News Digest Edited by Diana Johnson
Ban urged on riot fences after stadium tragedy
SHEFFIELD, England -- Law
makers Sunday demanded changes in
stadium designs, including a ban on
anti-riot fences, after a mad rush at a
soccer match trapped thousands of
fans behind one of the steel barriers.
At least 94 people died.
Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher
visited Hillsborough stadium and
promised a public inquiry into Satur
day’s disaster, which turned a soccer
cup semifinal into a nightmare.
Then she visited hospitalized sur
vivors and listened to their accounts
of Britain’s worst sports disaster.
“We were shouting out to (the
police) to get us out and they just
couldn’t move us,’’ 33-year-old John
Davis told her. “It was just sheer
bedlam. It was every man for himself.
There were people screaming and
screaming.’’
Seventeen-year-old Wayne
Adams said he was about five rows
from the front of the crowd. ‘T real
ized it was serious when I saw one of
the lasses standing near me just turn
blue in the face. She went down. She
was dead. That was it,” he said.
Police defended the decision to
open 16-foot-wide steel gates outside
the stadium just as the match between
the Liverpool and Nottingham Forest
teams began. Last-minute arrivals
then poured into a central standing
room-only section, pressing those
already inside against the steel mesh
fence.
The sturdy 10-fool-high fence,
angled in at the top to stop people
from scaling it, prevented them from
escaping over the top to the field.
Some were crushed to death. Others
suffocated or were trampled trying to
fight their way out of the crowd or
when the barrier finally collapsed.
South Yorkshire’s chief con
stable, Peter Wright, said a senior
officer decided to open the gates “to
save people’s lives and to relieve the
crush outside.’’
An investigation was expected to
focus on allegations that some Ians
entered the sold-out stadium, which
has a capacity of 54,(XX), without
tickets or with forged tickets, and
why so many were still outside as the
match began.
Police Supt. Tony Pratt, asked
about the decision to open the gates,
said, “Whatever happened there
yesterday, there was a demand for
police action and action was taken.”
Survivor Stephen Dooling, 34,
defended the police action. “The
police had to open the door because
the lads at the front were screaming.
They would have died there at the
turnstiles instead of in the ground,
Dooling said from his hospital bed.
Pratt said the casualty toll stood at
94 dead and 170 injured. Many vic
tims were teen-agers and children,
because the cheap standing-room -
only section is favored by young fans.
Seventy-one people were hospi
talized, many in extremely critical
condition.
It was the third major soccer trag
edy in four years involving English
teams, which have been barred from
European soccer competition since
May 1985 because of rioting by Liv
erpool fans.
A stampede by Liverpool fans at
Hcyscl stadium in Brussels in May
1985 killed 39 people. Eighteen days
earlier, 56 soccer fans had died in a
fire at Bradford stadium in England.
Lawmakers and other survivors
demanded changes in stadium dc
signs and elimination of anti-rim
fences. n(X
“People were caged In yesterday
-- people who should have bccnaH
to escape off those terraces, who Z
killed needlessly,” said Livernod
LiN^ral lawmaker David Alton
He said the fences should come
down immediately, a demand echoed
by Sheffield Labor lawmaker w
Ashton, and Denis Howell, a former
Labor sports minister.
Bert Millichip, president of the
English Football Association, said
regulations require fences.
‘‘Nevertheless, in light of the
appalling tragedy yesterday, quite
clearly we now have to look at the
fences and it has to be a very serious
consideration whether or not they
have to be pulled down,” he said.
A disaster fund was set up for
families of the victims.
Shore cleanup evaluated
as workers try out risky
steam-cleaning method
VALDEZ, Alaska -- Slate and
federal officials dissected Exxon’s
cleanup plan for hundreds of miles of
shoreline Sunday as an environmen
tally risky steam-cleaning method
was tested on rocks blackened by
America’s worst oil spill.
Oil from the 10.1 million-gallon
spill, mostly in the fonn of tar balls
and mousse-like foam, threatened
Homer and other ports on fish-rich
Cook Inlet. In Kodiak, the nation’s
No. 1 fishing port, herring from a
closed fishery were examined for
contamination.
Homer residents complained of
delays in placing log booms they
have built to protect their town.
Exxon officials say the booms are
being stockpiled at nearby Port Gra
ham to make them easier to deploy
when the oil strikes.
“People here in Homer are being
jerked around,” said Lee McCabe, a
resident who was building booms.
“If the fishermen in this town fished
like Exxon deploys boom, you’d
never see a fish on the dock.”
Exxon workers on Sunday tested
cleanup methods on blackened rocks
at Block Island, including high-pres
sure, hot-water sprayers. The com
pany has about 200 of the sprayers,
but they have not been used previ
ously with salt water.
Cold-water techniques, even
those using high pressure, have little
impact on microorganisms and small
marine life. But the jets of high-pres
sure steam upend rocks, strip away
sand and gravel and kill beach life.
Scientists say it takes up to two years
for life to return to the stcrili/.ed
~hore.
Adm. Paul Yost, the Coast Guard
commandant sent by President Bush
to hasten the operations, said he be
lieves the steam method is the only
one that can cleanse the sound’s
shoreline.
Yost said Saturday that it might
take three weeks to get Exxon’s
cleanup plan completely under way.
“I wish it was two or three weeks
ago,” said Dennis Kelso, Alaska’s
environmental chief.
Kelso, who has accused Exxon of
dragging its feet af ter the wreck of the
tanker Exxon Valdez on March 24,
indicated he would scrutinize the
plan over the weekend and brief Gov.
Steve Cowper on it before discussing
it in public.
Yost said he and his advisers
would meet Monday with Exxon offi
cials in Valdez and comment on spe
cifics of the plan afterward.
‘‘It appears to be a piece of work
that’s well thought out, scientifically
and operationally, and I’m very en
couraged,” he said Saturday.
Exxon spokesman Don Cornett
said the company would not discuss
its plan until after Yost had fully
reviewed it.
Efforts to contain the oil at sea
have been largely ineffective. Exxon,
the Coast Guard and the oil pipeline
consortium Aiycska all have been
accused of moving too slowly in the
face of a staggering logistical task.
About 3,000 rocky beaches were
tainted by oil in Prince William
Sound. The 44 beaches targeted by
the state for immediate cleanup have
at least 240 miles of often rugged
shoreline.
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Army gets soft for couch potatoes
NEWARK, N.J. - The increas
ing numbers of “couch potatoes’’
enlisting in the Army are getting
injured so often that the brass has
instructed drill sergeants to add
some “low-impact” exercise to
basic training.
“It’s our opinion that the young
people coming into the military
now have spent more time in front
of the TV than on the tennis court
or a softball field,” said Lt. Col.
John Anderson, an Army podiatrist
who says he can’t remember re
cruits being in worse condition in
his 20-year career.
A new Army directive says the
third week of boot camp, when
oul-of-shape recruits apparently
become particularly vulnerable,
will consist of low-impact aero
bics, which are exercises that in
volve constant movement but not
running and jumping.
“The third week was standing
out as the place where most of
those avoidable injuries were
showing up,” said Richard Dowl
ing, a spokesman for Fort Dix, one
of the Army’s eight basic training
posts.
“I’ll say that naturally every
one had sore muscles, beginning
with day 2. But the accumulation
over two weeks, and especially the
accumulation into the third week,
would lead to relatively more seri
ous injuries,” he said.
Anderson, stationed at Fort
Dix’s Walson Army Hospitalvat
tributed the injuries to inactivity
among the Army’s prime pool for
recruits, high school students.
4 ‘They really arc in poor condi
tion,” he said. “Nationally, many
school systems are not making
physical education a mandatory
course, or it’s being dropped back
to once a week. That certainly has
had an impact on the general con
dition of the incoming trainee.”
Besides Fort Dix, the Army
posts affected by the dircc .ivc arc
Fort Jackson, S.C.; Fort L '‘onard
Wood, Mo.; Fort Knox, K>.; Fort
Benning.Ga.; Fort Sill, Okla.; Fort
Bliss, Texas; and Fort McClelland,
Ala.
Col. Margarete DiBenedetto, a
physician whose rccommenda
lions led lo the directive, said re
search shows stress fractures af
fected as many as 10 percent of the
recruits at some posts, although
most posts showed fracture rates
ranging between 2 and 4 percent
She said that even a 1 percent
sick call by recruits is too costly.
DiBenedetto said research
within the last year show that re
ducing running and jumping in the
third week lessened associated in
juries. The studies also showed
better physical conditioning and
faster running times for a group
whose workouts were reduced in
the third week, compared with a
control group.
And should it be called bool
camp anymore, with new soldiers
required to wear Army-approved
running shoes when they run?
‘ ‘They used to, years ago, wear
from the lime they arrived until the
time they left combat boots,
Anderson said. But running shoes
have made some difference in the
number of foot injuries the Army is
treating, Anderson said.
Wright prepares for committee report
WASHINGTON - House
Speaker Jim Wright, along with other
players in the political drama unfold
ing around him, readied themselves
Sunday for the formal curtain raising
of a long-awaited ethics committee
report on his finances.
Wright, who launched his public
defense with a long presentation
Thursday that was beamed via live
television into millions of homes,
remained out of public view Sunday.
But his chief understudy - House
Majority Leader Tom Foley, the man
who would succeed him should
Wright be forced to step down - was
on a live television interview show
trying to keep the waters calm.
Republican Rep. Vin Weber of
Minnesota, meanwhile, was charac
terizing the pending ethics commit
tee report as raising much more sub
stantive questions than the kind of
technical violations that he acknowl
» .**••••••••••*•. •••••»•#••*•••••••••
edged would not be enough to force a
House speaker to descend from the
powerful position.
In fact, the likely contents of the
report have been so thoroughly
leaked in recent days -- including
Wright’s own point-by-point defense
of what he said he understood to be
the major charges against him - that
few surprises were likely.
‘There is an ex
amination here
that is going on.’
—Foley
The panel, made up of six Repub
licans and six Democrats, scheduled
a morning news conference to issue
the document.
The document will represent a
kind of informal “indictment” ac
cusing Wright of breaking or skirting
various House rules having to do with
reporting of outside income from
different sources to the speaker and
his wife.
Foley, D-Wash., sought to empha
size Sunday that the report, its offi
cial status notwithstanding, will be
nothing more than a list of allega
tions. b
Asked on ABC’s “This Week
With David Brinkley” whether
Wright would be politically crippled
even if eventually exonerated of rules
violations, Foley said:
“No, I don’t believe that and I
think we have to be terribly careful
that we don’t let accusation bring
about its own taint of guilt. There is
an examination here that is going
on.
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472-17f>6
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473-7301
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