The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current, June 18, 1987, Image 1
Texas m m W • The Battalion Vol. 82 No. 163 GSRS 045360 8 pages College Station, Texas Thursday, June 18, 1987 eople stay in MSC despite bomb threat _ I By Yvonne DeGraw id . and ■ Elisa Hutchins '' I Staff Writers bomb threat at the Memorial CdC Bdent Center turned out to be a I Vf V false alarm Wednesday afternoon. Bd while the bookstore and a few tareshoriother areas in the MSC closed for But an hour, most people stayed in 0 disperststhe building and took their chances, rch totliti! police Chief Elmer E. Schneider ajontreeissaid a worker at the MSC Print ’n’ Bpy received the threat around ut Wednai kp p m. that said a bomb would ex- ipolitical,Bele at 3:30 p.m. tionwidte fThis threat makes the third call in mention of■ dorsed CIibB a week that was reported to Univer sity Police. The two previous threats were off campus. It is not known if they are linked with the bomb scare at the MSC. Trena Wilroy, supervisor of Print ’n’ Copy, said the caller sounded like a young male and he stumbled over several words as he made the threat. “There’s a bomb in the MSC, and it will go off at 3:30,” the caller said. “Everybody in there will be killed.” Wilroy immediately called the University Police. The police dispatcher said police searched only the copy center area and found nothing suspicious. University Center Manager Ste ven Hodge said around 3:25 p.m. — five minutes before the caller’s dead line — the threat was being treated as a prank. The managers of the va rious areas of the MSC could decide whether they wanted to close and for how long, he said. The MSC Bookstore closed from about 3:15 p.m. to 4:15 p.m. The game area and bowling lanes in the basement and the Student Programs Office on the second floor also were closed. Maintainance workers were sta- ~ tioned at all entrances except the main one to keep people from enter ing the building. At 3:20 p.m. more than one hun dred high school drill team members were still dancing in a room on the second floor of the building. A pianist kept playing in the main lounge and visiting fall freshmen and their parents remained in the MSC along with students. “The managers are taking this too lightly,” said a visitor in the MSC who asked not to be identified. “Even if it is a joke, there are a lot of people in here, and it could be a di saster if a bomb exploded.” Schneider said that when a bomb to assess the danger from the tone and mood of the call. The department looks at the time of the call, the duration of the call, what was said, background noises and whether there is a likely target in the area. Based on this, he said they decide how to advise the building proctor. “In this case we had no indication to call for an evacuation,” Schneider said. Wilroy said Print ’n’ Copy has not fired any employees recently and had no explanation of why the call was made to the copy center rather than to the main desk. John Nethercutt, the room divi sions manager for the College Sta tion Hilton, says their emergency procedure is to call the manager on duty, the general manager, the secu rity manager and the police. He said they take directions froth the authorities because “they are the professionals.” Whether the bomb threat was real or just a prank call, the penalties if a person is caught can range from a third-degree felony to a misdemea nor. Bryan attorney William W. Vance said this case would be classified as a Class A misdemeanor that carries up to a $2,000 fine and/or a year in jail. ’00 to !U[ xraucetoj the “pomtij :gime. edungullit ‘d powdit. ■d m 1M thoimnrl lay thailll d Moodaul 17 weretej in step (to ion. dll be Stic lich cri&air to furtke fter the II Tower spends remaining money from campaign for personal use Beleaguered agency considers 1-35 corridor for nuclear dump site It housing [opening ? ® money market interest were all recorded as in- g induin'. i suffered deficit it year and t icting ill! ghtly lo»« thefi Jesal vement d ices Aiwf' irts beca»« WASHINGTON (AP) — Since retiring from the Senate in January 1985, former Sen. John Tower has dipped into his old campaign fund to spend nearly half a million dollars on every thing from airfares to lavish banquets. Last Aug. 1, the former Republican senator reported that his campaign committee, the Tower Senate Club, spent $1,645 at the Man sion on Turtle Creek in Dallas. Tower also reported that his committee spent $1,104 at the Monocle restaurant on Capitol Hill, according to documents filed with the Fed eral Election Commission. In addition, Tower reported on the same day that he used the campaign fund to pay $1,030 for airfare on American Airlines, $819 for meals and $51 for a rental car, according to the FEC documents. There are two payments totaling $2,938 that were listed as having gone to Alpha Aviation, a Dallas Love Field-based air charter company that offers turbo-props and corporate jets for private air travel. Treasury bills, dividends on cash funds and come by the committee. Since Tower left the Senate in January 1985, the campaign fund has dwindled from $466,000 to $20,761 as of December 1986. The committee has spent $498,498 and has taken in $53,401. All of the charges and receipts are legal be cause Tower qualifies them under a “grandfa ther clause” in the campaign financing laws. That clause states that it is permissible for congressional members elected before 1980 to “I did not see anything on the re ports that indicated that an inordi nate amount was spent on personal use. ” Hub Bechtol, campaign committee treasurer use their campaign funds for personal expendi tures. The former Senator was out of his offices in both Dallas and Washington Wednesday and was not available for comment. But according to a story in the Legal Times of Washington, Tower claims all of the expendi tures were political in nature and that none of it was applied for personal expenses. Hub Bechtol of Austin, treasurer for Tower’s campaign committee, defended the expendi tures. “I did not see anything on the reports that in dicated that an inordinate amount was spent on personal use,” he told the Fort Worth Star-Tele gram. “I think he was a good trustee of the funds,” Bechtol said. In addition to his luncheons, airfare and other expenses, the campaign fund has doled out generous consulting fees to former staffers of the former senator. Tower recently headed a presidentially ap pointed commission looking into the Iran-Con tra scandal. Political candidates favored by the 24-year veteran of the Senate have received $ 1,000 con tributions through his campaign committee. And one losing gubernatorial candidate, Re publican Tom Loeffler, received $4,000 from Tower over a year for the lease of a computer system. Southwestern University in Georgetown, Texas, was given $100,000 in November 1985, two months after the Tower Senate Club con tributed $50,000 to the Republican Party of Texas and $18,000 to the Associated Republi cans of Texas. DALLAS (AP) — Rebuffed in its efforts to put a low-level radioactive waste dump in rural West Texas, a beleaguered state agency is looking for potential nuclear dump sites along the Interstate 35 corridor from Dallas to Austin. Rick Jacobi, general manager of the Texas Low Level Radioactive Waste Disposal Authority, said sites in North Central and South Texas are prime contenders for the dump. Texas must build such a facility within five years to comply with fed eral requirements. The agency is reconsidering sites in those two regions after the Legis lature failed two weeks ago to desig nate state-owned land in Hudspeth County near El Pasp for the dump site’. Ruben Alvarado, the authority’s chief engineer, said the agency is, in effect, starting over. He estimates the project, which must be finished by Jan. 1, 1993, may be set back as much as two years. Although the agency has asked Gov. Bill Clements to include the is sue on the agenda of the special ses sion that begins Monday, Jacobi said the waste authority could not afford to wait for the outcome before ex amining other alternatives. “Our schedule is so tight now, we hate to sit on our hands and see what happens,” Jacobi said. The Legislature has directed the authority to give preference to state- owned land for a site. The area along 1-35 between Aus tin and Dallas is known as the Black- land Prairie and includes Navarro, Limestone, Hill, Bell and Falls coun ties. There is very little state land in those counties, though, and the agency hopes someone will come forward with property for sale. It is an attractive site, Jacobi said, as it has a dense, clay soil and deep ground water and would be equidis tant from most major waste genera tors. Tornado damage cleanup at Bryan complex continues By Robert Morris Staff Writer As cleanup of Tuesday’s tor nado damage at the Grove Apartments in Bryan continued, residents began their pilgrim- mage to “higher ground.” Many took with them confu sion because of what residents termed a lack of response or communication by the manage ment of the complex with the residents who were affected. As of 11:30 a.m. Wednesday, none of the residents packing up had been contacted by apart ment management. Although The Battalion made repeated attempts to speak to a representative of the Grove, as of 4:30 p.m. Wednesday, the complex manager was unavail able for comment. Haniet Cranek is a resident of one of the more severely dam aged apartments. Photo by Robert W. Rizzo The twisted remains of sheet metal roofing from one apartment unit lie crumpled on the ground. “Eve been waiting on them to tell us something, but they haven’t told us anything,” she said. Cranek said other residents she had talked to had not been contacted either. “There’s no way we can go up there and live,” she said. “The carpets are wet and the sheet rock is soggy. “I went this morning at 8 a.m. and they said, ‘Come back at 10 a.m.’ And I went at 11 a.m. and they said, ‘Come back later.’ So I guess I’ll go back this afternoon to find out what is going on.” The Rev. David Belasic, of Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio, was visit ing his daughter and son-in-law, an A&M graduate student, at the apartments when the tor nado hit. “As far as I know, no one from the apartments ever came by,” Belasic said. The police and fire depart ments both were there, but no one from the complex ever showed up, he said. Belasic, a Lutheran pastor, contacted Our Saviour’s Lu theran Church in College Sta tion and several volunteers from the church arrived to help the apartment residents move be longings. The funnel cloud, which ap peared at about 6:30 p.m., caused extensive damage to the complex, located at 3132 E. 29th St. in Bryan, affecting approxi mately 20 apartments, but no in juries were reported. Four units from the College Station Fire Department, several officers from the Bryan Police Department and the Brazos County REACT organization ar rived shortly after the funnel cloud touched down. Bryan building inspector C.A. McCollom was at the scene early Wednesday morning and said the metal roof was constructed and screwed down according to building code guidelines. “A lot of people feel that just because it was a metal roof it was a problem, but I think that we just got high wind in that partic ular location,” he said. Descriptions of the event took various forms. A&M student Staci Parkman, whose apartment suffered water Photo by Robert W. Rizzo The Rev. David Belasic peers through what was once an attic en trance of a closet at his daughter’s Grove apartment. damage, said, “I didn’t even re alize it had happened until the water started coming in. “I was looking out the window and I saw the insulation blow off and I thought it was just lint blowing out of the dryer vent and then a lot of insulation started falling. “The water started dripping down along the walls and in the closet. It was really coming down. Then I opened the door to the attic and I could see the light.” Cranek said, “It sounded like a lot of rain and thunder. And then all of a sudden you could tige tm “We could see that the roof had peeled back and gone over the apartment and then it slid down and landed on top of our cars.” About that time the police ar rived at the complex to tell resi dents to leave before the sheet rock caved in, she said. That’s when everyone started hauling stuff out of the apart ments, Cranek said. A small tornado hit different buildings in the same complex last August, tearing the roof off two buildings. It also caused no injuries.