News digest
Ocean earthquake slams killertidal wave into Nicaragua
1 ___ ___centered 75 miles southwest ot Managua ar.
MASACHAPA, Nicaragua — Splintered
huts and buildings littered a 200-mile swath of
Nicaragua’s coast Wednesday following a tidal
wave that killed at least 36 people and left
thousands homeless. Dozens were missing, and
rescue workers expected the death toll to rise.
A major earthquake at sea caused a wall of
water up to 30 feet high to sweep over most of
the Nicaraguan coast. It submerged islands and
rolled more than a half-mile inland in some
spots, destroying beachfront homes and hotels
and scattering wrecked boats and cars.
The surge of water sucked people and small
buildings out to sea as it retreated.
Nicaragua’s government appealed urgently
for international aid.
“The sea took us by surprise. All of sudden,
I was swimming inside my own home, and all
my furniture was floating around me,” Socorro
Lopez, 47, said. She lost two grandchildren in
Masachapa, a beach resortof about2,000 people
south of the capital, Managua.
“This huge wave swallowed us house and
all. Now I’ll never be able to bring my grand
children back,” the woman said, sobbing,as the
recovered bodies of the 4-year-old boy and 2
year-old girl were laid out nearby.
Eight of the nine confirmed dead in
Masachapa were children.
Lt. Col. Ricardo Wheelock, an army spokes
man, said preliminary figures indicated 36
people were known dead, 44 missing and 142
injured. More man juu nuuscs uvJU»jv»,
he said. . . . .
Jose Adan Guerra, vice minister of the presi
dency, said more bodies were being found.
Unconfirmed radio reports said there were
more than 50 deaths.
In Geneva, U.N. officials said the Interna
tional Federation of Red Cross and Red Cres
cent Societies reported at least 64 dead. They
said the United Nations would release $30,000
to buy urgent supplies.
The missing included at least 12 fishermen
lost at sea near Masachapa, Red Cross officials
said.
The earthquake, which registered 7 on the
Richter scale, struck at 6:16 p.m. and was
* A -U
cording to the National Earthquake Informa
tion Center in Golden, Colo.
Aftershocks followed, and the center said
they likely would continue for days but prob
ably would cause no damage.
Nonetheless, authorities evacuated thousands
of people from coastal areas and wailing ambu
lances sped through towns picking up the in
jured and dying.
The earthquake was among the most damag -
ing to hit N icaragua since a 1972 quake measur
ing 6.2 on the Richter scale devastated the
capital, killing 5,000 people.
• __ _A
South Florida refugees
begin tent city check-in
MIAMI —• Hurricane Andrew’s
weary, homeless victims started
trickling into tent cities Wednes
day, and were greeted like guests
at a first-class hotel. Some of them
enjoyed their first hot shower in
days.
Donated goods were being
shipped into hurricane-battered
Florida and Louisiana from across
the country by individuals, com
munity groups and corporations.
The first arrivalsatthe tentcamps
were registered by the Red Cross,
treated to a bag of toiletries and
stationery, then escorted to their
tents by luggage-toting men in uni
form.
“A Marine brought our stuff,”
marveled EmestGuzman, who was
settling into a camp in Homestead
with his two children where show
ers had been connected. “We’ve
got valet service.”
The five tent cities—two run by
the Marines, two Army and one
Navy — have room for 3,752
people, a liny percentage of the
tens of thousands left homeless by
the ferocious hurricane that swept
across southern Florida on Aug. 24.
Only a few dozen people moved
in Tuesday night and Wednesday
— the first days the tent cities were
available, although they weren’t
officially opening until Thursday.
Still, they offered some of
Andrew’s victims a sign that the
federal government, sharply criti
cized as sluggish and inefficient in
the first days after the storm, was
serious about providing help.
And, one day after Bush’s sec
ond lour of the storm wreckage,
three Cabinet-level secretaries were ^
in the area.
Transportation Secretary An
drew Card, who has been in charge
of the federal relief effort, was
joined at a news conference by
Housing Secretary Jack Kemp and
Health and Human Services Secre
tary Louis Sullivan.
Kemp said Bush would ask fora
multibillion-dollar supplemental
appropriation for relief, and also
said the government would con
sider whether to build smaller tent
cities m damaged neighborhoods
so that people could slay closer to
what is left of their homes.
‘Folks want to protect their
castle, their palace,” Kemp said.
Florida state officials said
Wednesday that 1.7 million meals
had been served so far at 35 immo
bile feeding sites and 75 mobile
ones, and that 7(X),(XX) pounds ol
food had been distributed.
In this corner, tne lncumoem
Bush hands out election-year cash, subsidies
SHALLOW ATER,Texas—Presi
dent Bush, polishing hi’s new image of
an activist president doling out elec
tion-year largess, on Wednesday an
nounced $755 million in disaster aid
for farmers and a $1 billion package
of farm export subsidies.
He unveiled the emergency assis
tance and the package to help U.S.
wheat farmerscompetcagainst heavily
subsidized European competition first
. in South Dakota and then later in this
East Texas, community. Then he
headed to Fort Worth, where White
House aides said he would announce
the go-ahead for S6 billion in sales of
Texas-made F-16 fighter jets to Tai
wan.
The United States will sell Taiwan
150 of the jets, the White House said.
Taiwan has sought the planes, manu
factured by General Dynamics at its
Forth Worth plant, for the past 11
years.
Company officials have said an
earlier administration decision to
block the sale of the fighters would
force the layoff of3,000 aircraft work
ers. Bush announced he was reconsid
ering U.S. opposition to the sale dur
ing a visit to Texas in July.
Standing among bales of hay on a
flatbed truck on a South Dakota farm,
Bush declared, “American farmers
need help, and with th is disaster assis
tance, you will get it.”
He delivered a similar message
during a rally at a cotton gin mill in
Shallowatcr, near Lubbock.
Bush told his Texas audience that
he saw his role as “being there to help
you get back on your feet when disas
ter strikes.”
In addition to providing assistance
to farmers in Florida and Louisiana
whose rice and other crops were dev
astated by Hurricane Andrew, the new
assistance would help reimburse farm
ers in East Texas whose cotton crops
were damaged by heavy flooding last
spring, Bush said.
The new aid came a day after Bush
promised 100 percent federal reim
bursement for Florida’s recovery costs
from hurricane damage.
While House aides denied politi
cal motivation, but did little to dis
guise the fact that Bush hoped to reap
political benefits from the announce
ment.
On the export aid, Bush said he was
directing subsidies to be applied to up
to 1.1 billion bushels of wheat for
shipment to 28 countries between now
and next June. The subsidies could
mean $3 billion in sales. Bush said.
Administration officials said the
SI billion cost would be financed
from existing agricultural appropria
tions, but they did not provide details.
Bush said the federal aid would
helpU.S. farmers compete with farm
ers in nations that subsidize farm ex
ports, allowing American growers to —
“beat their socks off.”
The White House denied that the
announcement represented a retreat
from the U.S. position — taken re
peatedly by the United States in inter
national trade talks — to end all such
subsidies.
The new move seemed bound to
increase frictions between the United
States and the 12-nation European
Community, where agricultural sub
sidies are common.
Bnan Shellito DN
.
Asylum-seeking swarm causes uerman strain
BERLIN — The headline in Germany’s
most widely read newspaper caught plenty of
people oi l guard: “Refugee Shelter Seeks Ger
man Cleaning Lady.”
Though the home’s directors say the Bild
hcadlme was exaggerated. Wednesday' s report
reflected a widespread feeling that a wave of
asylum-seekers has turned German life upside
down.
With unemployment and rightist violence
growing in the east, Gcrmansarctakingacloser
look at hundreds olthousands of refugees living
on the public dole.
No one's talking about tossing innocent
civilians back into war /ones, but there’s a
growing consensus that Germany doesn't need
to shelter Africans, Eastern Europeans and
Asians from poverty.
Even the opposition, Social Democrats, long '
the firm champions of Germany’s liberal asy
lum laws, says it’s time for a change — and lor
cuts in the refugees’ handouts.
“They can no longer get the same federal
welfare benefits as Germans,” said Hermann
Heincmann, the head of social services in North
Rhine-Westphalia stale and a Social Democrat.
Recent riots in Rostock and elsewhere have
plunged Germans into the most profound soul
scarchingand political bickering since the coun
try was reunited nearly two years ago.
Critics say Chancellor Helmut Kohl must
pay more attention to the struggling cast, where
the anti-refugee violence has been the worst.
Neo-Nazis took to the streets with Hitler sa
lutes. raising worries about Germany’s image
- 44
Other countries are watching
us very closely, with an eye
toward our rightist-extremist
tendencies in the past.
— Klaus Kirkel
German foreign minister
-99 -
particularly within the European Community,
abroad, particularly within the European Com
munity.
“The effects abroad are bad, of course,” said
Foreign Minister Klaus Kinkel. “Other coun
tries are watching us very closely, with an eye
toward our rightist-extremist tendencies in the
past.”
When West Germany was formed in 164d.
the country' s leaders w rote a I ibcral asvlum law
into the constitution as a form of atonement for
Nazi atrocities.
Those same provisions are now coming
back to haunt the government. State and city
officials bitterly complain that the hugecostsol
housing and maintaining the refugees are seri
ously threatening their budgets.
Officials sav 1,100 refugees arrived every
day from January through July, a pace nearly
double last year’s record-high of 256,000. The
Social Democrats say there are 360,000 un
processed applications for asylum.
The proccsscan take years. In the meantime,
the refugees receive free meals and lodging,
and can get spending money of up to S360 a
month for a head of family, with other family
members receiving lesser amounts.
The majority are fleeing poverty rather than
political persecution, and know they won't be
granted asylum. Fewer than 10 percent arc ever
granted reiugee status, but lew arc booted out
il they arpn t.
While even the federal Interior Ministry
says it cannot pinpoint the total cost of keeping
the people housed and fed, it’s estimated to run
well into the billions ol dollars every year.
Some shelters hold 25 nationalities at one
time, leading to disputes over customs and
eating.
One of the shelters, in the rural town ol
Usingcn outside Frankfurt, advertised lor a
cleaning woman, catching the eye ol the Bild
newspaper.
But some critics arc beginning to see greater
problems lurking below the surface — most
stemming from the difficulties of reuniting
rich,capitalist West Germany with the shambles
of Communist East Germany.
“I think the asylum problem just diggers a
much deeper set of problems," says Gcsinc
Schwan,a political science professor at Berlin s
Free University. "Even if there were no reiugee
homes, there would be other causes for riots.
U.N. to monitor Serb artillery
S AR A J E VO. Bosn ia- Hcrzcgov i na
—The leader of Bosnian Serbs agreed
Wednesday to pul his heavy weapons
around Sarajevo under U.N. supervi
sion, and a U.N. official said peace
keeping operations could last for years.
Despite the agreement by Serb
leader Radovan Karadzic on U.N.
monitoring of Serb artillery, mortar
shells fell again on Sarajevo, and loy
alist troops pressed on with their des
perate attempt to break through Serb
forces that have encircled the capital
for five months.
The developments came a day be
fore a new round of peace talks spon
sored by the United Nations and the
European Community in Geneva.
Apart from ending the war, a major
aim of the talks is to ensure aid gets to
the estimated 2 million people from
Bosnia who are at risk from cold or
lack of food this winter,
U.N. officials said a U.S. C-130
transport that flew to Sarajevo
Wednesday was the l,()(X)lh Bight in
a2-month-old U.N. airlift for thecity’s
estimated 450,(XX) residents.
Leaders of Bosnia’s ethnic fac
tions met for an initial round of peace
talks in London last week. The fight
ing, which has killed thousands,broke
out after Bosnia’s majority Muslims
and Croats voted on Feb. 29 for indc
pcndcnce from Serbia-dominated
Yugoslavia and ethnic Serbs rebelled.
Numerous cease-fire agreements
have quickly collapsed, and earlier
promises by the Serbs to have U.N.
troops monitor heavy weapons have
not slowed the fighting.
Fred Eckhard, the U.N. spokes:
man in Sarajevo, said Karad/ic signed
the supervision agreement Wednes
day after talks with U.N. military
officers on the details of how Serb
weapons would be monitored.
U.N. soldiers began surveying 11
collection points in the city, and mili
tary observers were to move there
Thursday or Friday, Eckhard said. !
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472-1766
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