The Columbine is a colorful Rocky Mountain flower so favored by First Lady Mame Eisenhower that Ike adopted it as the name for "Air Force One" before anyone had a name for the President’s airplane.

More recently, Columbine High School in Jefferson County, west of Denver, was the site of the most tragic high school killing spree in U.S. history.  Since then, Jefferson County has become a lot better at emergency management.   Its SWAT teams went to another county a couple years ago when another gunman took over a high school.

Today a nine member emergency response team is 230 miles south, taking over for local officials who had been working nonstop since state environmental health officials put the town of Alamosa, Colorado, on a bottled water order due to a Salmonella outbreak.   Now the pressure in on to notify everyone that come 9 a.m. Tuesday morning, the public water system won’t be good for much more than flushing toliets.

Meanwhile,  the Denver Post is reporting that the number of people down with salmonella has gone over the 200 mark.  That story can be found here.