January 17, 1995
Quake devastates Japanese citv
CHINA
RU
By Eric Talmadge
The Associated Press r
OSAKA, Japan — A powerful
predawn earthquake slammed west
ern Japan on Tuesday, killing at least
439 people, injuring more than 1,300
and trapping hundreds more in the
rubble of collapsed buildings.
The earthquake, which struck at
2:46 pan. Lincoln time Monday, reg
istered a preliminary magnitude of
7.2. It was believed to be the most
violent to have struck a Japanese
urban area in at least 20 years.
The quake devastated the city of
Kobe, a major port of 1.4 million
people 280 miles west of Tokyo —
where the quake was barely felt.
The national police reported 583
people were missing. Two thousand
buildings were damaged or destroyed,
police said.
The quake knocked trains off their
tracks, collapsed elevated highways,
knocked down buildings and sparked
hundreds of fires.
“I was terrified,” said an old
woman, holding her granddaughter,
shown on Japanese television. “All I
could do was sit in terror.”
Trains were derailed by the force
of the quake. Power was knocked out
in some areas and underground pipes
burst, sending water gurgling over
the ground.
People huddled in the streets of
Kobe wrapped in bedding, some
bleeding from cuts and scrapes. Oth
ers wandered the streets, staring at
the collapsed buildings.
The shaking lasted about 20 sec
onds. The jolt was strong enough to
twist doorframes, making it difficult
to escape from buildings.
More than four hours after the
quake, several fires burned out of
control in Kobe, darkening the skies
over the city with a thick cloud of
smoke.
The quake was also felt strongly
in Osaka, Japan’s second-largest city,
but the most widespread damage was
in and around Kobe.
The western city of Ashiya, a resi
dential area between Kobe and Osaka,
was said to have been devastated.
Japanese television said up to 200
people were believed buried in rubble
there.Deaths also were reported on
Awaji Island, closest to the epicen
ter.
The quake, was centered 12 1/2
miles under Awaji in the Inland Sea,
the Central Meteorological Agency
said. Part of the quake’s destructive
See EARTHQUAKE on 3
lest results
allow rooms
to reopen in
Avery Hall
By Matthew Waite
Senior Reporter
Chemical engineering students in Avery
Hall can breathe easier now that asbestos test
results have allowed administrators to reopen
all but four rooms.
The building was flooded Wednesday when
a valve in the attic of the building was left open
and water flowed back into drained chilled
water pipes.
The flood damaged asbestos ceilings and
closed sections of the building for several days.
Rich Hoback, a university maintenance
manager, said two laboratories would be closed
for two days to three weeks so the asbestos in
the ceilings could be removed. He said two
other rooms needed repair and would be re
opened soon because construction would be
done after hours.
Crews cleaned the second and third floors of
the 1920s building, and construction crews
replaced damaged ceiling tiles in 12 rooms,
Hoback said.
Damage estimates are still a week away as
equipment clean up and construction continue,
Hoback said. It was hard to estimate the
damage, he said, because ceilings had not dried
and equipment had been sealed in contami
nated rooms.
A spectrometer, a tool used for analyzing
chemical compound structures, may have been
damaged, Hoback said. It would cost $60,000
to replace.
Hoback said the spectrometer would be tested
today.
Two computers that were an initial concern
when clean-up crews found them appear to be
working. Hoback said, however, that may
change if corrosion becomes a problem.
Hoback said the largest part of damage and
clean-up costs would be the replacement of the
ceilings and asbestos removal.
Dinos to dollars
Scott Bruhn/DN
Wan Mafisah Ibrahim, a junior architecture major, has managed Dinosaurs, Etc., the gift shop at Morrill Hall, since
September. She credits the store’s success to creative and honest employees.
UNL entrepreneurs
turn museum shop
into teaching tool
By Alex Harriger
Staff Reporter
The UNL Association of Collegiate En
trepreneurs has turned a gift shop in Morrill
Hall into a thriving enterprise.
ACE bought the university-run gift shop,
which had been closed for six months be
cause of low sales, with help from an outside
investor and renamed it Dinosaurs, Etc. The
shop has been successful ever since, said
Robin Anderson, the group’s adviser.
The shop sold more than $80,000 in
merchandise between November 1993, when
it re-opened, and November 1994. The prof
its made by the store go into a scholarship
fund for Business Administration majors.
Anderson said the reason why the shop
had been so successful was the creativity
and boldness of the club members who
operated it. All the day-to-day business of
the shop is run by paid club members.
“They have a lot of creativity, enthusi
asm and innovation,” Anderson said.
“They’ve reduced a lot of the old inventory,
and are phasing in a lot of the new items that
customers want more.
“Management has made a lot of big
decisions. For example, they have put a lot
of items down where kids can touch them, to
give them more of a hands-on experience.”
Wan Mafisah Ibrahim, manager of Di
See DINOSAURS on 3
Lettuce, two new parties file to run in ASUN elections
By Paula Lavigne
Senior Reporter
One veteran party and two new parties will
be vying for seats in the ASUN March elections
with platforms on safety, minorities, a de facto
wet campus and ASUN spending caps.
Members of the ACCESS, Impact and Let
tuce parties said they would file before the
Association of Students of the University of
Nebraska deadline of Feb. 8.
The Lettuce party finished second in last
year’s election. Brian Fitzgerald, a senior an
thropology major who will run as a Lettuce
presidential candidate, said his party had a new
image.
“Everything’s fantastic,” he said. “Our
ticket’s full. We’re professional.”
Fitzgerald said Lettuce created a profes
sional campaign to draw more followers.
“Last year we were a little overwhelmed,”
he said. “This year, we’ve got more people on
our ticket. We wanted to create a more positive
image of ourselves.”
Lettuce added Andy Smith, a junior el
ementary education major, as a vice presiden
tial candidate. The party also added Matt
Kissler, a senior psychology major, as a second
vice presidential candidate.
Lobbying the NU Board of Regents and
administration for a de facto wet campus would
be one of Lettuce’s first goals if elected,
Fitzgerald said. Party members have said that
a de facto wet campus would allow those 21 and
older to have alcohol on campus.
Fitzgerald said Lettuce also wanted to keep
student fees down and impose a $200 spending
cap on ASUN elections.
“Elections should not be bought as they
have been in the past,” he said.
When parties spend more than $200, he
said, they are buying votes; a smaller budget
would force them to think of creative campaign
ideas.
The other two parties are new to ASUN
elections.
ACCESS student coordinators want to give
supporters just that — access.
~ Chad W. Pekron, ACCESS coordinator,
said his party wanted to give minority students
a voice in student government.
ACCESS members are associated with mi
nority groups on campus, he said, and are also
getting feedback from off-campus and resi
dence hall students.
“Rightnow, ASUN seems to be made of just
one main group of people,” he said. “It’s a very
small group who have taken over student gov
ernment and used it for their own benefit.”
“It’s the plain issue of fairness,” he said.
ACCESS wants to address residence-hall
issues such as campus escorts, he said. Pekron
said he also wanted to see decaying buildings
repaired before new buildings were erected.
“With the flood in Walter Scott and Avery,
we really need to see some improvement of
facilities on campus,” he said. “Some of the
older buildings are falling down, and it might
be better to fix them up instead of building new
things.”
See ELECTIONS on 3
