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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (Jan. 13, 1982)
■ICROflLM CENTER INC PO BOX 45436 DALLAS, TX 75235 VoT 75 No 75 16 Pages i Serving the Texas A&M University community Wednesday. January 13, 1982 College Station, Texas photo Howard EAort A bias! of arctic air Tuesday bringing sleet and freezing rain, covered the Br^ros area in lee. Despite weather conditions, residents adapted to,»the change without incident. Winter freeze blankets states; people and crops hurt in ice or- I ^—— * - -- m I vnm• rTvsft invernanonai The hardest freeze of this century |^ept a stranglehold on the Northeast and devastated the heart of Dixie today, rendering unequipped cities helpless under 7-inch snows and causing $500 million in damage to tender Florida crops. The weather was blamed for at least 130 deaths. Tennessee reported 4 inches of ipow, Arkansas 7 inches, and Mississip pi was laboring under slush and sleet in One of its worst storms in decades Freezing rain glazed the ArkJhsas- Lnuisiana border area and much of Ala bama. Northern Georgia, including Atlanta, and the western Carolinas also had snow The record cold maintained its strongest foothold in the Northeast, where the mercury at Worcester, Maas., fell to 8 below zero and brisk winds plunged the win<V-chill to a minus 46 dagnaaa. Florida officials said Tuesday 's freeze was as damaging as the one in 1977, which caused $500 million in damages t to Florida's agriculture As a result, orange juice, sugar and many vegetables will be more expen sive, possibly within only a few days, agriculture spokesmen said Enrollment expected to drop from fall figures More than 33,000 students are ex pected to be enrolled for the spring semester classes at Texas AArM Univer sity. which begin Monday Associate Registrar Donald D. Carter says 24.000 students already have pre-registered i Fall semester enrollment exceeded 35.000 students Carter said the decline in enrollment between the fall and spring semesters occurs every year. 'Based on historic enrollment fi gures, well have anywhere from 1,200 to 1,800 fewer students in the spring. ” Carter said He attributes the drop in enrollment to the large number of stu dents who graduated in December and the small number of freshmen entering the University only get 100 new freshmen in ng compared to the h T® 40 h» the E," Carter said Most rnt comes from transfer students and graduate stu dents " Delayed registration and drop-add start today and continue through Jan 23. Drop-add is being held at C. RolIk- White Coliseum from 8 a. m to noon and from 1 p m to 5 p m through Friday The coliseum will be open from 8 a m . to noon Saturday for students who need to pick up revised schedules Other noteworthy dates are as fol lows: — Jan. 22 - last day to enroll in the University and last day to add new classes — Feb. 2 - last day to drop classes with no record — Feb 5 - last day to apply for p-aduate and undergraduate degrees to be awarded in May — Feb. 19 • last day to drop classes with no penalty (Q-drop). Most officials in the South threw up their hands in dismay and were left to watch cities dose down for lack of snow removal equipment. Interstate highways became parking lots and bars and hotel lobbies became havens for thousands of stranded motor ists in Georgia, where a bitter winter storm left up to 6 inches of snow and icy Cbmmuters abandoned cars and attempted to walk miles to get home in Atlanta Flights were canceled because pilots, crews and passengers couldn't get to the airport and children huddled, stranded in school buildings “We have wall-to-wall people lined up to use the phones to call home and say they're stranded, said Doug Brad- er, night auditor at the downtown Atlanta Rodeway Inn. The Red Cross said hundreds of peo ple were at shelters, including about 150 school children One Atlanta funeral home began tak ing to the slranded “U was the first place I came to that seemed to be inhabited, said Naacy Smith, 28, adding some people bad journeyedmcross the street to a bar Gov. Dave Treen called out the National Guard in New Roads Tuetday to deliver water to nursing homes and other facilities left without electricity in the town of less than 4,000. The 24-mile Lake Pontchartraia Causeway between new -Orleans and C xrvutgton was shut down most of Tues day and hospitals across the state post poned elective surgery because of pow er p'obleawi. life frozen Midwest was granted some respite as the mercury rose by a few degrees — above zero and into sing- le-dfeit levels But parts of Iowa. In dians and Illinois reported snowstorms toSy. - 1 If \ ife* f The Weather Today Tomorrow i High 77. 29 High .. 51. Low .vX^I ' Lo w ...29 | Chance of rain ■ 30% Chance of rain.... 30% USPS045 360 Phone 845-2611 Arctic weather creates few problems By DANIEL PUCKETT . m — .. _ A Safi* nanaiior Matt Weather that seemed more charac teristic of Minneapolis than of College Station blew into the area Sunday, bringing single-digit temperatures, sleet and freezing rain. But, despite dosed schools and businesses, burst water pipes and a . power-plant breakdown, resid* nts Tuesday seemed to be weathering the winter storm gracefully. As of 5 p.m Tuesday, the College Station Police Department reported no traffic accidents for the day. and a spokesman for the fire department said it had responded to no house fire calls Capt. Davf Giordano of the College Station Fire Department said fire trucks [ had responded to several public assist ance calls mostlv cleaning up from l broken water pipes — but tnat residents were being safety-conscious in their handling of heaters However, both the Bryan and Col lege Station school districts shut down Monday and Tuesday because of a natu ral ggs curtailment ordered by Gnu- Star Cas Co. A spokeswoman for the College Station Independent School District said -schools would remain closed today and added that she did not know when classes would resume. Telephon es at the Bryan Indepen dent S<moo! District offices were not being answered Tuesday afternoon Schools were not the only institu tions affected by the gas curtailment. Several local businesses were forced to •hut dawn by the shortage of natural gas supplies, and cold weather caused, such a shortage of electricity that both Col lege Station and Bryan were asking resi dents to conserve energy Specifically, the two cities asked con sumers to turn their thermostats down to 65-68 degrees during the day and 60 degrees at night, to cfese off unoccupied rooms and shut the heat vents in them, to turn off space heaters when leaving the room for several hours and to keep fireplace dampers closed unles&a fire is burning. A spokesman for Lone Star Gas Co. said the company did not know when the gas curtailment would end and that "it all depends on the weather ” But the foreeast for the rest of the week is not encouraging Cold weather is expected to continue through the weekend, with only a brief let-up Thursday afternoon and Friday, said Charlie Renton, weather station mana ger for Texas A&M University’s Depart ment of Meteorology Renton said the passage of another cold front early this morning will pro- king the cold temperatures until Thurs day and the threat of sleet and freezing rain through the morning hours today. Skies should become partly cloudy Thursday, he said, with temperatures moderating Friday, hut another cold front Friday night will drop tempera tures again by $ah)rda|. ‘ Benton saidf the cold weather and freezing rain are not unusual for this time of year in Cfollege Station. Although Monday’s low of 9 degrees was the coldest reading since 1973 and set a record fbr that date, it did nqt set a record for January The record low here is 3 degrees below zero, set Jan 31, 1949 And Tuesday s freezing rain is the usual form of frozen precipitation here, he said, snow being a rare occurrence in the area For snow to fall, the layer of cold air overhead must be very thick. But here, Benton said, warm, moist air usually overrides a thin layer of cold air. producing sleet or freezing rain, rather than srtpw Benton said it was too early to tell whether the weekend cold snap would produce more icy conditions Monday s Arctic cold burst many wa ter pipes throughout the area, ib( lading several on campus Physical Plant Dire ctor Joe EstiH said water-bearing coils in air-eonditkmsng units broke in fU- Reed > McDonald Building, tin- Regents Annex of the Memorial Student Center and in President Frank ■Vandiver's home Estill said he could not estimate the cost of repairing the damage, but said he expected it to be between $20,000 and $40,000 The cold aho may have caused the shutdown of Bryan’s Roland Danshy Power Plant Monday. Officials blamed the shutdown on frozen instruments in the plant and said the damage ma\ tale a wqek to fix, However, the bitter cold has done little harm to local agriculture, said Michael Flynn, meteorologist-in- charge at the South west Agricultural Weather Service Center. Since little is grown locally during the winter months. Flynn said, the weather could not do much damage. The winter oats and whrat crops are hardy enough to withstand freezing temperatures and rain, though they might he slightly burned. No reports of livestock losses have reached his office, he said, hut produc ers will probably have to feed cattle more than they normally would, to make up for grass which is unavailable for grazing *j . la addition, he said, the freeze in the Rk> Grande Valley apparently felled to damage the citrus crop there. However, low temperatures Monday night may have been severe enough in Florida to cause severe kisses to citrus growers. "Valley growers mignt he pretty hap py about that,' Flynn said, since wide spread damage to the Florida crop would probably cause citrus prices to rise nationwide Haig presents options for autonomy to Egypt t)toted frr»» International CAIRO, Egypt — Secretary of State Alexander Haig, reportedly blaming ack of political will hy Israel for the tailed Palestinian autonomy talks, irought new options in the dispute to a neeting today with Egy ptian President fosm Mubarak Haig and his chief Middle East ad vis- ts met Tuesday with Foreign Minister Carnal Hassan Ali and his advisers for rearlv two hours in a meeting that dealt -xclusively with Palestinian autonomy. “Egypt will spare no effort to keep tnlL-c xtfaxmr* instil fks»V KrinU their desired results,’ Ali told Haig on his arrival in Cairo Tuesday Palestinian autonomy is called for in the 1979 Egyp- tian-lsraeli peace treaty. The underlying problem, according to an assessment just completed by the State Department, is the lack of political will on the part of the Israeli govern ment to make the transition to real autonomy for the 1,,2 million Palesti nians in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip The state-controlled Middle East News Agency reported Haig said he wants to “play a role, personally and directly, in giving a push to the negoti ations, ' and Ali welcomed this Haig hroufffit the results of that Mid dle East assessment with several op tions but "no grandiose new ideas,” U S. officials said. One possibility was naiping a new U S. high-level representative to the talks *to replace Shi Linowitz who gave up the post when former President Jim my Carter left office W * • The Secretary of State is scheduled to leave Thursday for a 24-hour visit to Back-to-school moving blues Diana Dean (right), a freshman accounting mayor Texas AAtM graduate. Debbie, who is continuing from Sugar Land, gets help movii^ into her room at Texas AfcM to get her teaching certificate, is ■ Hobby Hall from her sister, Debbie Dean, a moving out of the room.■