MAJOR APPEAL FOR FUNDS SET SATURDAY
Quake victims to get aid from local Italian group
by DON MORBERG Citizen Staff Reporter
Prince George’s Italian community will send relief money to aid Italian earthquake victims, and ensure the money goes to those who need it.
A committee, headed by club vice-president Italo Massini has been organized and will start concerted money-raising immediately, according to club past-prudent Reno Perotta.
Perotta said the big push for money-raising would come on Saturday.
“We will direct the money to those who need it, either through the Italian consulate in Vancouver or directly to Italy.” he said.
About 3,000 people were killed when an earthquake rocked the mountain area between Naples and Salerno in Southern Italy Sunday. Most of the hardest-hit villages are high in the mountain range between the two cities, hampering rescue operations.
The Italian government estimates 200,000 people are homeless in Italy’s worst quake in 65 years. An estimated 3,200 people are dead and another 1,300 missing.
Perotta said some of the people in the community were concerned the money would not get to its intended destination. He said every effort would be made to ensure it did.
“I feel the money raised after the 1976earthquake made it to
The
Prince George, British Columbia
the people who needed it,” he said.
Perotta said he thinks the Italian community will respond well to the call for aide and he encouraged non-Italians in Prince George to assist as well.
The provincial government announced Tuesday it will give $50,000 to the Canadian Red Cross for Italian earthquake relief.
Premier Bill Bennett said all British Columbians were saddened by the tragedy and, ‘‘can do no less than extend a hand of friendship and help at this time of need.”
He extended condolences of the government and the people of the province to the Italian government in a telegram to the Italian consul general.
The Prince George relief effort parallels similar campaigns
across the country. The federal government has set aside $100,000 for relief, but is still waiting for a request for aid from the Italian government. Italian-Canadian clubs across the country are embarking on money-raising drives.
Canadian immigration officials have been instructed to expedite the applications of any people from the earthquake-stricken areas who want to come to Canada under the relative-assisted program, according to immigration minister Lloyd Axeworthy.
Sunday’s earthquake measured 6.8 on the open-ended Richter scale, stronger than the 1976 earthquake in Northern Italy, which registered 6.5.
On the scale, an earthquake measuring 2 is 10 times more powerful than one registering 1.
“This is the saddest day for Italy and we hope all Canadians, whatever their cultural background, will help us to help Italy.” said Laureano Leone, president of the National Congress of Italian-Canadians.
Canadian B'nai B’rith. a Jewish service organization, said Tuesday it donated $5,000 to the congress and the Canadian Red Cross announced $10,000 would be available immediately for tents. blankets and non-perishable food for those left homeless.
Large Italian communities in Toronto and Hamilton are working to surpass the amounts they sent to Italy after the 1976 quake.
In total, Canada sent more than $4 million to Italy in 1976.
The Italian consulate has asked Canadians not to telephone Italy because it hinders rescue work.
Perotta said he was not aware of any local families having relatives in the earthquake-stricken area.
CP Air announced today free return flights to Italy for people with relatives in the earthquake-stricken area. The flights will be for up to two members (mother, father, children or spouse) of any family in the earthquake region. A letter of authority from the Italian consulate, proof of origin in Basilicata or Compania provinces and Italian citizenship is a necessity.
The seats will be allotted on a space-available basis and return must be within 30 days. More information is available from CP Air or from the Italian consulate in Vancouver.
200,000 HOMELESS
Aftershocks hit devastated area
Crash cuts power
Citizen photo by Rlc Ernat
A fireman tries to gain entrance to overturned bus-camper after an accident about 8 km north of the city on the Hart Highway early this morning. Police said the bus, driven by Rod Edward Brigham, 22, of Fort St. John, slipped off the road and rolled over, shearing off a power pole. This caused a near-five-hour power outage in the North Nechako-Hart Highlands area. Brigham was not injured and police estimate damage at about $10,000. The driver is facing several charges.
CONSTITUTION LEVER
HOUSE FIRE
Commonwealth pull-out? Dog saves family
EDMONTON (CP) - The Journal says British MPs say Ottawa has privately threatened to pull Canada out of the Commonwealth if Britain holds up the Liberals’ constitutional reform package.
The newspaper says Cana-
dian officials are warning Westminster, in a series of diplomatic and political meetings, to rubber-stamp Prime Minister Trudeau’s constitutional package or face the wrath of the federal government.
Clerical staff gets flight duty training
Southum News
TORONTO — Faced with the threat of a Christmas strike by flight attendants, Air Canada began training non-union clerical staff and management personnel to handle in-air duties Tuesday.
Airline spokesman Brock Stewart said 380 volunteers will be put through a five-day
intensive training program at headquarters in Montreal.
Stewart said the cost to the company has not been determined.
Air Canada’s 3,500 flight attendants will be in a legal strike position Dec. 18 if the federal conciliation commissioner, Montreal lawyer Stanley Hart, fails to negotiate agreement.
The Journal says Sir Anthony Kershaw, chairman of the select parliamentary committee on foreign and Commonwealth affairs, confirmed in a telephone interview from London that Ottawa is putting extreme pressure on Westminster to approve without hesitation the Trudeau formula for patriation of the British North America Act.
Kershaw is reported as saying he has not directly heard the warnings about pulling Canada out of the Commonwealth or imposing economic sanctions but other British MPs have.
The select committee is looking into the procedures Britain is to use to deal with the Canadian government’s request for it to amend and then patriate the British North America Act.
A family of four escaped unhurt when a fire started in their home on Westwood Drive early today.
A spokesman for the Prince George Fire Department said the family’s dog awoke the Walter James Smith family by barking as the home was filling up with smoke.
A fire in the utility room caused damage to that room and the kitchen. The fire department says cause of the blaze was clothing hanging too close to a heater.
Transpo confirmed
VANCOUVER (CP) -Canada’s bid to hold the Transpo 86 transportation fair at Vancouver was endorsed today at a meeting in Paris of the 36-country Bureau of International Exhibitions.
Provincial Secretary Evan Wolfe, who represented the B.C. government, said in a telephone interview the bureau was impressed with the Vancouver presentation and
expressed no interest in doubts about the fair among some city politicians.
“These people are all aware of changes, used to the odd hiccup in politics,” said Paul Manning, a provincially-appointed Transpo planner who also attended the meeting.
Mike Harcourt, Vancouver’s newly-elected mayor, has objected to the fair.
See also page 2
OIL EXPLORATION COMPANIES
Oberle 'exodus' claim challenged
by ARNOLD OLSON Citizen Staff Reporter
Claims by a local MP that Fort St. John district businesses are going bankrupt because oil companies are leaving B.C. aren’t true, say area government and business spokesmen.
Oberle, Prince George-Peace River MP (PC), was quoted Monday as saying, “The effects . . . are not only disastrous to our energy future but to the economy in general — particularly in the producing areas of our country where small companies and businesses that service the oil patch are going bankrupt at unprecedented rates.”
He referred to "a mass exodus in western Canada, of not multinationals, but Canadian companies going to other parts of the world.”
He made those statements in the Commons and later, outside, added that Fort St. John and Fort Nelson were communities suffering the effects of the migration.
Canadian Hunter Explorations Ltd. officials have gone on record, both in B.C. and in Alberta, as planning any future explorations in the U.S., rather than in Canada, because of the new federal budget which the company says has produced financial hardships even with existing producing wells.
Oberle said there were seven other companies which were verging on similar action.
Fort St. John mayor Pat Walsh said it is, “just not true,” that his community and surrounding district was experiencing bankruptcies at an unprecedented rate.
The Citizen checked with bankruptcies administrator for Consumer and Corporate Affairs, Harvey Henderson, who said to his knowledge there was no greater rate of business failure this year compared with 1979.
“There has been no significant increase. It usually takes a while for any upset to affect companies,”'he said.
Murray Mawhinney, a Prince George licence trustee, was contacted on Henderson’s suggestion, because this office would normally handle all bankruptcies for the northeastern part of B.C.
“I haven’t seen that level of incidence yet,” Mawhinney said.
Walsh’s statement that his community was not suffering doom and gloom attitudes was backed by Bill Anderson, Peace River-Liard Reg-
ional District economic development com missioner.
Anderson said, “We’re holding our own.”
Referring to Oil Week — the bible of the industry and communities deeply interested in oil and gas activities — he said records show little difference in the number of rigs being active.
Any difference — about two wells less now than in the same period in 1979 — was more likely to be because holes drilled now were deeper, more costly, and more time-consuming to complete.
He added that if all current proposals to market natural gas or its derivatives were to come about, the B.C. production would have to be doubled, meaning more wells would be needed.
NAPLES. Italy (AP) -Heavy rains and more aftershocks added to the misery of earthquake survivors in the Naples-Sorrento area of southern Italy today as workers kept digging for bodies. The chief of relief operations said he is planning the evacuation of many thousands of the homeless.
The interior ministry reported 3,000 bodies have been recovered, at least 1,300 more people are missing, 5,000 were injured and 200,000 people were made homeless by the earthquake Sunday night.
It was Europe’s deadliest quake in 65 years, since one in 1915 killed 30,000 people in the Avezzano region of central Italy.
The continuing tremors brought down buildings that escaped the earthquake Sunday night and frightened hundreds of thousands of survivors camped in parks, beaches and other open spaces.
"We have offered them school buildings, but they don’t want to go in with anything over their heads, said Salerno health official Antonio Ercolano. "It is understandable because they were so shocked and frightened.”
Bleary-eyed soldiers, police and firefighters helped grieving villagers dig out the living and dead from the quake that hit Sunday night. Rescue teams worked slowly because they did not have enough bulldozers or other equipment.
Fallen stones and collapsed bridges blocked many roads, but an interior ministry official said relief teams had arrived at every community in the stricken region by Tuesday evening.
The military command estimated the death toll at 3,132. The parish priest in Sant’ Angelo dei Lombardi said he believes 1,500 bodies are beneath the ruins there.
BULLETIN
BOGOTA (AP) — A strong earthquake shook the Colombia Venezuela border area Wednesday and initial reports from the area indicated there was heavy damage.
The earthquake was the strongest felt in 30 years in the Colombian border town of Cucuta, said u Cucuta fireman in an interview broadcast hy radio station Carucoi.
Cucuta is in northern Colombia, 400 kilometres north northeast of Bogota and five kilometres west of the border.
Hostage talks under way
WASHINGTON (AP) -Algerian intermediaries met today with U.S. state department officials to deliver a new message from Iran on its terms for freeing the 52 American hostages.
The day-long talks could determine how far apart the two countries are on negotiat ing the release of the captives
They were greeted by Assistant State Secretary Harold Sauders on arrival and went into talks with an American team led by Deputy Secretary Warren Christopher.
TODAY
tieahhn
'Let's hope wo nover have to use it!”
FEATURED INSIDE
D
Basketball rivalry . . .
A fierce rivalry between the Prince George Polars and Duchess Park Condors is brewing again in high school basketball. Page 19.
A sudden ending . . .
The sudden end to the Sugar Ray Leonard-Roberto Duran fight left the closed circuit crowd in the Coliseum frozen in disbelief. Pages 17 and 19.
Index
Bridge........................ Entertainment ...........34-37
.10, 11
City, B.C.
........2,3,6, 13, 15,31 33, 43 International... ...................5
..20-27
.......34 ...................7
Community pages... ..47-49 Bolling Stone..
.......22 17-19, 50-52
c
THE WEATHER
Enjoy the sunshine today, we have snow on the way.
Between two and four cm of the stuff should be falling on us by 10 p.m., according to the weather office. Thursday should be unsettled, mostly cloudy with isolated snow flurries and sunny breaks in the afternoon.
From an overnight low of -5, today should see a high of 2, going down to -2 overnight and a high of 2, Thursday. A year ago today we had a high of -1 and a low of -12.
Sunrise was at 6:58 a.m. and sunset is at 3:59 p.m.
Sadrack says . . .
|
eilfcC vl
jcn LhT^\
Details Puge 2
NOW HEAR THIS
J
• It was better late than never for a former South Fort George Elementary School student recently. A twinge of conscience prompted the student to shove a starter pistol through the school mail slot with a note saying it was stolen two years ago. The principal said he didn’t even know it was missing.
• An elderly trucker was passing through town recently and stopped on The Bypass to check and tighten down his load. His newly-acquired dentures had been giving him some discomfort, so he had just stuffed them intu his shirt pocket. After travelling down the road a couple of miles he reached for his teeth and they were gone. Turning back in hopes that they had fallen out when he checked his load, he returned to the spot. “Sure enough!” the trucker exclaimed, “there they were. Sittin’ on the side of the road just alaughin’ at me!”
Got a news tip? Call The Citizen’s 24-hour
news line at 562-2441.