The Prince George
Citizen
THURSDAY, APRIL 25,1991
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Pitch in and clean up___________5
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‘Baddest’ bosses chosen 13
Stars grab stranglehold 15
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MOTORCYCLE HIT BY POLICE CAR
City track star injured in California crash
by MARILYN STORIE and DON SCHAFFER Citizen StafT
Cory Watts, a 20-year-old Prince George runner, is in hospital in Santa Rosa, Calif., after being struck by a California Highway Patrol cruiser Tuesday.
Watts and friend and fellow runner Rob Flank of Vancouver were riding motorcycles when the highway accident occurcd near Leggit, California.
According to Garberville County police, officer Brian Anderson was making a routine
patrol of the northern portion of the 101 Highway near Leggit at 2 p.m. Tuesday when he clocked two motorcycles and one pickup truck travelling faster than 70 miles per hour. The speed limit is 55 mph.
When Anderson moved in to issue citations, the two motorcycles pulled over to the side of the road, said Larry Gobin, public relations officer. The officer continued in pursuit of the pickup truck.
One motorcycle started up, said Gobin, and made an illegal U-turn
back onto the freeway. The motorcycle was hit broadside, causing severe injury to its driver.
-w “The officer * tried to swerve to • f ' j the left, but un-) ^ p- Vt fortunately the
i bike swerved to
v T j* the left, too,”
I * ff said Gobin. He |? said the driver of
WATTS ^ P‘C^UP fled
the scene when Anderson stopped to help Watts, who had been flung from his motorcycle.
Watts, who was in California competing, suffered multiple fractures of the left tibia (shin), a fractured left fibula (lower leg), tissue damage to his left leg from the knee to the foot, an injured right scapula (shoulder bone) and struck his head.
A graduate of D.P. Todd Secondary School, Watts was wearing a helmet at the time. He remains under sedation in Santa Rosa.
Watts won the junior college 1,500-metrc run at the Mount Sac Relays in Walnut, Calif., Thurs-
day and was en route to Eugene, Ore., to compete this weekend.
Watts’ parents, Marg and Bev Watts of Hamilton, Ont., are in Santa Rosa, as is Shane Bilodeau, Watts’ close friend and training companion.
Bilodeau said Watts had a CAT scan Wednesday, which was negative. He said the most serious injuries are to the left leg.
“He has muscle and tendon damage all the way from the knee down,” Bilodeau said. “The shoulder doesn’t bother him much
— he sleeps on it and it supports the weight of his body.”
Bilodeau said this moming that Watts, “appears pretty stable.” There are plans to transfer him to hospital at UBC for specialized treatment to his leg.
“Luckily, his kneecap wasn’t fractured,” said Bilodeau. “And there’s just a scrape to the scapula.”
In his graduation year, Watts won the B.C. high school and provincial junior 800-metre titles and competed at several Canadian junior championships.
Kurds get new deal with Iraq
From AP-Reuters
BAGHDAD — After hugging President Saddam Hussein before the cameras of Iraqi state television, Kurdish rebel leaders secured from him a tentative agreement Wednesday that would grant them the autonomy they have sought in decades of struggle.
After the agreement, the guerrilla leaders called on the estimated 2.5 million Kurds who fled last month’s failed rebellion to come home from their squalid settlements at the Turkish and Iranian borders.
The agreement met with skepticism from some of the Kurds who scrambled into the snowy northern mountains in fleeing a government counter-offensive. But it was too early to determine if the refugees would return.
Many are exhausted or ailing, and history makes them fear betrayal.
The Kurd-Iraqi agreement was announced by rebel leader Jalal Tala-bani, who said Saddam had offered the Kurds an autonomy agreement similar to one signed in 1970 but never implemented. They discussed free elections for a national assembly, freedom of the press and freedom to assemble.
But Talabani, part of a four-member Kurdish delegation that met with Saddam, also told a late-night news conference that nothing had been signed, details remained to be ironed out and further talks would take place next week.
The Baghdad development came as British officers in the northern town of Zakho, where the U.S.-led coalition partners are putting up a tent city in hopes of luring back the Kurds, said they had issued a Friday deadline for Iraqi police to leave.
The 200 to 300 Iraqi police appeared to be heeding the order, with one officer saying they would be out today.
Meanwhile, British commandos were reported to have clashed with Iraqi police in Zakho. Britain’s Press Association news agency quoted the British commanding officer today as saying commandos patrolling in Zakho intervened when eight Iraqi policemen tried to drag off a Kurd injured in a car crash. After an argument, the commandos put the man in a taxi and escorted him to hospital.
If a settlement between Saddam and Kurdish leaders is indeed reached, the need for the tent cities the U.S. and other coalition troops are racing to set up in northern Iraq would be in doubt.
Talabani made no mention of the refugee camps being built in northern Iraq, but he said all foreign forces should leave Iraq after a peace agreement has been signed between the Kurds and Baghdad.
There is no official White House comment. But one official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said the agreement “would help facilitate the sense of security for people to return to their homes.”
Bulletin
The Soviet Union beat Canada 5-3 this moming at the world hockey championship.
The loss was Canada’s first of the championship after four straight wins, and left the Soviet Union the only unbeaten team in the preliminary round.
The Soviet record is 5-0.
Canada plays Sweden Friday moming and meets Czechoslovakia on Sunday in its final two games of the round-robin.
Earlier story, page 15.
College Heights Secondary students who took part in the B.C. School Sports 1991 Milk Run got off to a good start Wednesday in what has become the largest fitness-nutrition event of its kind in Canada.
Off and running This year an estimated 65,000 students from 220 schools were expected to run, jog, walk or wheel
three kilometres. Each participant was asked to make a contribution to the Canadian Wheelchair Sports Assocation-B.C. Division, which co-sponsors the event with the B.C. Dairy Foundation. Donations will be used to purchase wheelchairs and support the wheelchair sports demonstration team.
NEW FINANCE MINISTER
Wage controls
by Canadian Press
CALGARY — In his first major speech as federal finance minister, Don Mazankowski hinted strongly Wednesday about the possibility of wage controls.
The federal government has committed to holding civil servants’ wage increases to three per cent, said the former agriculture minister who took over the finance portfolio in Sunday’s cabinet shuffle.
Ottawa wants to reduce inflation to three per cent by 1992 and two per cent by the middle of the decade, but it will need the co-operation of Canadians to do so, he said.
“If Canadians accept these targets and act accordingly, we can reduce inflation with little cost and
much benefit,” Mazankowski told the Canadian Petroleum Association.
“However, if Canadians resist these goals through inflationary behavior, the cost of meeting the targets will be much higher.”
When pressed by reporters later, Mazankowski said he hoped formal wage controls won’t be necessary.
“We’re hoping that we can achieve this through the moral leadership of the federal government and the support of the provinces,” he said, noting six provinces have already announced wage-restraint packages for civil servants.
“It’s not one single item that will address this issue, it’s a combination.”
hinted
Mazankowski said the country needs to develop a consensus about stability being an important component of growth and prosperity.
“Monetary policies cannot carry the whole burden,” he told about 600 energy executives. “This means that government costs must be restricted and the debt must be brought under control.”
The farmer from Vegreville, Alta., praised the Mulroney government’s efforts to lower the annual deficit.
When the Conservatives took power in 1984, the deficit represented 8.7 per cent of the national economy, but by last year tis had dropped to 4.5 per cent, he said.
Gorbachev’s resignation offer rejected
MOSCOW (Reuter) — The Soviet Communist party’s Central Committee overwhelmingly rejected an offer by President Mikhail Gorbachev to resign as party leader today, the independent Interfax news agency said.
Participants in the stormy session said Gorbachev angrily announced after a day and a half of hard-line criticism that he was ready to resign.
But Interfax said an emergency meeting of the party’s ruling Politburo decided the question should not be put on the agenda.
“This would not be in the interests of the party,” Interfax quoted deputy leader Vladimir Ivashko as saying.
NOW HOMELESS IN COSTA RICA
Former resident tells of quake terror
by DIANE BAILEY Citizen Staff
Louise Grogan is alone and homeless in earthquake-ravaged Puerto Limon, but she is planning to stay and do what she can to help residents rebuild their homes and lives.
“Physically I’m fine. It’s just that I’m tired,” the 19-year-old former Prince George resident said today from a pay phone on a street in the Costa Rican port city, which bore the brunt of the killer quake Monday.
Grogan was in the city volunteering for a local organization helping street kids.
She and two kids were in the group’s house when the earthquake, measuring 7.4 on the Richter scale and centred only a few kilometres away, hit.
Grogan said her automatic reaction was to grab the kids and run out of the house.
“At first I didn’t know what it was,” she said. They flung themselves face down on the yard,
while the street in front of them writhed.
“It was just like big waves in the street, is the best way to describe it. Waves you could surf on.”
The house never fell, but has been locked up because it is unsafe.
‘If something else happened in the night, there is no way we could get the children out safely. Or get ourselves out,” she said.
“We’re all homeless now.”
Street Kids International, which referred Grogan to Puerto Limon, has no support office there, so she is left to fend for herself.
“Because I’m here by myself, I’m basically by myself,” Grogan said.
“It’s OK. I laugh a lot. I have some really good friends here.”
Their front yards ha*e become her only shelter.
“I have slept in three different places in two nights- But I didn’t sleep.”
Hundreds of aftershocks have
rocked the city through the day and night, including five big ones that followed Monday afternoon’s quake.
Comer stores are starting to open up, but food supplies are scarce and without a home Grogan has no place to cook meals. She is surviving on a diet of raw oatmeal and Coca-Cola.
There is almost no drinking water to be found, and Grogan fears outbreaks of cholera and hepatitis. She ws not able to get a hepatitis shot before she left Canada because all supplies of gamma globulin had been diverted to the Persian Gulf.
The Costa Ricans are holding up well despite the devastation, said Grogan.
“Things are pretty calm. There has not been any panic. People are co-operating well.
“It is really touching for me to see people unite after a disaster.”
She is trained in first aid, but says the Red Cross is well-organized and her skills have not been
needed. But the rebuilding will start soon and she plans to stay to help rather than head home.
“I’d be chickening out if I did. I came to Costa Rica to help the people out. Now the focus has shifted”
Grogan said there are still a lot of buildings standing.
“The poorest people suffer the most. They don’t have the resources and backup, in terms of money and food in the house. They have the worst houses, so they were the first to fall.”
It is now the rainy season in Costa Rica and although the rains have held off, they won’t for much longer.
“It looks like it is going to rain today so more houses will wash away.”
The quake killed 79, injured more than 800 and left thousands of Costa Ricans homeless.
COLLEGE HEIGHTS SECONDARY
Citizen photo by Brock Gable
INDEX
Ann Landers .... 25
Bridge..................30
Business........22,23
City, B.C...............2,3
Classified .... 30-37
Comic...................26
Commentary................5
Crossword...............33
Editorial...............4
Entertainment . 26,27
Family..................25
Horoscope................30
International . . . 9,13
Lotteries................9
Movies...................26
National........10,12
Sports .... 15-17,28
Television..............34
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