church’s top spot with a simple, humble demeanor like that of his venerated namesake. We hope that will translate into an effective connection with the 1.2 billion Catholics worldwide.
The new top prelate has his hands full with myriad challenges both in his church and the world, and we wish him well.
Editorials represent the majority opinion of the Daily Inter Lake’s editorial board.