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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (June 4, 1980)
! llti ie 'Messed | j ed his visi ^in a quatj shotth twasloatj Inn Mold 'ghly fom, ■' ite with ids from . butthei The Battalion Vol. 73 No. 158 12 Pages Wednesday, June 4, 1980 College Station, Texas USPS 045 360 Phone 845-2611 You bet we're fragile! Drfo« This vocal kitten is letting the world know he and his littermates are just what the box says ... “Fragile.” Senior Virginia Jee was giving the kittens away outside the Memorial Student Center during Monday’s summer school registration. staff photo by Lee Roy Leschper Jr. Sinkhole just keeps opening up’ ite in ft ers. FeJ' channel, phiccon- requency jhTretile with the United Press International KERMIT — An ever-widening hole big- r than a football field yawned in a pasture ear the city today, filling with water and otentially dangerous gas and oil, some of it :om a collapsed Shell Oil Co. pipeline. The hole, which was 100 feet in diameter hen first reported to the Winkler County leriffs office Tuesday morning and had rown to 150 yards long and 80 yards wide y nightfall, threatened other pipes, owerlines and a state highway, authorities said. It’s bigger than a football field,” said wriffs deputy Jack Harwell. “The crazy ring just keeps opening up. Sinkholes, which periodically open up in ie oil-rich Permian Basin, are believed by ientists to be the result of earth tremors caused by the collapsing of underground caverns left when oil is pumped out. Harwell said one geologist at the scene Tuesday told officers the sink hole was on the site of an old lake. Local residents, however, said the the site was a “buffalo well” drilled in the early 1970s that came in violently, destroying the well housing and leaving a huge under ground section with a swiss-cheese like tex ture that finally caved in. “All we know is we have a rather large hole out here,” Harwell said. “We re guarding the road and keeping sightseers away from it. If anybody slipped down in there that’d be all she wrote.” A gas pipeline from a nearby Shell Oil tank farm collapsed into the ever-widening hole and oil company employees worked to close off and re-route three other pipelines that also were in jeopardy. No dollar estimate on the damage had been made. mmmer £i graduates apply now Texas A&M University students who ex- ectto graduate this summer should make egree application during summer school igistration. Application can be made in G. Rollie nite Coliseum as summer school fees are id today or Thursday (June 4-5). Formal application must be made no la ir than Friday, June 13, said Registrar [obert Lacey. After June 5, applications fe made at the Graduate College and ieaton Hall. A graduation fee of$ll will be isessed. Graduate and undergraduate students no expect to complete degree require- lents during the second summer session '0 asked to apply by June 13, but may file [riday, July 18. ‘Sensitive’ documents get OK to be sent to USSR, Cuba, Iran United Press International WASHINGTON — House mem bers may not have known it, but they have passed a bill that provides infor- mation about American nuclear weapons and U.S. defense intelli gence to such nations as the Soviet Union and Cuba. The bill governs the International Exchange program. Approved by voice vote without opposition Tues day, it would transfer from the Smithsonian Institution to Congress’ Government Printing Office the job of distributing government publica tions to foreign countries. The materials are distributed under an international agreement concluded in 1889 that requires U. S. publications be sent to “foreign gov ernments which agree to send to the United States similar publications of their governments for delivery to the Library of Congress.” As the House routinely passed the bill, however. Sen. James Sasser, D- Tenn., was quietly inserting a state ment in the Congressional Record in which he said he was “amazed and dismayed” at the kind of information the United States is giving away free to such countries as the Soviet Un ion, Cuba and Iran. Under the $l.l-million-a-year ex change program, Sasser said, the government is sending the Soviet Union and Cuba such publications as Army technical manuals and Army field manuals. In one of them, “Field Artillery Battalion LANCE,” a chapter titled “Tactical Nuclear Operations” dis cusses “Controls on Nuclear (weapons) Release,” “Lance Nuclear (missile) Employment,” “Survival on the Nuclear Battlefield,” and “The Battlefield Decision,” which deals with when missiles can be released by a Corps commander. The LANCE missile is a mobile nuclear and non-nuclear surface-to- surface missile deployed in Europe and the United States. “I can scarcely believe that the United States government is ship ping — free of charge, yet — such sensitive military publications to the governments of the Soviet Union, Cuba and others,” Sasser said. Sasser said other documents being sent to the Soviet Union include the Defense Communications Agency’s Global AUTOVON telephone direc tory and issues of the Defense Intel ligence Agency’s “Review of Soviet Ground Forces.” Sasser said under the exchange program more than 20,000 publica tions were sent to the Soviet Union last year at a cost to taxpayers of $12,000 in printing costs alone, while 20,200 publications were sent to Cuba at a cost of nearly $12,000 in printing costs. At least 3,100 publications were sent to Iran at a printing cost of $1,800. Carter wins; Ted to stay in Power company crews also were re routing electrical power and sheriff s de puties closed the highway to all but emergency traffic. Cracks streaming from the hole snaked to within 100 yards of the road. “You can tell by the way it keeps bub bling that it’s filled with oil, and gas and water,” said Harwell. “It’s at least 30 feet from the ground down to the water and we re not sure how much deeper it goes.” United Press International President Carter today clutched the votes for his party’s nomination in one hand and offered the other in peace to his van quished rival. But a stubborn Sen. Edward Kennedy won California and New Jersey and vowed not to quit. Kennedy defeated Carter in California in the grand finale of the 1980 primary cam paign — 306 delegates were at stake — to add to “Super Tuesday” triumphs in New Jersey, Rhode Island, South Dakota and New Mexico. Carter took Ohio, West Virginia and Montana, and even in losing New Jersey won enough delegates to put him more than 300 votes beyond the 1,666 needed to win the nomination at the Democratic con vention in August. It was Kennedy’s best showing by far in the drawn-out primary process that ended with the counting of votes in California. Although Carter had a mathematical lock on the nomination, Kennedy pointed to his victories in some of the nation’s biggest states — California, New York, Pennsylva nia, New Jersey and Michigan — and said, “The people have decided that this cam paign must go on.” Ronald Reagan, who had the GOP nomi nation in hand two weeks ago, won all nine GOP primaries Tuesday. Kennedy, hoping his strong showings plus some dramatic presidential missteps still could deny Carter re-nomination, reaped enough delegates Tuesday to en sure a noisy convention if he desires. With Tuesday’s voting the Democratic delegate totals gave Carter 1,958 dele gates, and Kennedy 1,215. 1,666 are needed for the nomination. The Republican balloting gave Reagan 392 additional delegates, increasing his tot al to 1,463. Only 998 delegates are needed to secure the GOP nomination. At 4:15 a.m., the primaries looked like this: California: With 76 percent of the pre cincts reporting, Kennedy 1,119,085 or 45 percent, 166 delegates; Carter 937,150 or 38 percent, 132 delegates. New Jersey: With 99 percent, Kennedy 309,433 or 56 percent, 68 delegates; Carter 207,174 or 37 percent, 45 delegates. Ohio: With 98 percent, Carter 589,078 or 51 percent, 84 delegates; Kennedy 508,076 or 44 percent, 77 delegates. Kennedy won in Rhode Island with 68 percent, South Dakota with 48 percent, and New Mexico with 46 percent. Carter won in West Virginia with 63 percent and Montana with 51 percent. Carter went over the top while losing to Kennedy in New Jersey — getting 45 dele gates in that defeat to pass the 1,666 total needed for the nomination. The president complimented Kennedy on running “a good campaign” and said it “is a time to resolve differences.” Kennedy would have none of that. “I am committed to continuing this cam paign in a way that helps, not hurts, that unifies, not divides, the Democratic Par ty,” Kennedy said. Carter told his campaign supporters, “The Democratic Party always has prob lems in finding unanimity, but the demo cratic process, including the convention it self, is a time to resolve differences.” Reagan, whose main focus now is select ing a running mate, said he feels no obliga tion to choose someone with a different viewpoint than his own. “Frankly I don’t know just what that word ‘moderate’ means anymore. I think I’m kind of moderate. Maybe we can overdo moderation.” Tuesday’s generally light turnout, re flecting the widespread perception that both races were settled long ago, ended the primary season after 35 contests starting with the Feb. 26 New Hampshire primary won, prophetically, by Carter and Reagan. Probe reveals Mayan canals United Press International WASHINGTON — Scientists knew ab out the big cities and sophistication of the ancient Mayan civilization in Central America, but they often wondered how the Maya could produce enough food to feed millions of people. An airborne radar system developed to study the cloud-shrouded planet of Venus may have answered the question. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration reported Monday images of 50,000 square miles of usually cloud- covered areas of Guatemala and Belize have revealed an extensive network of Mayan drainage canals dating between 250 B.C. and 900 A.D. hidden beneath dense rain forests. Prof. Richard E. W. Adams of the Uni versity of Cambridge in England told the space agency the canals apparently enabled the Maya to drain water from swampy jung les to create small plots of dry land where maize and cacao could be grown inten sively. Adams said there has been little evi dence in the past of the kind of intensive agriculture needed in a land characterized by either arid and mountainous territory or swampy jungles. “We’ve never before been able to recon struct convincingly an economic base for mstal residents ignorant of storms the Maya,” Adams said. “In other words, how did they feed all these masses of peo ple all of the time?” The radar was developed by NASA and the Defense Department and adapted by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., to map the cloud- shrouded topography of Venus. From an altitude of28,000 feet over Cen tral American jungles, the radar enabled scientists to produce clear images of varying layers of the foliage. Height mea surements allowed researchers to deter mine land levels beneath the vegetation. Adams examined the radar data for evi dence of ancient settlements or roadways. He found instead unnaturally uniform grid patterns. “I could see little lines, most of them looking like ladders or lattices, connecting with larger waterways,” Adams told the space agency. He and Dr. T. Patrick Culbert of the University of Arizona visited the rain forests in February and found evidence at least a third of the patterns seen by radar are ancient canals dug with stone blades and hoes to drain water and make small square plots of dry arable land. Adams estimated the canals, about IVa feet deep and 3 to 9 feet wide, cover 11,000 square miles of Guatemala alone. NASA said additional studies using more advanced radar are planned to determine how extensive the canal system is, and ground expeditions are planned to look for Mayan agricultural artifacts. EXAS 0 fi'S® to Traffic worrying hurricane planners United Press International HOUSTON — With the 1980 hurricane cason under way as of Sunday, a persistent ''orry for disaster planners will be the in casing vulnerability of this often traffic- tioked area’s rapidly growing and largely airricane-ignorant population. Six thousand people died in the region’s Crst storm ever, an unnamed hurricane W struck Galveston in 1900. The last ma- or fatality storm on the Texas coast was 'aria, which went ashore near Port Lavaca nl961, killing 46 people and causing $400 million damage. There is much larger potential now,” Id local National Weather Service direc- or Cecil Palmer. “Now there is a larger Xjpulation and it grows daily.” Many of the area’s newer residents — e population of the Houston area has dou bled since 1961 — have had little exposure to hurricanes or hurricane preparedness. The awesome storms have winds of 75 to 200 mph and heavy rains, and hurricane storm systems, which can be hundreds of miles across, often spawn tornadoes. But Palmer and local civil defense plan ners are most concerned about a storm surge, the sudden rise in sea level often associated with hurricanes. Surges can reach 25 feet or more and suddenly flood widespread lowlands. “If you can get the public away from the hazard of the surge, you’ve solved 90 per cent of your problem of deaths, based on statistics,” Palmer said recently. “Some storms have 25-foot storm surges so the target would be to get to a 25-foot eleva tion.” Most of Houston is above that elevation and would be safe from such a surge. But for many in Galveston and the main land between Galveston and Houston, reaching a point 25 feet above sea level requires driving 25 or 30 miles. The island, for example, is 10 feet above sea level at its highest point. To minimize loss of life and property, officials will rely on early warning of a storm, followed by public cooperation, for quick evacuation of all lowlying areas. Houston-Harris County Civil Defense Assistant Director John Caswell estimates 200,000 to 300,000 of the Houston- Galveston area’s 3 million residents will be seeking higher ground if a storm threatens. Planners predict that would mean 88,000 cars leaving Galveston Island, some 100,000 people departing the mainland around Texas City and some 66,000 cars trying to escape Freeport, just west of Gal veston Island. Escape routes are few. Interstate 45, parts of which are only 5 feet above high tide now, is the only route directly north ward to the mainland off Galveston Island. Texas 332 leads from Galveston west ward to coastal mainlands and a ferry con nects eastward to Texas 87 on low Bolivar Peninsula. Two roads, Texas 288 and Texas 36, lead inland from Freeport. Palmer said the margin between first warnings and evacuation deadfines would be thin, possibly 12 hours or less before the start of flooding that might block roads. Texas A&M University experts, who along with disaster officials are working on a new evacuation plan to be ready next year, estimated in 1978 that it would take 12.6 hours to evacuate Galveston Island resi dents under the best conditions. That estimate did not include tourists. “There could be a storm come out of the Gulf that wouldn’t give you 12.6 hours to get out, ” said Thomas Urbanik of the Trans portation Institute. Part of the concern is about the ignor ance, inexperience or stubbornness of the area’s population. “People will be reluctant to leave; some will not leave at all,” Caswell said. “They are going to have to leave early. If they start leaving before the freeways become impassable, we’ve got it made. ” Officials will be working throughout the June 1-Nov. 30 season to inform residents of the hazards associated with hurricanes in an effort to guarantee optimal response. The Weather Yesterday High 91 Low 70 Humidity 60% Rain . 0.0 inches Today High 95 Low 73 Humidity 70% Chance of rain . .... None