The gamecock. (Columbia, S.C.) 1908-2006, January 16, 2001, Page A6, Image 6
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Page A6 !f| ' - { : ‘ •*’. ‘ V J§ Tuesday, January 16,2001
Earthquake recovery continues
by Will Weissert
Associated Press
SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador
—Authorities have buried in mass graves
many of the 400 confirmed victims of El
Salvador’s earthquake, saying a landslide
that wiped out entire families had made
it impossible to know the identities of
many who died.
Two more people were found alive,
including a small child and a young man
whose cellular phone call alerted au
thorities to his location. Some 1,000 peo
ple were still missing, and the mayor of
a hard-hit community said Monday that
as the ground firms and time passes the
chances of finding more people alive un
der the mountain of dirt is becoming more
remote.
“VNfe always have hope that someone
can be found alive, but we have to ac
knowledge that there is less possibility
of finding life,” Mayor Oscar Ortiz of
Santa Tecla told The Associated Press.
On Sunday, distraught relatives lined
up at an improvised morgue in a blood
stained Santa Tecla alley to identify some
of those mangled and entombed in Sat
urday’s 7.6-magnitude quake. The need
to dispose of the mounting number of
corpses cheated some of the chance for
closure.
One woman looking for a pair of miss
ing cousins showed up at the morgue in
the half-buried Las Colinas neighborhood
only to find out that two children who
matched their description had already
been sent to a mass burial.
“My cousins are similar to the ages
of the ones you buried, and they are miss
ing,” 18-year-old Kenya Marbella told
stem-faced soldiers who said it was too
late to see the bodies. “How could you
just throw bodies in the ground like that?”
With no refrigerated facilities, and
bodies and body parts piling up in the al
ley near the quake-triggered landslide
that covered Las Colinas in a wall of dirt,
there was little choice but mass burial,
said coroner Mario Alfredo Hernandez.
About half of the corpses were uniden
tified, he said.
Earthquake see page az
Joy turns to anguish as quake survivor fights for life
by Niko Price
Associated Press
SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador
—For two days and a night, the young
musician lay beneath 15 feet of cin
<derblocks and mud while rescuers
worked desperately to pull him to safe
ty
But the elation when Sergio
Moreno was finally freed turned to
agony on Monday when heart and kid
ney failure left him fighting for his life.
“After so much joy when we saw
him pulled out, we are again living in
anguish,” said his mother, Leticia del
Carmen de Moreno, weeping in the
hospital.
Moreno, 22, is the keyboard play
er for the popular Salvadoran merengue
band Grupo Algodon. But he recent
ly decided to return to college to study
computers, and had bought a humble,
two-story house in the Las Colinas
neighborhood of Santa Tecla, just
‘After so much joy when we saw him
pulled out, we are again living in anguish.’
Leticia del Carmen de Moreno
Mother of-Sergio Moreno
outside the capital where he would
study.
Saturday morning, Moreno was
painting his new home when an earth
quake sent the hillside above crashing
down on top of him.
Moreno was trapped in darkness
in the bathroom, with cinderblocks pin
ning his legs. The ironwork of a bal
cony shielded his upper body.
He had a cellular phone with him
and dialed a friend. He got through, and
within an hour, rescuers were cutting
through concrete to open a pathway.
It was tough work, and with the
earth still trembling, the rescuers knew
they could be crushed at any moment.
But Jhonny “Cannibal” Ramos and
Manuel Guzman weren’t going to aban
don Moreno.
“We made a pact: No matter what
the risks, we weren’t going to leave
until we got him out,” Guzman said.
Digging mostly with their hands,
the two rescue workers tunneled down
15 feet and opened a small hole to
where Moreno lay. They pushed in a
garden hose, and told Moreno to put it
Survivor see page az
Clinton wishes for racial harmony
by Larry Margasak
Associated Press
WASHINGTON —
Marking the Martin
Luther King Jr. holi
day, President Clin
ton said Monday that
his wish as he leaves the
White House is for an
America where the
V^UVOV. 1W1 WliUUVIl uu
CLINTON manity outweighs
racial, ethnic and cul
tural differences among citizens.
“If I could leave America with one
wish as I depart office, it would be that
we become more the ‘One America’
that we know we ought to be,” Clinton
told a crowd of about 900 at the Uni
versity of the District of Columbia.
Clinton also referred to a message
he sent to Congress over the weekend
that calls for improvements to the crim
inal justice system, restoring voting rights
for people who complete their prison
sentences, and a national election com
mission led by former Presidents Ford
and Carter that would review balloting
problems that surfaced in the past pres
idential election.
Earlier, Clinton, who signed the King
Holiday and Service Act in 1994 to es
tablish the day as a national day of ser
vice, went to a local senior center where
he painted a pillar and told reporters that
he hoped his successor’s commitment
to civil rights is not marked by parti
sanship.
Minority citizens in America still
face problems that must be addressed
by the next administration, Clinton said
as he rolled pumpkin-colored paint with
Americorps workers at the Greenleaf
Senior Center.
“I hope it will be a commitment
that goes way beyond party,” Clinton
said.
The president also told reporters
he’s considering clemency for several
people who have completed their sen
tences and want their voting rights re
stored.
He called on Congress to pass leg
islation similar to that in Arkansas that
automatically restores voting rights af
ter people have served their sentences.
“It would seem to me most Amer
ican people agree that when you pay
your debt to society and become law
abiding citizens,” that voting rights should
be restored, he said. “I would really like
to see it done. I think there’s a lot of bi
partisan interest in it.”
On Sunday, Clinton sent to Con
gress his recommendations for improv
ing race relations in the United States.
In his message to lawmakers, Clinton
called for an end to the “intolerable
practice” of racial profiling.
He also said Election Day should
be declared a national holiday and rec
ommended that the incoming Bush
administration appoint a nonpartisan
presidential commission on election
reform.
“If ever there was a doubt about
the importance of exercising the most
fundamental right of citizenship, it was
clearly answered by the first presi
dential election of the 21st century,”
Clinton said.
President-elect Bush will be sworn
in Saturday to succeed Clinton after
winning the closest presidential race in
recent history.
Some minority voters — especial
ly in Florida, where the outcome of the
election was ultimately decided—said
they were intimidated or even blocked
from voting when they went to the polls
on Election Day.
World Briefs
■ Bush marks King
holiday at Houston
elementary school
AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — Facing
deep suspicion among black Ameri
cans, President-elect George W. Bush
was marking the Martin Luther King
Jr. holiday with a scheduled trip to a
Houston elementary school to call for
unity and to highlight his education
proposals.
Joining him Monday at Kelso Ele
mentary School was expected to be
Rod Paige, the president-elect’s choice
for Education secretary. Paige, who is
black, runs the Houston school district
and is a product of segregated schools
in Mississippi.
Blacks favored Democrat A1 Gore
by a 9-to-l margin in the November
election, and by better than a 2-to-l
margin, most blacks believe they will
lose influence, rather than gain it, un
der Bush, according to a Pew Research
Center poll this month.
■ California focuses
on wholesalers for
energy crisis relief
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Apian
to try to fix the energy crisis by mak
ing the state a major electricity broker
will likely be introduced Tuesday to
the state Legislature, officials said.
After a seven-hour meeting with
energy providers and state and federal
officials, Gov. Gray Davis said Sunday ,
the state will try to sign contracts with
electricity wholesalers to buy power
and sell it to utilities.
The state believes it can negotiate
better prices than financially unstable
utilities, which have amassed billions
of dollars in debt by buying energy in a
California market unhinged by deregu
lation and supply shortages.
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