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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (Nov. 16, 1987)
The Battalion Vol. 87 No. 55 USPS 045360 10 Pages ' p'i! College Station, Texas Monday, November 16, 198? Tornadoes rage across 200 miles of state ton Jii,l . , From Staff and Wire Reports Tornadoes stormed a path of more than 200 miles through east- central Texas on Sunday, killing at ■least nine people, injuring at least ■ 132 others and toppling scores of mobile homes, barns, homes, build ings and power lines. The carnage began before noon at Jarrell, a small town on Interstate 35 about 50 miles northeast of Aus tin, where a 6-year-old boy was slightly injured when a tornado touched down. About 12:15 p.m., Janet Eagleton, 54, of Sugarland, and her daughter. Carol Skotnik, 27, of Bryan, were killed when a twister hit 60 miles southeast of Jarrell at Caldwell, cut ting a 16-mile path of destruction through Burleson County, said Bev erly Mahlmann, administrator of the Burleson County Hospital. Shortly after 2 p.m., two people were killed in Normangee, about 50 miles northeast of Caldwell, when a tornado touched down, said Marga ret Haislip, a sheriffs dispatcher in Madison County. Two others were injured, she said. Later in the day, two people were killed at Whitehouse, about 100 miles northeast of Normangee. i te IP deE i pei pad 6bl spet' for: Dthe: Photo by Dean Saito Karen Collins, left, and Karen Hernandez walk through debris that was thrown about when a tornado touched down just outside of Caldwell at about noon Sunday. The tornado tore down trees and completely demolished some houses, scattering tin roofing and household items. Collins and Hernandez were helping a friend sift through the debris for items that could be saved. Photo by Sam B. Myers The middle beam of a storage shed is the only piece that remains standing after Sunday’s tornado. Sixty-five Texas counties were still under tornado watch or warning Sunday night. Smith County Deputy Sheriff Randy Potts said several tornadoes touched down Sunday afternoon in Smith County, including the one that hit Whitehouse. Caldwell Mayor William Broad- dus said, “The path of destruction is about 10 to 12 miles in length and a half-mile in width. “In that path, the destruction is total. What is left of homes is noth ing more than the concrete founda tions. The metal and wood from barns . . . siding is up in the trees for miles.” Burleson County Sheriff A.G. Wilhelm said officials were checking all the damaged houses Sunday af ternoon to make sure all the injured were accounted for. “There are quite a few trailer houses torn up that people are not oing to be able to go back to,” Wil- elm said. “Some homes have been unroofed, and everyone is out of power because the lines are knocked down and a lot of trees are in the roads.” An undetermined number of peo ple were missing, officials said. The rash of tornadoes was un usual so late in the year. Meteorologist Bill Hecke said, “Of course, they can happen anytime. This has been more of a classic pat tern for severe weather because they have such a push of gulf moisture combining with warm, moist air.” The tornado cut a path of de struction for eight miles on each side of Caldwell, Burleson County sher iffs department dispatcher Cory Crajdoalk said. Mike Cox, a spokesman for the Department of Public Safety in Aus tin, said Joe Conway, editor of the First County Citizens Tribune, had the roof of his house blown off while he was in church. Another family at the church would have been killed if it hadn’t been attending the service because its trailer had been overturned. In Bell County, north of Jarrell, there were reports that a barn was damaged and a mobile home was flipped over, said Kathy Rhodes, a dispatcher in the Bell County Sher iffs Department. Rhodes said most of the damage was to trees and shrubs and no inju ries had been reported. Tornado destroys business, home in Caldwell By Tracy Staton Staff Writer On Texas 36 just north of Cald well, a small white frame house is standing in the midst of debris — the aftermath of a tornado that swept through Burleson County Sunday afternoon. Tin from the roofs of surround ing houses is twisted around tree trunks, whose only limbs are the stubs of now-scattered branches. A woman’s blouse is stretched between two strands of a barbed-wire fence. A mangled bathtub, a toaster and a silver hairbrush are heaped in the back yard, just in front of a collapsed barn. The dark clouds still hovering ominously in the western sky only hint at the destructive power of the storm they brought to east-central Texas. Even the pieces it left strewn across the pastures of this farm could assemble only an eerie sense of the chaos of a few hours before. But to Susie Gerdes and her fa ther, Collie Gerdes, the tornado is very real. They were huddled in a closet in the white house when the storm whipped across the Gerdes’ property. “It had been raining a little and the sky was about the color it is now,” Susie Gerdes, 40, said. “Then I heard a roaring like a lot of trains. I hollered at Daddy and told him that either a train was going by and the wind was carrying the noise or there was a tornado coming.” Gerdes said she looked out and saw the trees whipping in the wind, but still didn’t see a funnel cloud. “I ran and threw everything out of the closet anyway,” the Caldwell native said. “Daddy and I got in the closet and put suitcases over our heads.” Gerdes said she waited until ev erything was relatively calm to ven ture outside. “As soon as I could I went out to look for my cats,” she said. “They’re alive, but one is under the bed and he won’t come out.” After the cats’ safety was assured, Gerdes and her father surveyed the damage to their property. They found only one of their nine rent houses intact and all three barns lev eled. None of the renters were home at the time of the storm. “We’re going to try to salvage two of the rent houses — they need new roofs,” she said. “We’re just getting some plastic to cover the roof for now.” Debris from the destroyed homes is deposited across the 60-acre farm. Appliances, dishes and clothing in termingle with twisted tin and splin tered wood. Power lines felled by tree limbs stretch from leaning poles. Gerdes said she didn’t think the houses could be replaced with the in surance money. “These were older remodeled homes,” she said. “The insurance company doesn’t want to put that much insurance on older houses. We may be able to build some smaller houses to replace them, but it’s going to be hard in today’s economy.” The Gerdes’ loss is more signifi- See Tornado, page 6 Plane crash in Denver kills at least 19, injures 54 DENVER (AP) — A Continental Airlines jet with 81 people aboard flipped on its back while taking off from Denver’s airport in a snowstorm Sunday and skidded along the runway, killing at least 19 people and injuring 54 more, authorities said. “We counted 18 dead outside the plane, and there are several dead in the fuselage,” Stapleton International Airport spokesman Richard Boulware said. Twenty-one people walked away from the crash, officials said. The DC-9 twin-engine jet, Flight 1713, was carrying 76 passengers and five crew members from Denver to Boise, Idaho, said Continental spokesman Ned Walker. Walker said the flight originated in Okla homa City, and the crash took place shortly after 3 p.m. CST. Rescue work was ham pered by falling snow and ice, visibility was poor and some survivors were still trapped inside the plane more than four hours after the accident, authorities said. “Many people are survivors at this point,” Walker said. “It’s too early to specu late on anything that could have occurred (to make the plane crash).” National Transportation Safety Board chairman James Burnett and nine Wash ington-based investigators will fly to Denver to investigate the Sunday night crash, NTSB spokesman Ted Lopatkiewicz said. At Denver General Hospital, Dr. Peter Pons said there were 19 confirmed deaths and that 54 people were taken to area hos pitals with injuries, and three were in crit ical condition. He said eight people were believed to be in the wreckage, with one or two of them believed still alive. Rescue workers set up emergency lights on the runway and used electric saws to remove wreckage. Denver police officer John Wyckoff said, “Right now there’s emergency operations trying to get injured people extracted from the plane. It’s just a chaotic scene right now.” Boulware said the airplane “is on its back.” Dukakis tells A&M students U.S. needs to get serious about arms control By Doug Driskell Staff Writer The Strategic Defense Initiative, known as “star wars,” is a waste of money and will not work, presi dential candidate Mike Dukakis told Texas A&M students at a satellite teleconference Friday afternoon in Rudder Theater. “Let’s get serious about arms con trol and arms reduction on earth, not add to our problems with an un believably expensive program that, in my judgment, won’t work,” he said to television viewers and the campus audience of about 900. The Democratic governor of Mas sachusetts arrived at Easterwood air port from Dallas to take part in a conference televised to 50 other lo cations in 26 states. Dukakis an swered questions phoned in and from the audience. “I would like the United States to spend more time on our relationship in Mexico and perhaps less time with Nicaragua,” he said in response to a Mexican student’s question on Cen tral America. “What we have been doing in Ni caragua is one of the worst foreign policy fiascos in the history of this country,” he said. “It not only has been doomed to failure from the be ginning, it is illegal under the Rio Treaty and under the charter of the Organization for American States, which includes Mexico and other Central American countries.” Dukakis continued by praising the president of Costa Rica for taking the initiative in Central America and said that House Speaker Jim Wright is filling the “vacuum of leadership” in the White House with his negotia tions involving Nicaragua. Dukakis attributed the scheduling of the upcoming summit to the will ingness of Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. “What you have in Gorbachev and the people around him is new, younger, less ideological and more pragmatic leadership that under stands if the Soviet Union continues to spend 16 percent of its gross na tional product on the military and doesn’t open up that society to new ideas, new enterprise and new initia tive, the Soviet Union is going to be come a second- or third-rate power,” he said. Dukakis predicted that if the Dec. 7 summit goes well, it will set a prec edent for the next president. “We are going to need a strong national defense for many years to come,” he said. “And the next presi dent of the United States is going to have to be somebody who can man age and lead and give us that strong national defense.” Dukakis seemed loose and relaxed during the question-and-answer ses sion. The relaxed image was the in tention of the campaign planners, said Kenneth Bunting, the Austin bureau chief for the Fort Worth Star- Telegram. Before speaking, Dukakis walked among the members of the audi ence, shaking hands and answering questions. He said he came to A&M to speak to the students who are also voters and are young and energetic. After the teleconference, Dukakis commented on the recent decline in the foreign trade deficit. He said it is a modest reduction, which is most likely due to the reduction of the dollar’s value. “The problem is, we got ourselves in this mess when the president pur- suaded the Congress that you can in crease defense spending, cut taxes and balance the budget,” he said. “It was a fairy tale then, and it is a fairy tale now. In 1980, we were a creditor nation. Now we are the world’s greatest debtor.” Dukakis criticized President Rea gan and the current administration for not emphasizing fiscal responsi bility, which should be a president’s main concern, he said. “What troubles me is that the ad ministration that hasn’t been able to balance the budget in seven years is proposing a balanced-budget amendment,” he said. “Why doesn’t the president get serious about defi cit reduction, instead of talking about constitutional amendments?” Dukakis said more fiscal responsi bility in this country would lead to more trade with the European com munity. He also said he wants the Japanese to invest more in Third World countries. Sen. Kent Caperton attended the teleconference, but said he was un decided who he will support for the Democratic nomination. “I was certainly very impressed,” Caperton said. “I thought he han dled the questions extremely well. He is very knowledgeable and has a very good track record, and I think he could bring a lot of strength to the Democratic Party.” Photo by Sam B. Myers Gov. Mike Dukakis of Massachusetts shakes Democratic presidential candidate, answered hands with a student before the airing of a tele- questions from telephone calls and the audience conference Friday in Rudder Theater. Dukakis, a of about 900 people after brief opening remarks.