Union 15 Cents
Monday, August 30,1976
108th Year
Explosion hits Hanf ord site; 8 contaminated
U B photo by Ron Cartoon
Getting
-On the first day of school, everybody can't be expected to know everybody else. So when Tricia Rhea Fausti, 7, started classes at Bemey Grade School this morning, her teacher.
to know her
Peggy Sharon Erdman, pinned a name tag on her. Tricia's mother. Sue Fausti, 2815 Melrose Ave., looked on.
The injured man, whose identity was RICHLAND, Wash. (AP) - Eight workmen were contaminated by being withheld, was treated at the Hanradioactivity today following a ford Environmental Health Founchemical explosion at a commercial dation, an industrial medical facility. Officials said he and the other man facility on the Hanford Nuclear Reserwould be isolated until deconvation. tamination. Radioactivity is removed Six of the men were decontaminated repeated washings. The process and sent home. One worker, cut in the by may take until Tuesday, one official face and shoulder by flying glass, and another man who helped him, received said. Stocking said the cause of the exhigher radiation doses and "it will take a little time to leam the extent of their _ plosion wUl not be known for at least 24 hours, which is the soonest incontamination," an official said. vestigators will be able to enter the conAuthorities said the blast did not intaminated room. volve a nuclear reactor, and there was About 10 men were in the area when no serious radiation escape beyond the the explosion occurred, officials said. relatively isolated Atlantic Richfield Said ARHCO Vice President Hugh Hanford Co. (ARHCO) building where Warren: "We have shut down the explosion occurred. everything to clean up in this one ARHCO Pres. George Stocking said building, but nothing else has been shut the explosion occurred in a device in our operation." called a glovebox, a sealed off, 4 by 8 by down The ARHCO facility produces 9-foot compartment, through which amencium, a radioactive element workers use rubber gloves to handle produced by nuclear fission. It is radioactive material on the other side recovered from the waste produced by of a window. nuclear reactors and is used in "There was a chemical reaction petroleum exploration to measure which caused the racioactive material to fly out into the room," Stocking said. ground heat. "This is being blown all out of "As far as we know, no radioactivity proportion. You would think that we was released into the atmosphere, but wer all gone down here," he said. The some material was tracked out of the company scheduled an afternoon tour room but remained confined to the —for newsmen of their facilities. building."
Inmates demand removal si Bus ride brin9s doctor after death • to start their new year of A "day of mourning" was declared Spokane County last March for parole By GLEN GIBBONS Jr. OHheUnareulMin
Business was brisk today at Walla Walla's 11 schools as students poured in for the first day of classes. By foot andby car, by bus or bike, on skateboards and motorbikes, they came: A disorganized, chattering army equipped with notebooks, rulers, tablets, pens, pencils and the popular "Big 64" boxes of color crayons. And first-day jitters. Elsewhere in Walla Walla County the scene repeated itself. Students gave up summer jobs or vacation and returned to battle the books in College Place, Dixie, Prescott, Touchet and Columbia (Burbank) school districts. Although its schools are all within the city limits now, Walla Walla School District reaches out with its boundaries to gather students from miles in every direction. Most of those outside the city — and many of those inside — ride one of the district's 15 regular buses. About 2,000 of the district's anticipated 5,850 students arrive at school
Umatilla vote to decide fate of county tax PENDLBTON - A proposed $160,753 property tu levy needed to help finance the operation of Umatilla County rament wffl be decided by voters is outside of Oregon's sixand lequires voter OT_^, officials and f4n"ni«1'ialor« say the levy is needed to balance a budget of about IS million for fiscal year 1978-77 which began on July 1. Total taxes necessary to balance the budget are estimated to be $1.8 million — a reduction of approximately $100,000 from taxes which were required to balance last year's budget Tuesday wDB be the third time county voters have gone to the pods for levy oueatkos this year. Proposed levies were rejected by voters last May and again in July. front the original levy proposal. Because of increased uiupeily valuations in the county, tax rates per 91,000 of trne-caah vahax are estimated to decrease from $M7 last year to about fljOO this fiscal year. Potts jriB be open from • am to I pjn. PolUng placet "KM for eastern Umatffla County tadude: iude: r-Prednctsl,S,2a at Femdate School; precincts 3 and la • uincpoif artefacts 4, S, «. 7. 8, 8a at School - Precincts f, S* at Weston _*
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- Fractals IS aad 9 at Heux Library.
"Sarah Marie," said the one. "Sarah Lee!" they replied, thunderously. Their sister stood corrected.
In successive stops at islands of trees and farmhouses, the bus filled, class schedules were exchanged, friendships revived, summer excursions recounted in bursts of words and animated gestures. Prominent in the conversations were questions and advice about school procedures. "Don't worry about being late for classes during the first five days," said one boy. "Are you going to take typing?" he was asked. "Yeah, I got to. . . I can't write." At length the bus reached Frazier Drive where the grade-schoolers piled out in a flurry of "Goodbye Mrs. DeBeaumont" to board another busMrs. DeBeaumont's bus forged onward to Pioneer Junior High, where the more restrained, but no less eager, secondary students left, heading toward the already filled halls. School was open.
early today by Washington State Penitentiary inmates in the wake of the death of a convict Sunday in the prison hospital. The prisoners' Resident Government Council demanded the removal of prison hospital Supervisor Dr. John Baugher, prison officials said. However, the demonstration was unmarked by incidents. B.J. Rhay, prison superintendent, said no staff changes will be made as a result of the prisoners' actions. Ed Heir, 32, died at 11:30 a.m. Sunday in the prison hospital as a result of a hepatitis infection, Rhay said. The inmate had been in the hospital since Aug. 18, and the infection was a long-standing problem, according to Rhay. He said Heir's illness had been diagnosed as terminal last week. "He was quite a popular young man. He spent most of his life here on the installment plan, mostly for drug-related causes," according to the superintendent "The hepatitis was from drug usage. You get it ft om dirty needles." Herr was committed to prison from
violation on charges of indecent liberties and lewd conduct. His original commitment was for grand larceny, Rhay said.
"When anybody dies in here, apparently it has an extra trauma — dying in prison. And this apparently is jwhat is being acted out now."
Rhay said the prison chaplains agreed to hold special services today for Herr. The only change in the regular schedule is that no work is being done by convicts inside the maximum custody walls, Rhay said. "It looks like a normal day in there to me. I was just in there," he said this morning. A spokesman for the state department of corrections in Olympia said the resident council had thought Herr did not receive proper medical care. "But, according to the report I got from the penitentiary, he had. He had been fully examined," said Leslie Swanson of the Washington Department of Social and Health Services' public affairs office.
Mrs. Ford says husband will win 'tough' campaign VAIL, Colo. (AP) — Betty Ford says the White House can be a lonely place, that she's dying to be a grandmother and that she "won't be heartbroken" if President Ford loses the election. But Mrs. Ford says she's sure her husband will win in what she says will be "a very tough campaign" against Democrat Jimmy Carter and that the President's pardon of Richard M. Nixon will be an issue. "In a subtle way," Carter and his
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by bus. "I'm glad school's staring early," Perhaps typical of the bus routes — Sloan said. "That way we'll get more and students—is the Valley Grove run, days off during the winter. No. 7, driven for the last nine years by "I was getting tired of summer Betty DeBeaumont, 1825 Pike Place. already anyway." At 7:15 this morning Mrs. . At the next stop, a friend piled into DeBeaumont pulled her 47-passenger the seat beside Sloan. 1967 Ford out of the district's bus barn "Ya oughtta heard the radio today. It on Crescent Street and pointed it north says 'Watch out for children,'" said the toward Lower Waitsburg Road. friend, his face flushed with excitement Out there, strung along a maze of at being one of a day-full of schoolbackroads and deadends were her bound celebrities. passengers, waiting like eggs to be And so, filled with a mounting gathered up from widely separated clamor, the bus rumbled its way along nests. the gully roads, between billowing hills For each Mrs. DeBeaumont had a crisp and sharp as a handclap in the familiar greeting and a question or two morning sun. about school. Most she knew by name. At one stop, a cluster of kids rushed Her first customer was Sloan Kim- onto the bus. ball, a sixth-grader at Green Park Barely touching his seat, Billy OrSchool. chard turned and blurted out, "My Since the bus passes his house again Mom had a baby girl last night!" on its way back to school, Sloan could "What's her name?" came the collecboard it a half-hour later. tive response. But this was too big a day to be the "Sarah Lee," chorused the Orchard last one on. family, offspring of Willis and Sharon Behind him came his sister Kelly, Orchard. silent and remote as only second"Sarah Marie," said one dissenter. graders can be. "Sarah Lee," the others insisted.
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running mate Walter Mondale "keep bringing up the fact that they're not going to mention the Nixon pardon. I think it's bringing up the pardon," Mrs. Ford observed during a weekend interview before returning to Washington. Mrs. Ford says her husband will win because he's "best equipped" for the job of president and has "spent two years proving himself." In those two years in the White
House, Mrs. Ford has proved more popular than her husband in the polls and she thinks her greatest appeal to voters is "being myself." Starting with a trip to Chicago and Waukegan, III., next weekend, Mrs. Ford will be campaigning "as much as possible" for her husband. She said she won't discuss political issues or debate Mrs. Carter. Admitting that she is "very, very surprised" at her own popularity, Mrs.
Voter league may pay for Ford-Carter debate WASHINGTON (AP)—Federal election officials today agreed to permit the League of Women Voters to finance a series of presidential campaign debates, which are likely to begin the third week in September. By a unanimous vote, the Federal Election Commission adopted a policy statement declaring that the league or any other comparable, non-partisan organization could sponsor presidential debates without running afoul of federal law forbidding private financing of presidential camnaigns. The law provides public financing of the presidential candidates, with about $21 million to be provided both to President Ford and Democratic nominee Jimmy Carter. Carter, meanwhile, said tentative agreement has been reached on a format of three debates, each lasting 75 minutes. He said the first would be held the third week in September and patterned primarily after the league's The Federal Election Commission declared mat the league could not obtain financing for the debates from corporations or labor unions, which are
forbidden from spending money in connection with a federal election. However, the commission also said that a separate political fund established by a corporation or labor organization could make unlimited contributions to the league's voter education fond to help pay for the The league has proposed getting corporations and labor unions to underwrite the estimated $150,000 cost of producing the debates. While neither Ford nor Carter has made an absolute commitment to have the league sponsor the joint appearance, they are negotiating through that i to and are to meet again Wi discuss debate terms. At a meeting last Thursday, oommissioners seemed to agree that UK debates should be permitted to take place under the league's auspices. Bat they expressed concern over the method of financing the debates and the exclusion of minor candidates from the format
Ford said, "I think our family comes across as a very natural, pure midAmerican family with no pretenses." She indicated she may be having second thoughts about continuing her outspoken comments, even though Ford has "never stepped on my toes" for being frank. It was just a year ago that Mrs. Ford created a stir by telling a television interviewer she wouldn't be surprised if daughter Susan told her she was having
an affair. Nineteen-year-old Susan, listening in on her mother's interview this weekend at the Fords' Vail vacation chalet, gave the latest report on that "Nope," she isn't having an affair, she said. Now, Mrs. Ford says she's decided that when she gets tough questions like the one about Susan's love life "there's no reason why I have to answer a question because they push me into it"
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A few of the possibilities: For the future - Challenge of Change. For Today-Ecology of the Walla Walla River. For the home-Drapery Workshop. For the farm-Agriculture Survey.
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