l^T DTA7C DlCXPiif Associated Press
JL ^1 w w JL Ia ^ Edited by Roger Price
More rocks roll
under California
SCOTIA, Calif. — A pair of
powerful aftershocks followed a major
earthquake along Northern Califor
nia’s “Lost Coast,” touching off fires
and fear Sunday of more seismic
shaking.
The National Guard trucked in
drinking water to four communities
hardest hit by the quakes in this rug
ged region, where redwoods outnum
ber people and mountains drop straight
to the sea.
About 50 people were injured in
the string of quakes that began Satur
day with one that registered 6.9 on the
Richter scale, centered about 270 miles
north of San Francisco.
Two strong aftershocks early Sun
day touched off a fire that ravaged a
strip shopping center, destroying a
lumber yard, a pharmacy, a coffee
shop and a grocery store. Flames shot
100 feet into the air and explosions
were heard.
The first serious aftershock struck
at 12:41 a.m. and measured 6.0 on the
Richter scale. A second, at4:18 a.m.,
measured 6.5. They were among
thousands of aftershocks in this re
mote area known for lots of seismic
activity.
People as far away as Fresno, 460
miles south, felt the aftershocks.
A bridge connecting Scotia, a dairy
town of 1,200 people, with Rio Dell
was closed Sunday while officials
looked for damage. Another bridge
near Rio Dell showed gaps in con
crete from the first aftershock, but
wasn’t closed.
The epicenters of both aftershocks
were in the area of the first quake,
centered just onshore near Rio Dell, a
town of about 3,000 people.
"The typical pattern with a big
quake is to sec a couple of fairly large
aftershocks and then smaller ones with
decreasing frequency,” said John
Minsch of the U.S. Geological Sur
vey in Golden, Colo. “So far, it’s
pretty typical, but these things don’t
always do what you expect.”
After the aftershocks, David and
Joanne Paine, their neighbors and their
five children camped outside in
Fcmdalc.
“Things that didn’t fall in the first
two quakes fell in the third one,” said
Powerful aftershocks \
follow earthquake
Two powerful aftershocks followed a
major earthquake along the Northern
California’s “Lost Coast."
The epicenters of both after
shocks were in the area of the
first quake, centered just on- |
shore near Rio Dell \ |
Eureka ' ‘-if f
Femdale 11
Rio Dell 11
Scotia
„ ’v 40 miles If
Pacific \ g
Ocean
Paine, who feared his century-old, The state s “Lost Coast runs from
salmon-colored house might topple the town of Shelter Cove 50 miles
from its foundation if more after- north to Cape Mendocino, the west
shocks struck emmost point in the Lower 48 states.
Rebels vie for control of capital in Afghanistan
Fundamentalists,
moderates battle
in Kabul streets
KABUL, Afghanistan — Rival
rebels fought over Afghanistan’s fallen
capital on Sunday, and the followers
of a moderate leader gained the upper
hand with help from troops of the
collapsed communist government.
The Red Cross said it had treated
50 wounded rebels since the Muslim
guerrilla swarmed into the capital by
the thousands on Saturday, and that at
least seven had died.
With 14 years of civil war appar
ently coming to an end, Kabul was
jubilant and peaceful when the rebels
began arriving, and rival groups even
cooperated in taking over govern
ment buildings.
But by Saturday night the fighting
among the rebel factions began.
Gunfire, rocket and lank shells shook
the city of 1.5 million Sunday.
The central bazaar, normally bus
tling, was nearly empty on the sunny
day. By nightfall, streams of red trac
ers stitched the sky, and white and
green flares flashed on the horizon.
Most of the fighting was at the
presidential palace and other slrate
gic spots, and was between radical
guerrillas under rebel leader Gulbud
din Hekmatyar, leader of the funda
mentalist Hczb-e-Islami, and those
led b/ moderate commander Ahmed
Shah Masood, of the Jamiat-e-Islami.
Masood’s men, fighting alongside
remnants of the military, drove
Hekmatyar’s men from the presiden
tial palace and some suburbs of Kabul.
But Hekmatyar still held the Interior
Ministry building and pockets of the
city with anti-aircraft weapons.
U.N. Secretary-General Boutros
Boutros-Ghali, whose plan to restore
peace collapsed with President Najib
ullah's ouster earlier this month,
pleaded for all sides lo end the blood
shed.
“Now is the time for healing, tol
erance and forgiveness,” he told re
porters in Islamabad, Pakistan.
Hckmalyar has demanded the for
mation of a strict Islamic state, and
opposes Masood’s vision of a moder
ate state in place of the old commu
nist government.
Most of the other rebel groups
have allied with Masood, and their
political leaders say the military
commander is in charge in Kabul
until a multiparty interim government
arrives from Pakistan.
Explosions
blamed on
oil firm
GUADALAJARA, Mexico —
Authorities Sunday blamed city lead
ers and the Pemcx state oil monopoly
for sewer blasts that k i 1 led at least 190
people last week. Charges could in
clude negligent homicide.
The nation’s attorney general said
officials were negligent for not evacu
ating the area after residents reported
strong gasoline fumes coming from
sewers. He also said they should have
acting quickly to repair the problem.
Pcmex has denied a broken gaso
line pipeline caused Wednesday’s
explosions, claiming the pipes were
ruptured by the blasts. A secretary at
Pcmex’s press office in Guadalajara
said no spokesmen were available for
comment Sunday.
The attorney general, Ignacio
Morales Lcchuga, said nine public
and Pcmex officials and two private
citizens he did not identify faced
various charges related to the deaths,
injuries to 1,470 people and property
damage. No formal charges were filed
on Sunday.
Mexicans, who repeatedly have
suffered environmental and natural
disasters in recent years, have harshly
criticized officials for the disaster and
blamed both Pcmex and lax govern
ment precautions.
Friday, when the last known vic
tim was removed from the rubble of
Guadalajara’s Reforma district, the
dead child’s father, a policeman,
screamed: “It’s the fault of Pcmex!”
Morales Lcchuga said the leaked
gasoline mixed with other volatile
chemicals in the sewers, especially
the strong industrial chemical hex
ane, to produce the disaster. He said
three cooking-oil companies that use
hexane in the manufacturing process
would be investigated to determine if
they were the source of the hexane.
Crime rates
still growing
WASHINGTON — Violent crime
reports to police increased 5 percent last
year while reported property crimes rose
2 percent, government figures showed
Sunday, and experts blamed drugs and
the nation’s economic troubles.
The total rose 3 percent, continuing a
trend of increases dating back to 1985,
according to preliminary figures from
the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reports.
The 5 percent increase in violent crime
— murder, forcible rape, robbery and
aggravated assault—is less than half the
10.6 percent hike from 1989 to 1990, but
it is in line with increases since the mid
1980s.
The FBI’s figures did not include
population estimates for 1991 and thus,
the rale of crime per capita.
However, calculations by The Asso
ciated Press indicate there were about
5,880 crimes reported per 100,000 resi
dents last year. That is the second-high
est rate in the past three decades, sur
passed only by 1980, when there were
5,899.9 crimes per 100,000 U.S. resi
dents.
The violent crime rate was about 750
per 100,000 residents, the highest in the
past three decades, according to the AP’s
calculations, and it continues an upward
trend that followed a dip in the early
1980s.
Meanwhile, the rate of property crime
— burglary, larceny-theft and motor
vehicle theft — was about 5,090 per
100,000 people, the AP found. Like the
overall crime rate, that’s the highest since
1960 with the exception of 1980«
The AP’s calculations were based on
the FBI’s broad percentage changes in
reported crime as well as the Census
Bureau’s estimate of the 1991 U.S.popu
lauon.
Perot aims sharpest attacks at president
DALLAS — Ross Pcrol says he harbors no
ill will toward either parly. But the Texas
billionaire has been aiming his sharpest barbs
at President Bush while sometimes seeming to
go out of his way to praise Democrat Bill
Clinton.
Perot’s blunt rhetoric
may reflect what many
longtime Perol-watchcrs say
is a deep-seated enmity
toward Bush, raising the
question of whether win
ning or driving Bush from
office may be uppermost in
the fellow Texan’s mind.
Recent polls suggest Perot draws support
about equally from Democrats and Republi
cans. But his victory in certain key states like
/I
Texas could pose a substantial obstacle to
Bush’s re-election.
Perot has a history of difficult dealings with
Bush over the years, culminating in the Dallas
businessman’s all-out opposition to Bush’s
conduct of the Persian Gulf War.
Perot denies bad blood and says he doesn’t
consider his prospective independent candi
dacy a grudge match with Bush.
His words and actions speak differently.
Even though he has spread several hundred
thousand dollars in political contributions over
the past 15 years to Democratic and Republi
can candidates alike, much of it to Texans, he
has given nothing to Bush, who lived in Texas
for 20 years and represented the state in Con
gress.
And in a gesture that must irritate the presi
• • A I
dent’s family, Perot volunteers arc operating a
busy drive-in petition-signing booth in north
Dallas just a few blocks from the home of the
president’s eldest son, George W. Bush.
Perot’s rhetorical venom against Bush has
intensified the closer Perot gels to formally
announcing an independent candidacy.
Listen to recent Perot on Bush:
- “When you’ve got an incumbent saying, ‘ I
will do anything it lakes to win’... then when
you know what he did in the last campaign,
look at what they’re doing now, it’s kind of all
time new low,” he said in an interview with The
Associated Press last week.
- On domestic policies: “I’m talking about
two-day education summits . . . these little
video events set up to say, ‘I am the education
president.”__
Chinese derby tirst in 4.5 years
CANTON, China — This soulhem city on
Sunday hosted China’s first public horse races
since the Communist revolution of 1949 with
an eclectic mix of cash prizes, American beer
ads and the “William Tell Overture.”
And the winner was — capitalism, going
away.
A sold-out crowd of 5,000 sometimes scream
ing Chinese packed the Huangcun Racetrack, a
recently converted military airfield, for six
races. Betting was prohibited, but that didn’t
slop many from playing the ponies for fun.
:‘I wouldn’t be surprised if people bet among
themselves,” said Wu Zhiwei, a Canton banker
attending the event. “I would pick horses from
Inner Mongolia because they have more expe
rience.”
He must have had a tip.
A Mongolian horse named “Suddenly” won
the last and most important race of the day, the
“Horse of China” derby.
Such an event wouldn’t have been possible
10 years ago, said Wu. But with a recent drive
towards economic reform leaving a capitalist
hue in the prosperous south, China’s leaders
sec the sport as a higher form of entertainment
for an increasingly wealthy population.
Banners advertising Pabst Blue Ribbon beer,
Pepsi-Cola and other American products lined
the track. No one played “My Old Kentucky
Home” but organizers blasted a taped medley
of thumping local pop songs and a remix of
Rossini’s “William Tell Overture.”
The races were partly sponsored by the
Guangdong provincial government, of which
Canton is the capital, and broadcast live by two
local television stations. Even the official Xinhua
News Agency published a guide to the meet.
Zhang Tao, a spokesman for the provincial
government, said the government wants “to
give the people more activities to enjoy. This is
not betting, this is fun.”
All forms of gambling were banned in China
after the 1949 revolution and criticized by the
government as being elements of “bourgeois
capitalism.”
Chinese officials are also gung-ho about the
races because 40 percent of the profits will go
to funding construction projects in the prov
ince.
Nebraskan
Editor Jana Pedersen
472-1766
Managing Editor Kara Walls
Assoc. News Editors Chris Hoplsnspargsr
Kris Karnopp
Opinion Page Editor Alan Phelps
Wire Editor Roger Price
Copy Desk Editor Wendy Navratll
Sports Editor Nick Hylrek
Advertising Manager Todd Sears
Sales Manager Eric Krlngel
Classified Ad Manager Annette Sue per
Publications Board
Chairman Bill Vobejda
472-2588
Professional Adviser Don Walton, 473-7301
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1992 DAILY NEBRASKAN
