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Floyd prompts coastal evacuation i
MIAMI (AP) - Hundreds of thousands of people
were ordered to evacuate the Florida coast Monday,
and NASA all but abandoned Cape Canaveral as
Hurricane Floyd - one of the most powerful storms
ever to threaten the United States - charged toward
Florida with potentially catastrophic 155 mph winds.
Floyd was much larger than Hurricane Andrew,
which smashed into south Florida in 1992, causing
$25 billion in damage, killing 26 people and leaving
160,000 homeless.
Forecasters said Floyd would brush past the
Bahamas overnight and could hit land in the next cou
ple of days between central Florida and South
Carolina. They predicted it was capable of causing
enormous damage.
“It’s scary. It’s very scary,” Gov. Jeb Bush said.
“Andrew hit Miami in the middle of the night, and it
was haunting. This is as strong and... three times big
ger.”
Bush declared a state of emergency Monday, giv
ing him the authority to activate the'National Guard
and allowing the state to order evacuations and sus
pend tolls on the highways.
The storm could be dangerous even if it does not
come ashore. Floyd’s hurricane-force winds - at least
74 mph - extended for 125 miles. Andrew’s hurricane
*•
force winds extended about 25 or 30 miles.
With a hurricane warning in effect Monday from
Florida City, south of Miami, to Brunswick, Ga., resi
dents along 400 miles of Atlantic coastline packed
stores to stock up on canned food, bottled water, ply
wood and aluminum shutters. Navy ships left port to
ride out the storm at sea, and aircraft were sent inland.
Coastal and mobile home residents in four Florida
counties were ordered to evacuate. That included
Miami-Dade, where about 272,000 people were
affected. Schools were closed today in 13 counties in
Florida and one in Georgia.
At Kennedy Space Center, which is just 9 feet
above sea level, almost all of the 12,500 workers were
leaving. A skeletal crew remained behind, but they,
too, will evacuate if the wind is as fierce as predicted.
That would be the first complete evacuation of the
space center ever.
Three of NASA’s space shuttles were in a hangar
that was designed to withstand wind of only up to 105
mph. A fourth was in a building designed to stand
winds of up to 125 mph. Four multimillion-dollar
rockets were exposed on launch pads and could not be
moved.
The storm has consistently moved faster than pre
dicted, said Jerry Jarrell, director of the National
a
Its scary. Its very scary.
Andrew hit Miami in the
middle of the night and it was
haunting. This is as strong and
... three times bigger.”
JebBush
Florida governor
Hurricane Center. Forecasters had expected it to turn
northward, possibly reducing the danger to Florida.
But by Monday afternoon, there was no sign that the
hurricane was being influenced by weather systems
that forecasters hoped would steer it away.
“It’s controlling its own destiny,” Jarrell said.
“That’s a bad sign.”
“Hurricane Floyd is huge, he’s powerful, he’s fast
and he’s mean,” said Richard Moore, North Carolina’s
public safety secretary. “This is one of those once-in
a-decade storms.”
Sharp shooters used
to curb smuggling
WASHINGTON (AP) - Coast
Guard sharpshooters fire from
helicopters to knock out the
engines of cocaine-laden boats in
the Caribbean in a tactic unused
since the Prohibition era, officials
disclosed Monday.
The previously secret assaults
have been employed in recent
weeks using an array of nonlethal
force to stop smugglers who now
use open-hull, low-profile boats
called “Super Smugglers” or “Go
Fasts” that carry barrels of fuel
and about a ton of cocaine each.
The sea encounters have led to
the capture of 13 crew members
from four boats and netted more
than three tons of cocaine des
tined ultimately for the illicit U.S.
market, said Barry McCaffrey,
White House drug control direc
tor. He said those and other opera
tions in the past year brought
cocaine confiscation to a record
53 tons, with a street value of $3.7
billion.
“We have made the drug
smugglers afraid. We will now
make them disappear,” McCaffrey
said at a news conference with
other officials alongside one of the
specially equipped MH90
/"
rt
Enforcer helicopters leased by the
Coast Guard for the operation.
Three of the four “Super
Smugglers” stopped so far were
disabled in the last month. None of
the four crews fired back, Coast
Guard officials said, but rules of
engagement allow lethal return
fire if they do.
Sharpshooter ; Charlie
Hopkins, nicknamed “El Diablo”
because his .50-caliber Robar rifle
bears the packing number 999,
fired three shots Aug. 16 that dis
abled a vessel.
“Depending on which way you
hold it, it carries the sign of the
devil (666)” Hopkins, 32, of
Winslow, Maine, said in an inter
view.
“We’re still humanitarian. We
just want to stop the flow,” he said,
noting that each helicopter carries
a life raft in case a boat is acciden
tally blown up or sunk.
Adm. James E. Loy, Coast
Guard commandant, ruled out any
chance that commercial fishermen
or pleasure boaters will be target
ed by the sharpshooters. Rules
require identification and exten
sive warnings before aggressive
tactics are employed.
J
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THE DAILY NEBRASKAN
Clinton readies provision
of troops for East Timor
auukj^anu, New Zealand (AT)
- President Clinton, after his summit
with Asian leaders, is ready to provide
American troops for an international
peacekeeping mission in East Timor.
The United States said Monday it
would play a limited role in a peace
keeping operation expected to be led
by Australia. “We’re talking here about
hundreds,"not thousands, ofAmericans
that would be involved, and not neces
sarily all of those would be based in
East Timor,” National Security Adviser
Sandy Berger said.
Nobel laureate Jose Ramos Horta,
an East Timorese activist, told Clinton
that about 200,000 people have been
displaced from their homes during his
country’s independence struggle.
At the State Department,
spokesman James Rubin said the
United States was awaiting the out
come of talks at U.N. headquarters in
New York between the Security
Council and the foreign ministers of
Indonesia and Australia on a peace
keeping force for East Timor. Once that
is done, the size and nature of U.S. par
ticipation can be decided, Rubin said.
He said the United States probably
would limit its contribution tQ provid
ing communications, logistics,trans
portation and intelligence support, as
opposed to sending combat torces.
The administration declared
Clinton’s talks here a success after the
reopening of trade negotiations with
_ China, the missile accord with North
Korea following discussions in Berlin
and Indonesia’s grudging agreement to
accept outside help to restore order in
East Timor.
Clinton was heading for a day of
rest Tuesday at a scenic alpine resort on
New Zealand’s South Island after the
summit of the Asia-Pacific Economic
Cooperation forum.
“This has truly been a good week
for stability and U.S. interests in Asia,”
Berger said. Yet, there were some dis
appointments.
Negotiators failed to complete a
trade deal between North Vietnam and
the United States. Moreover, the hur
ried resumption of trade talks with
China yielded no immediate progress
or deadline for completion, and
Clinton and China’s president, Jiang
Zemin, remained at odds over Taiwan.
Even the tentative accord with
North Korea fell short of the break
through agreement Clinton had hoped
to announce here during a meeting
with South Korean President Kim Dae
jjung and Japanese President Keizo
Obuchi.
At least 7 die in Turkey aftershock
GOLCUK, Turkey (AP) - Terrified
residents jumped from windows
Monday as a strong aftershock jolted
the same area of western Turkey where
15,000 people died in an earthquake last
month.
At least seven people were killed
and more than 420 were injured.
In the hard-hit coastal town of
Golcuk, one building damaged in the
Aug. 17 temblor slid into the sea, appar
ently trapping four people who had
gone inside to salvage their belongings.
Rescue workers from the civil
defense, the military and a civilian res
cue group were on a 6-foot coma- sec
tion of the building jutting from the
water, pulling at the rubble. Navy divers
searched the water.
“Our only chance is that they are out
of the water,” said rescue worker Emre
Ayan.
Rescue workers were also pulling
debris from at least one other site in
Golcuk where survivors might be
trapped.
The quake had a preliminary mag
nitude of 5.8 and was centered in Izmit,
just northeast of Golcuk and some 50
miles southeast of Istanbul, the city’s
Kandilli Observatory reported.
Most of the injured suffered broken
bones jumping from buildings in hopes
of reaching safety on the street.
Isa Ersozer was in a second-floor
barbershop in Izmit when the building
began to shake.
“The stairs were full of people try
ing to get out, so I just jumped,” he said,
sitting in a wheelchair in a field hospi
tal, his foot covered in bandages.
Three people were killed in nearby
Kocaeli when a building fell on their
car, Istanbul Deputy Governor Ali
Cafer Akyuz said. Another three were
killed in that town when the building
they were in collapsed, he said.
A woman in die town of Adapazari
died of a heart attack, state-owned TRT
television reported.
More than 420 people were being
treated from injuries or severe psycho
logical trauma, state-owned TRT televi
sion reported.
■ Washington
Sniper cartridges found at
house used by FBI in Waco
WASHINGTON (AP) - A dozen
spent rifle cartridges of a type often
used by snipers were recovered from
a house used by the FBI during the
1993 standoff with the Branch
Davidians, the Texas Rangers said
Monday.
The special investigator named
by Attorney General Janet Reno will
have to determine whether the shell
casings came from FBI agents, who
have denied firing, or from Bureau of
Alcohol, Tobacco andpFirearms
agents who used the sairie house 51
days earlier during the initial fire
fight.
In a report submitted to
Congress, the Rangers also released
a letter by a federal prosecutor who
told Reno that Justice Department
officials may have withheld facts
from her regarding the FBI’s use of
potentially incendiary tear-gas canis
ters.
■ Moscow
Terrorists suspected
in Moscow bombing
MOSCOW (AP) - Dozens of
people were missing and believed
buried under tons of wreckage
Monday after a suspected bomb pul
verized an eight-story apartment
building in Moscow, killing at least
73 people.
Authorities blamed terrorists for
the pre-dawn blast, and appealed for
help finding a man who allegedly
rented space in that building and
another that was blown up four days
earlier. More than 200 people have
died in explosions in Russia during
the past two weeks.
The government ordered a mas
sive security operation in the capital
and other cities. Police checked peo
ple’s identity papers at metro stations
arfd other crowded areas, and
searched for stores of explosives in
buildings across Moscow.
■ Zambia
Absent African presidents
mar AIDS conference
LUSAKA, Zambia (AP) -
Thousands of officials and AIDS
activists converged Monday on the
Zambian city of Lusaka for a major
conference billed as an attempt to
wrest a greater commitment from
governments to combat Africa’s
worst killer.
But at least 16 African presidents
- including host President Frederick
Chiluba - did not show up, casting a
pall over efforts to muster greater
political will to tackle the epidemic
that has killed 11 million Africans.
Chiluba did not say why he
stayed away, “but I’m sure there was
a good reason,” said Simon,Mphuka
of Zambia, a senior conference coor
dinator.
■ Philadelphia
Company pleads guilty to
giving China technology
PHILADELPHIA (AP) - A
Pennsylvania company agreed
Monday to plead guilty to illegally
giving China technology that could
help improve the accuracy of mis
siles.
Orbit/FR, headquartered in
Horsham, about 15 miles north of
Philadelphia, planned to plead guilty
in US. District Court to violating the
Arms Export Control Act, according
to papers filed in court Monday.
