Flatwater Free Press

The exterior of Davis Global Center in Omaha, where the National Quarantine Unit is located. Photo courtesy of Nebraska Medicine

Flatwater Explains: Why are hantavirus patients in Omaha?

Destiny Herbers

Wednesday, May 20, 2026

As passengers prepared to disembark from a hantavirus-stricken cruise ship, public health officials announced 18 American citizens would soon be returning to the U.S. But they were not headed home or to a major hospital on either coast. They were going to Omaha.

A monument to the students who attended the Genoa U.S. Indian Industrial School stands in Genoa, Neb. Photos by Rebecca S. Gratz for the Flatwater Free Press

For Subscribers

At Nebraska's Native American boarding school, search for child graves and closure continues

Jessica Wade

Tuesday, April 8, 2025

Carolyn Fiscus knows where her aunt, Mildred Lowe, spent her final days.She knows the 12-year-old Winnebago girl became gravely ill in the winter of 1930 at the Genoa U.S. Indian Industrial Boarding School. She knows Mildred died.She does not know where her aunt was buried.

Water resources technicians Josh Schnitzler and Connor Baldwin, who both work for the Lower Elkhorn Resources District in Norfolk, prepare to test the water in a monitoring well near the north fork of the Elkhorn River in 2022. A recent stateled effort to test private wells in Nebraska found 15% had nitrate levels above what the Environmental Protection Agency considers safe. Photos by Ryan Soderlin for the Flatwater Free Press

WATER WORRIES

Yanqi Xu

Wednesday, February 19, 2025

In 2023, nearly 29,000 households scattered across rural Nebraska received postcards instructing them how to get their drinking water tested, free of charge, for a harmful contaminant state policymakers have been aware of for decades.