Turkey battles new tremor
ISTANBUL, Turkey (AP) -
Homeless earthquake survivors battled
to keep their cardboard and blanket
tents from collapsing in a downpour
Tuesday, and a new tremor 200 miles
away sent residents of Ankara running
into the streets in panic.
While the death toll from last'
week’s quake soared to nearly 18,000
people, there were no reports of casual
ties or damages from Tuesday’s much
weaker tremor. The magnitude-4.7
quake was centered near Haymana, 40
miles south of Ankara, the capital. A
magnitude-4.2 aftershock followed.
Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit,
whose government has been under fire
for its slow response to the crisis,
acknowledged Tuesday that there were
delays in the rescue efforts.
But he said past governments bear
some responsibility for allowing the
shoddy construction that contributed to
the high death toll. And he insisted
some of the delays were unavoidable
due to severe damage to telephones and
roads from the magnitude-7.4 quake
that struck before dawn on Aug. 17.
“Mistakes have been made,” Ecevit
said in an interview with CNN, adding
that the government is already working
on stricter measures to solve the prob
lem.
Despite the criticisms, Ecevit said
he has no intention of resigning.
“Of course the people have the
right to be nervous, have the right to
complain, but this is a natural disaster,”
he said
“We will certainly derive lessons
from the experience of this last disas
ter,” he said. “We will certainly benefit
from the expediences and knowledge of
foreign experts.”
The relief efforts have over
whelmed Turkey, which has appealed
for aid, including disinfectants, tetanus
vaccines, tents, flashlights, blankets,
garbage trucks and heavy machinery
for clearing rubble.
Turkey’s National Security Council
estimated that 200,000 people have
been left homeless and are staying in
tents and makeshift shelters.
The death toll rose to 17,997
Tuesday as more bodies were uncov
ered from the wreckage. Some officials
estimate the final death toll could reach
40,000.
Although the region has suffered
numerous quakes over the past decade,
experts say little has been done to
address die problems of shady contrac
tors who don’t bother with permits and
skimp on materials, or local officials
who don’t enforce building codes.
Thousands of cheaply-made con
crete-and-cinder-block apartment
blocks collapsed during the quake,
crushing thousands as they slept.
Tens of thousands of homeless are
now camped out on streets, in parks
and on vacant lots. Many are growing
angrier with the new misery of heavy
rains, and are waiting to see if and when
the government will help them.
Memduh Oguz, governor of hard
hit Izmit province, urged those whose
houses were not seriously damaged to
return home to ease the demand for
emergency shelter.
A Dutch group said it would send
30,000 prefabricated shelters designed
to withstand quakes and winter cold,
and the United States plans to send
3,500 all-weather tents.
Emergencyhousing, however, may
not reach all the needy until late
November - when heavy rains tradi
tionally lash northwestern Turkey.
A few foreign rescue crews, includ
ing Americans, continued to search for
miracles Tuesday, saying some people
have been found alive more than a
week after other quakes. But in general,
the search for survivors was winding
down and efforts were shifting to help
ing refugees - including taking mea
sures to prevent disease.
Dr. Michel Thieren of the World
Health Organization said the largest
threat to survivors comes from poor
sanitation, contaminated water and the
interruption of routine medical care,
not the presence of the large numbers
of unburied corpses.
“The relationship between dead
bodies and illness on the part of living
persons is incorrect - the risk of disease
is actually low,” he said in a telephone
interview from Geneva.
Dr. Stephen Ostroff of the U.S.
Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention agreed that contaminated
water and poor sanitation are the
greater risks, but said removing dead
bodies would also help ease health con
cerns.
“For a variety of sanitary and
hygiene reasons, it’s not good to have a
lot of decomposing corpses sitting
around,” he said.
Mut/iiuui/mjtxvuv'ui mu) xwvw h x/xujui xixjxmxwiuui ma i xtvjxj ■
Chinese espionage fears
send Washington to work
WASHINGTON (AP) - Box-by
box, sometimes line-by-line, govern
ment record keepers have worked the
past three years to declassify 600 mil
lion pages of documents, opening
doors to America’s secret past.
Now, because Washington fears
that China got its hands on U.S. nuclear
secrets, these bleary-eyed declassifiers
could face a daunting new task: Doing
it again.
Legislation headed for approval in
Congress would require all of the doc
uments to be re-examined to make sure
sensitive details about the U.S. nuclear
arsenal don’t slip out of the govern
ment’s attic.
“This is all part of the frenzy about
Chinese espionage that is driving
Washington crazy,” said Steven
Afteigood, who directs The Project on
Government Secrecy at the Federation
of American Scientists. “The idea that
they’re going to reread material that’s
already been declassified is preposter
ous. It will basically cripple die declas
sification program by driving it in cir
cles.”
Present efforts to lift the veil of
government secrecy are driven by an
executive order President Clinton
signed in 1995. The order instructs fed
eral agencies to open - by April 2000 -
classified records that contain histori
cal material and are more than 25 years
old. Exceptions are narrowly defined.
In the past three years, more than
600 million pages have been declassi
fied.
Subjects include the Cold War,
Vietnam, POWs and UFOs.
The public already can access 400
million pages that have been unsealed.
Another 200 million pages are declas
sified, but are not yet on public shelves.
Nearly one billion more pages still
must be reviewed.
Declassification was moving at a
fast clip until last year when some law
makers worried that nuclear secrets -
still classified under the Atomic
Energy Act - weren’t being properly
protected. Several U.S. senators wrote
to National Security Adviser Samuel
Berger saying that “in a frenzied
attempf’ to meet the April 2000 dead
line, documents containing sensitive
nuclear weapons information may have
been released, or were in danger of
being released.
Such concerns prompted Congress
to pass a law last year requiring declas
sifiers to come up with a plan to scan
documents, page-by-page, looking for
nuclear material - unless the records
were “highly unlikely” to contain such
information.
This year, after a government sci
entist suspected of giving nuclear
secrets to China was fired in March for
alleged security violations at Los
Alamos National Laboratory in New
Mexico, lawmakers sought even
'tougher scrutiny.
Babchuk s
dedication
is recalled
BABCHUK from page 1
Babchuk said. “You have to redefine
yourself (after your father dies). I was
so close to him, and I’m so proud of
everything he’s done.”
Bianca Babchuk, who is also a soci
ologist, met her husband in an introduc
tory sociology class at Wayne State
University in Detroit
They married soon after and moved
to St. Louis, where they both did gradu
ate work.
“He was an extremely dedicated
husband and father,” she said. “I still
can’t believe he’s gone.”
Bianca Babchuk said her husband
was an unselfish man dedicated to the
sociology department.
“He would think in terms of the
department and not himself,” she said,
noting that in his years of teaching he
never missed a class because of illness.
Wayne Babchuk said his father led
an interesting life and had many talents.
Besides the research, teaching and
family, Babchuk also served in the
World War II Air Corps, played the vio
lin and spoke Ukrainian fluently.
“He was a kind, kind man to every
one,” Wayne Babchuk said. “It’s hard to
believe that someone with such a rich
life still has to die.”
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