The Battalion
Vol. 87 No. 55 USPS 045360 10 Pages
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College Station, Texas
Monday, November 16, 198?
Tornadoes rage across 200 miles of state
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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.
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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.