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Worried
about
Skylab?
by HAZEL ALLAN
Citizen Staff Reporter
If you’re the sort of person who takes precautions against being hit by a meteorite, then you'll probably want to take precautions against being hit by pieces of Skylab.
Prince George is "considerably north of the northernmost limits of Skylab’s orbit,” according to Brian Klotz, a member of Ottawa’s Skylab response team, part of Federal Emergency Plan of Canada.
“But if someone wants to take precautions, indoors would be better than outdoors,” said Klotz.
Skylab, an orbiting U.S. space laboratory the size of a house, is expected to break up into approximately 500 pieces, ranging in size from a few ounces to several tons.
Estimated time of breakup is 9 a.m. Wednesday, Prince George time plus or minus five hours.
“The majority of the pieces will be small and would bounce off the roof of an average house,” said Klotz.
Contingency emergency plans are in force in B.C. and municipalities south of Williams Lake have been issued with emergency plans.
“The chances of anything hitting Prince George are so remote that if anything did come down here, NASA personnel would be the most surprised people in the world,” said George Hartley, assistant director of the regional provincial emergency program.
“Skylab is in orbit from 50 degrees north to 50 degrees south, and 50 degrees north is barely north of Kelowna,” said Hartley.
“There is nothing to worry about up here. It’s highly unlikely that pieces of Skylab will strike any inhabited area and even more unlikely that it come down over Canada,” he said.
But — just in case any pieces should land here, there will be at least two hours advance warning and emergency plans have been prepared.
SKYLAB
★
WASHINGTON (AP) -Skylab’s “countdown to crash” ticked relentlessly on today, and a space agency official said there is a good chance all debris from the faltering hulk will fall harmlessly into the south Atlantic or Indian oceans Wednesday.
But Richard Smith, head of the space agency’s Skylab task force, cautioned that predictions at this point are imprecise, and if the station “flies a Uttle longer, pieces could hit Australia. Or if it flies even longer, or backs up, parts of it could fall in the United States.”
See also page 24
Pickets have closed two Prince George pulp mills.
CitUtn photo hy Doug Weller
ISLAND CACHE PROPERTY
Land dispute referee requested
Rioting rips city
by TOM NIXON Citizen Staff Reporter
Irate Island Cache land owners whose property was taken by the city for an industrial land swap were told Monday their land is gone for good and they should appeal to a court-appointed commissioner if they think they were not fairly compensated.
Told at a city council meeting by Mayor Elmer Mercier that the replot is a “fait accomplit” and will not be turned back, the land owners yelled that they hadn’t seen or signed any legal agreements.
“You don’t own that land anymore,” said city manager Chester Jeffery, “you can’t get it back.”
He said landowners should take deeds for their former property to the land registry office and trade them for deeds to their new parcels of land given in exchange.
Mercier told them council would request a B.C. Supreme Court appointment of a commissioner to act as an impartial referee to settle disputes over fair compensation.
Cache area spokesman Dave Petrescu asked council to order Lakeland Mills Ltd., to stop work on the disputed land until the compensation cases are finally settled.
“Is the matter closed before an owner can even say no?” he asked.
“It’s a fait accompli," Mercier said. “The land is gone and we can’t wait.
“It’s all finished as far as the land and the trees are concerned.
“A commissioner will settle any disputes over fair compensation.”
Mercier also promised Petrescu that resident-owners of Cache land outside the replot area but affected by the mill expansion may meet .with
council next week to discuss the future land use plans for the area.
Petrescu said resident-owners — seven remain in the Cache, — are concerned that they will be squeezed out of the area without receiving a fair price for their property.
He said the proximity of the new mill will lower residential values in the area.
The Island Cache replot came as a result of a $15 million mill expansion program by Lakeland. The Canadian National Railways also wants Lakeland to relocate northwards to allow rail yard expansion.
The city, Lakeland and the CN, along with a number of
other owners of large areas of Cottonwood Island, negotiated an arrangement of sales and land swaps in which Lakeland got room in the former residential area for mill expansion, the city got a large wild area of delta lands for a future park and owners of small plots of land got new parcels of future industrial land in the Island Cache in return for land needed by the lumber mill.
Mercier admitted the replot was one-sided against the small property owners because the combined city-Lakeland-CN land ownership gave them far more than the 70 per cent ownership necessary legally to force
through the replot even if everyone else objected.
During the weekend, property owners t>lncked attempts by a Lake!and crew to begin site preparation for the mill expansion.
Threats were hurled, including a death threat, and police were finally called to settle the conflict.
Lakeland director George Killy said Monday his company is determined to proceed with construction of the new mill even though some owners of land are against it.
He said the replot is a legal fact and any legal force will be used to stop owners from blocking the expansion project.
ARTHUR FIEDLER
'Pops' maestro dies
BOSTON (AP) — Arthur Fiedler, the zesty showman who brought classical music to millions of people as conductor of the Boston Pops, died today at his home in nearby Brookline, Mass. He was 84.
Word of his death came from his personal physician, Dr. Samuel Proger of Tufts New England Medical Centre, who said the maestro died of cardiac arrest at about 7 a.m.
Dr. George Bottomley, brother of Fiedler’s wife, Ellen, said the maestro passed away quietly in his bed. He was found about 7:30 a.m.
"He had been working, but he died in his bed,” Bottomley said.
He said Fiedler’s son, Peter, was away from home on state National Guard duty. Funeral arrangements are incomplete.
“To millions of people
FIEDLER
around the world the maestro personified the spirit and life of the city of Boston," said Boston Mayor Kevin White. "We probably never again will be blessed by the presence of such a gifted, vital man. Arthur Fiedler was a Boston institution,
a man whose verve and talent transcended generations.”
Fiedler, who had remained vigorously active until the last year, had been recuperating after hospital confinement for a heart condition. He had suffered a heart attack, his fifth since age 44, on June 9. He was released June 27 from the Tufts medical centre.
It was the latest in a series of illnesses that began with surgery to relieve pressure on his brain in December, 1978.
Fiedler opened his 50th season with the Pops in May. But a few days later, he collapsed backstage and spent several days in the hospital suffering from exhaustion.
In November, he entered hospital suffering from exhaustion and on Dec. 11, he underwent brain surgery .
in N.B.
BATHURST, N.B. (CP) - A three-ring circus of drag racing, stunt driving and drinking has turned this northern New Brunswick city into a shambles of broken glass and smoldering debris as a strike by the city’s 26 policemen entered its sixth day today.
After a hot, muggy night of vandalism and mischief in downtown streets, city and union spokesmen today warned the rowdiness will get worse unless contracts are signed by the policemen and 87 blue-collar employees of the city also on strike.
Several hundred people in this community of 15,000 cheered and tossed beer bottles Monday night as daredevil drivers raced down main streets and rowdies set fires, destroyed phone booths, started fights and urinated in the streets.
Police held fast to their vow not to break their picket lines Monday night to keep the peace, as they had done twice since the strike began.
However, early today a patrol car carrying four striking policemen escorted an ambulance downtown to help a young woman who apparently passed out.
The cheering crowd of about 2,000, most of them young, pelted the police car and ambulance with bottles when they pulled up to help the woman.
"There is no way the people of Bathurst will let vandals ruin their city,” Mayor John Duffy said today. "The people are hostile and fed up.
“I don’t think these people will take the law into their own hands, I know they will.”
Many of the people who watched the fray Monday night saidthat what startedout as fun on the weekend has turned ugly and dangerous.
Picture page 7
THE WEATHER
The forecast for tonight calls for cloudy skies with showers and the chance of thundershowers. Wednesday should be sunny in the morning with afternoon cloudy periods and isolated showers.
The expected high today was 21, the low tonight 9. Wednesday’s forecast high is 21. Monday's high was 26, the low 12, with 10.8 hours of sunshine. On this date last year the high was 18, the low 10.
Details page 2
20‘ Copy
Prince George. British Columbia
Ip mills
by JAN-UDO WENZEL Citizen Staff Reporter Prince George and Intercontinental pulp mills are shut down today because 70 papermakers walked off their jobs Monday afternoon.
At issue, according to spokesmen of Local 1133, Canadian Paperworkers Union, is the shift differentials offered by the pulp industry.
“It is not enough," a spokesman said.
The Pulp and Paper Industrial Relations Bureau offered to increase the current 18 cents night shift differential to 22 cents in the first year of a two-year contract to 26 cents in the second.
Graveyard shift workers have been offered 12 cents increase over two years on the current 25 cents.
“That’s not enough, either,” the spokesman said.
Based on this, the workers, who are all shift workers, walked off their jobs.
The other employees of both mills, members of the Pulp Paper and Woodworkers of Canada, honored the picketlines shutting down the mills.-
About 1,000 workers are involved.
Mark Gunther, president of Prince George and Intercontinental pulp mills, said today he was disappointed by the employees’ action.
'Generous final offer'
“We (the industry) made a generous final offer and the matter of shift differentials was included in this offer,” he said.
He pointed out that this offer was the industry’s final one and that shift differentials were never a priority in current contract talks with the PPWC and the CPU.
Gunther acknowledged that the strike of the papermakers was legal as strike notice had been served July 1.
“Maybe the matter should have been brought up in the union’s wage caucus,” he said.
Gunther said the shift differentials are not a local issue and he wondered whether the walkout is authorized by the CPU.
“It is part of a province-wide offer and the issue should have been discussed by the union’s wage caucus," Gunther said.
He also pointed out that there are no local issues to be settled at his two mills.
"The industry was very determined to put this wage package together," he said.
This offer calls for an increase of the base rate from $8.16 an hour to $9.06 an hour in 1979 and to $9.96 next year.
A mechanic, class A, would increase his base rate from $10.56to $11.76'* in 1979 and to $12.8814 by 1980.
This would bring the annual wage of a mechanic to $26,800 in 1980, while a worker’s annual wage woUld be $20,716.
Voting here Thursday
This offer has been made to the PPWC, the CPU and the International Woodworkers of America.
"I hope the unions will vote soon on this offer,” Gunther said.
The PPWC in Prince George will conduct a vote Thursday.
A meeting of members of Local 9, PPWC will be held at VanierHallat9a.m. and again at 7:30 p.m.
Local 9 president Len Shen-kel said today the meetings will inform the members of the
Planes crash over Windsor
WINDSOR. Ont. (CP) -Five persons were killed today when two light airplanes crashed while flying over east Windsor.
No victims were identified.
Coroner Ken Rock said four bodies were recovered, but the fifth was hidden in debris. Firefighters were looking for the body.
There were no reported injuries on the ground.
Maureen Martinuk, an official with the federal transport ministry, said the smaller aircraft, a Cessna 150 with two persons aboard, was flying out of Windsor. The other plane, a twin-engined Cessna 310 with three on board, had just left City Airport in Detroit, Mich.
Witnesses said the planes collided. The Detroit plane crashed in a field where it burst into flames, starting several small fires within about a one-kilometre radius of the si|e.
The other Cessna crashed on a residential street a block away. Sections of flaming wreckage were found throughout the area.
status of negotiations and a vote will be conducted after each of the meetings.
But Shenkel said the PPWC is not happy with the latest company offer.
"It leaves a lot to be desired in regard to cost of living, pension issues, health and welfare,” he said.
He stated that the lack of an offer of a cost-of-living clause leaves members without protection against inflation and the rising cost of living.
He also objects to the industry’s demand that no pension questions be raised in the next contract when the one currently being negotiated expires.
Shenkel said this would lock the union in and members now retiring would be locked in on their retirement pay without hope of an increase.
"The contract also offers no improvements in the dental care, extended health care and long term disability care,” he said.
Meanwhile, workers in Mackenzie also walked off their jobs at the pulp mills.
Employees of Finlay Forest Products and B.C. Forest Products want a northern living allowance in their contract.
The 84 members of CPU Local 402 on Monday voted 93 per cent in favor of turning a 24-hour study session into an official strike.
Gunther said the shutdown of the two mills in Prince George "has an immediate effect on the community.”
Suppliers of wood chips and other materials have already been informed that the mills can no longer accept shipments.
"I hope the matter can be settled as soon as possible,” Gunther said.
NOW HEAR THIS
0 A blow has been struck for women’s liberation here. It came out in provincial court Monday where a skidder operator was charged with possession of a weapon. It seems that he planned to use the broken leg of a coffee table to intimidate his estranged wife and his mother-in-law during a domestic dispute in which he sought to wake up his sleeping children and take them with him. Things didn’t go as planned when he brandished the coffee leg because his mother-in-law smashed him over the head with a wooden drib board, causing a deep gash which required stitches. After showing the scar in court, he was given a conditional discharge for 18 months on condition that he "keep the peace and be of good behavior."
Got a news tip? Call The Citizen’s 24-hour news line ut 562-2441.
FEATURED INSIDE)
'Hopeless position'
Nicaraguan dictator Somoza is again rumored to be on his way out. His national guard is reported in a "hopeless” position with only enough ammunition for another three weeks and rebel forces in control of nearly every town in the worn-torn South American country. Page 5.
Western conference
The Canadian Football League’s Western Conference
is previewed today. Page 13.
Index ........19 ..........26
.......8,9 Garden Column..... ............6
City, B.C.................... ....2,3,0 Horoscopes............. ..........30
...16-23 International.......... ............5
.........28 ............7
...........4 ..........2V
Entertainment......... .........29
SHIFT-WORK PAY OFFER SPARKS WALKOUT
Pickets close two city pu
“Any sign of a gas station yet?