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VOLUME 68 ISSUE 11
WEDNESDAY, APRIL 11, 2012
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CHARRED Chico Fire Department personnel stand outside the Warner Street home of three Chico State students who were arrested on suspicion of manufacturing a controlled substance after the house caught fire. PHOTOS BY • FRANK REBELO
Blaze sends 3 to jail jail, and Havens was released because of jail overcrowding, Butte County District Attorney Mike Ramsey said in a voicemail to The Orion. Murphy remains in custody and will be arraigned or released today, Ramsey said. Glasco and Havens are scheduled to return to court May 4 if the DA’s office charges the two. The cause of the fire was investigated by the Butte Interagency Narcotics Task Force, which alleges that the residents were in the process of manufacturing hash oil, said Ted McKinnon, the Chico
Dan Reidel Andre Byik THE ORION
MOONLIT CALL The majority of Chico’s fire stations respond to the house fire, which started about 10:15 p.m. Saturday at 1061 Warner Street.
Three Chico State students were arrested on suspicion of manufacturing a controlled substance after the students’ Warner Street home was heavily damaged by a fire Saturday night. The students, Devin Murphy, 19, Nicholas Glasco, 21, and Cheyenne Havens, 19, were booked in Butte County Jail with bail set at $100,000 each, according to a Chico police press release. Glasco was bailed out of
police sergeant who supervises the task force. Chemicals are added to marijuana to extract tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, which is the chemical compound that gets people high, McKinnon said. “If being illegal doesn’t worry you enough, just the safety factor should,” he said. The fire damaged every room of the house, McKinnon said. Despite the heavy damage to the house, Chico police Sgt. Curtis Prosise said there were no injuries. Joanne Romaniuk, a junior
Trip guides attempt river rescue Kjerstin Wood A SST. NE WS EDITOR
Ariana Altier was looking up the Trinity River at the rapids her Adventure Outings group had just passed through when out of the corner of her eye she saw it. A car had slammed into the rocky embankment, rolled down the hillside and landed in the river. “It was right there in my face,” said Altier, an undeclared freshman and first semester Adventure Outings assistant trip leader. Two trip leaders, Sam Padilla and Taylor Dwyer, and two assistant trip leaders, Altier and Cara Befort, were leading a group of 10 down the river Saturday when the car had swerved off of Highway 299. Befort signaled Padilla, a senior geography major in his third semester as an Adventure Outings trip leader, to pull the participants off the river and go upstream to assess the situation. Altier was the first one out of the boat and ran up the hillside to look for help, because the group didn’t have cellphone service, she said. The team saw that there was a man inside the car, which was submerged about 7 to 10 feet under water, and quickly made a plan to rescue him, Padilla said. “We said, ‘Boom, it’s safe, let’s go,’” Padilla said. The man inside was Patrick Hume, 58, of Shasta Lake City, said Paul Reyes, a sergeant for California Highway Patrol. What caused Hume’s 1974 MGB convertible to go off the road and down into the river is still under investigation, he said. Padilla went about 15 feet upstream from the accident and jumped in the water.
Dan Reidel can be reached at dreidel@theorion.com Andre Byik can be reached at newseditor@theorion.com
Majors shift in slow economy Numbers suggest Great Recession led to new major popularity balance Dan Reidel STAFF WRITER
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THE ORION • TERCIUS BUFETE
RESCUE ATTEMPT Sam Padilla, a senior geography major and trip leader for Adventure Outings, attempted to rescue a man who was submerged in Trinity River after his car rolled down a cliff. Dwyer and Befort went a ways downstream to assist in getting Padilla out of the water and Altier acted as a “spotter” for Padilla, telling him when to dive down to the car, she said. After three attempts, Padilla was able to cut the shoulder strap of the man’s seat belt but was unable to free Hume from the car, Padilla said. “It wasn’t chaotic at all, it was controlled,” he said. “We were working as a team. It wasn’t just me.” If there had been only two leaders instead of four, Altier does not think the group would have carried out a rescue plan, she said. “I think having the four leaders each with medical training allowed us to attempt rescue,” Altier said. When Padilla began going back upstream for a fourth attempt, the group saw Hume’s body come free from the car and sink to the bottom of the river, Padilla said. Dwyer was ready to jump in downstream and retrieve the man, but the group was unable to locate Hume even after searching farther downstream.
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media arts major who lives across the street from the burnt house, looked out her window about 10:15 p.m. to see flames that reached up to 45 feet high, she said. “It was so big,” Romaniuk said. The residents at the 1061 Warner St. home were detained at the scene as Chico Fire Department personnel extinguished the fire.
Hume has not since been found. Trinity River is barely above freezing, said Rick Scott, director of the Wildcat Recreation Center. “It was a heroic effort on our staff ’s part,” Scott said. Scott said he saw Padilla two days after the incident. “He was very sad he couldn’t get the guy out and get him out alive.” CHP was also glad the student group was there, and Reyes commended the group’s efforts, he said. Befort and Padilla are both trained in swift-water rescue, and all Adventure Outings trip leaders undergo safety training, said Ann Marie Hingley, assistant director for outdoor programs. The swift-water rescue program is a nationally recognized certificate focused on the recovery of people and equipment in the event of an accident in moving water. “One thing we learn in training as leaders is that our first responsibility is personal safety, second is safety of the group,” Hingley said. The group “had their priorities straight” when they
responded to the emergency situation and made sure that they and the participants on the trip were safe before attempting a rescue. After the day’s events the leaders and participants ate burritos, and since the participants were about 400 to 500 feet downstream from the incident they were somewhat “detached” from the situation, Altier said. This event has strengthened her desire to get emergency medical technician certified as well as swift-water training. Padilla will still continue to participate in trips, he said. He looks at this as a learning experience. “I think we made the right decisions for what we were given at that moment,” he said. This was Altier’s first Adventure Outing’s trip, and she is scheduled to go back on the same Trinity River trip in May, she said. “It will be eerie to see that same pool of water where the car was,” she said. Kjerstin Wood can be reached at kwood@theorion.com
A drop in enrollment for some majors has been balanced by growth in others since the Great Recession, according to records. When the Great Recession began in December 2007, there were 716 students majoring in construction management, according to the Office of Institutional Research. There are now 416. Reasons for the drop in enrollment include a lack of recruiting and the negative publicity surrounding the housing market, said Rovane Younger, chair of the construction management department. Only about 5 percent of Chico State graduates go into construction of single-family homes, the area hit hardest in the construction market, he said. The increase in fees at the university level has also been a factor, Younger said. Students are spending more time at community colleges before transferring, where fees are lower. Before the recession, between 50 and 60 companies were recruiting at Chico State per semester, he said. May 2010 had fewer jobs offered with only 20 to 25 companies recruiting. Despite the lack of initial offers, all of the graduates were employed by the end of June. In the California State University system, there are fewer than 500 construction management graduates per year, Younger said. With more than 300,000 licensed contractors in California, construction managers are needed. Chico State’s nursing program has been affected by the recession as well. Enrollment has dropped from 590 students in spring 2006 to 457 this semester, according to the Office of Institutional Research. The program was not impacted when Louise Brothers graduated from Chico State with a nursing degree in 1990. “At the time when I graduated, there was a real cry for nurses,” Brothers said. “We had all kinds of different hospitals from the Bay Area as well as in the Chico area recruiting nurses and offering really good sign-on >> please see MAJORS | A4
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