The gamecock. (Columbia, S.C.) 1908-2006, March 02, 2001, Page 4, Image 4
Seattle recovers after earthquake
by Gene Johnson
Associated Press
SEATTLE —A day after the region’s
strongest earthquake in a half-century,
most western Washington residents
headed for work, school and their daily
business as usual Thursday, grateful for
their close call.
Still, the cost of Wednesday’s 6.8
magnitude quake continued to climb as
crews checked roads, bridges and buildups
for damage. A preliminary damage
estimate reached $2 billion, said Sen.
Patty Murray, D-Whsh.
“I’m so glad there were minimal
injuries,” she said as she toured the state
with Federal Emeigency Management
Agency Director Joe Allbaugh.
Earlier, Gov. Gary Locke told the
NBC Today program said the damage
could go into the billions of dollars “when
you calculate not only property damage
and the cost of repair, but also the
economic impact of lost wages. ”
But like Murray, he stressed that
things could have been far worse.
“We’re just really, really lucky,” •
Locke said after surveying the region by
helicopter.
The earthquake, centered about 35
miles southwest of Seattle, was felt as
far away as southern Oregon and Canada.
Because the quake was 33 miles
underground, the Earth’s crust absorbed
much of the shock, scientists said.
The state Emergency Management
Division tallied 272 people with injuries
directly linked to the quake, but all but
a few were minor and none was
considered critical.
A woman in her 60s died of a heart
attack at about the time of the quake,
but it was unclear if the death could be
attributed to the quake.
Two minor aftershocks — a 3.4 and
a 2.7 — were recorded early Thursday
at the location of the initial quake, said
University of Washington seismologist
Bob Norris. Neither was widely felt and
rfo additional damage was reported.
Seattle began Thursday morning with
most businesses and schools open. Some
roads remained closed as crews checked
for damage, complicating the morning
commute.
Boeing, the region’s largest private
employer, reopened most of its offices
and factories, though its facilities at Boeing
Field south of Seattle were closed due
to damage to the airport.
Locke, his wife and two children
were among the relatively small number
of residents forced out of their homes.
Cracks appeared in the brick walls of the
Governor’s Mansion in Olympia —just
11 miles from the epicenter—and books
and pictures flew off the walls, he said.
The state Capitol also sustained damage.
But officials said the millions of
dollars of investments the state and cities
put into stabilizing buildings and bridges
apparently paid off. While brick and
shattered glass littered the streets, there
was no widespread structural damage.
Most buildings constructed in Seattle
since the mid-1970s were built to a
uniform code designed to withstand strong
earthquakes.
Seattle’s Space Needle, where more
than two dozen people rode out the quake
from 600 feet above the city, was built
to handle a 9.1 -magnitude quake. Twenty
minutes after the shaking stopped, the
elevators and structure, a landmark dating
from the 1962 Wbrld’s Pair, were declared
safe.
“It was like a rolling ship in the
ocean,” said Daryl Stevens, who was on
the observation deck. The tower’s
facilities director, Rick Harris, declared
it “the best ride in town.”
“The code worked, but it wasn’t
[
‘The ground felt like it was Jell-O, cars were
swaying, trucks were swaying.’
Tim Jacobson
Seattle worker
tested to the full extent,” said Bill Steele,
a seismology lab coordinator at the
University of Washington.
The earthquake hit at 10:54 am, 35
nules southwest of Seattle, according to
the National Earthquake Information
Center in Golden, Colo. It was the laigest
quake to hit the region since a 7.1 quake
near Olympia killed eight people in 1949.
A 6.5 earthquake hit in 1965, injuring at
least 31 people.
“The ground felt like it was Jell-O,
cats were swaying, trucks were swaying,”
said Tim Jacobson, who works at Seattle
Air Caigo.
In Seattle and in Portland, Ore., 140
miles from the epicenter, the shaking
sent people diving under desks and
running into streets. Showers of bricks
crushed cars, and three people in the
Seattle area were seriously injured when
they were struck by falling debris.
Hundreds of thousands of people
across the region temporarily lost power.
Seattle-Tacoma International Airport was
closed for several hours, and U.S.
Highway 101 buckled in several places.
However, the state Department of
Transportation said there were no reports
of major damage to bridges, as San
Francisco faced after the deadly 7.1
magnitude World Series quake in 1989.
In Washington state, a $65 million
retrofitting program that began in 1990
improved more than 300 bridges.
“We would look at the retrofit
program as having paid for itself and
shown a success,” said Ed Henley, a bridge
management engineer. Though there
were no collapses, some highways and
bridges sustained lesser damage and were
being checked for damage.
-1
House committee
approves Bush’s
income tax plan
■ 23-15 vote split
along party lines
by David Espo
Associated Press
WASHINGTON - Republicans
pushed the income tax rate cuts at the
heart of President Bush’s economic
program through the House Ways and
Means Committee on Thursday,
overriding vehement Democratic protests.
The committee vote was 23-15,
strictly along party lines, and cleared the
way for a vote in the full House next week
as GOP lawmakers pressed for an early
legislative success for the new president.
The committee’s chairman, Rep. Bill
Thomas, R-Calif., said the legislation
would provide a “stimulus for the unsteixly
American economy” while helping
working taxpayers.
Even before he spoke, though, senior
Democrats in both houses renewed their
attack on the measure and unveiled their
own, less costly alternative, adjusted to
favor lower- and middle-income wage
earners.
“This is the most irresponsible
legislative act that I’ve ever seen, a
rush to judgment,” House Democratic
Leader Dick Gephardt of Missouri said
of Bush’s plan, renewing his claim that
it would shortchange debt reduction and
vital government programs.
But the tax-writing committee
rejected the Democratic alternative before
voting on Bush’s measure.
The president’s package would cut
income tax rates and collapse the current
five tax brackets into four. When fully
phased in by 2006, it would create a new
low-rate tax bracket of 10 percent and
cut the highest rates, now pegged at 36
percent and 39.6 percent, to 33 percent.
The GOP made changes in the
president’s proposal that would expand
the relief by accelerating a cut in the
lowest tax rate and making it retroactive
to Jan. 1. Thomas said Treasury Secretary
Paul O’Neill had embraced the changes.
Republicans said their measure would
cost $958 billion over 10 years, about
$65 billion more than the equivalent
portion of Bush’s plan. Thomas said other
elements of the president’s recommended
cuts, including repeal of the estate tax,
would be acted on later in the year.
Thomas and other Republicans
stressed Wednesday that they were moving
swiftly to help slave off recession.
But their action ajso appeared
designed to give a quick boost to Bush,
who w;is on a two-day national swing to
promote his Utx cuts. Republics offends,
who spoke on condition of iinonymity,
said House Speaker Dennis Hasten of
Illinois spoke emphatically at a closed
door meeting of the rank and file of the
need to support the president and act
quickly to help the economy.
At the same time, officials
acknowledged no legislation is likely to
reach Bush's desk for months. Democrats
have the ability to delay action on a tax
cut until Congress has approved an overall
tax and spending plan, a process that
customarily lasts until April or May.
By moving swiftly and by announcing
an enhanced, retroactive tax break for
the lowest rate, Republicans also put
Democrats in the unenviable political
position of opposing legislation that offers
speedy relief for millions of wage earners.
The measure would adopt most of
Bush’s proposed rate cut proposal without
changes. While current law taxes income
at five graduated rates —15 percent, 28
percent, 31 percent, 36 percent and 39.6
percent, Bush proposed condensing those
rates and creating a new, lower 10 percent
bracket. When fully phased in by 2006,
there would be four rates: 10 percent, 15
percent, 25 percent and 33 percent.
Bush’s plan would gradually create a
new lowest rate bracket by subjecting the
first portion of taxable income to a rate
of 14 percent in 2002 and 13 percent in
2003, dropping eventually to 10 percent
in 2006.
Under the legislation Thomas drafted,
a 12 percent bracket would be created
for 2001 and 2002, dropping to 11 percent
from 2003-2005 and 10 percent in 2006.
lne measure also includes an
adjustment in the alternative minimum
tax that aides said would cut taxes for
taxpayers who have three or more
children and incomes between $30,000
arid $50,000.
Thomas’ aides said the maximum
reduction from that change would be
$360 for a married couple and $180 for
a single person.
With Republicans moving swiftly to
enact Bush’s income tax cuts, the political
rhetoric escalated sharply during the day.
Hasten accused unnamed Democrats
of working to thwart action in hopes of
an economic downturn that would inflict
political damage on Republicans.
“Obviously, there are some on the other
side of the aisle that don’t want us to have
success. They would like to see us go into
recession.”
Gephardt rebutted sharply a short
while later.
“I don’t know what Dennis said, and
I hope he didn’t mean that,” he said.
“Because how could anyone want to visit
on the American people, especially poor
people, what a recession and what a
slowdown really means?”
Mideast van explosion
kills one, injures nine
by Dina Kraft
Associated Press
MEI AMI, Israel — As Israeli
police closed in, a suspected
Palestinian militant detonated a bomb
in a taxi van Thursday, killing one
Israeli, injuring nine other people and
reigniting debate over how Israel
should respond to terrorist attacks.
Prime Minister Ehud Barak said
the blast appeared linked to an
attempted attack Wednesday in central
Tel Aviv, where a bomb at a food stall
was discovered and safely exploded.
As investigators sifted through
debris from the crumpled white van
near the northern Israeli town of Mei
Ami, Israeli leaders accused Palestinian
leader Yasser Arafat of failing to crack
down on Islamic militant groups.
“As long as activists (from militant
groups) are walking around freely in
the West Bank and Gaza, the
responsibility is of those who let them
walk around,” said Deputy Defense
Minister Ephraim Sneh. “We see the
Palestinian Authority as responsible
for the situation.”
Sneh said he believed the militant
Hamas or Islamic Jihad were
behind the blast, but the groups made
no claims.
The taxi’s passengers and the list
of injured included both Arabs and
Jews.
The badly wounded Palestinian
suspect, who was in the van at the
time of the bombing, was flown by
an Israeli helicopter to a hospital. The
Israeli man who was killed, and seven
of the nine wounded, were also in the
taxi, police said The blast also injured
two people nearby.
Police said they had been
searching for the suspect after
receiving information he was at laige
in northern Israel, possibly with
explosives. Several surprise
checkpoints were quickly set up.
When the taxi van stopped at a
roadblock, police were checking the
ID papers of the passengers, when
“the terrorist apparently set off the
bomb,” Police Commissioner Shlomo
Aharonishki said.
“I heard a loud explosion.... I
saw body parts, someone’s hand,”
truck driver Daniel Grosser said.
The suspect was believed to be a
resident of the West Bank, according
to police, and might have activated
the explosives with a cell phone,
according to. Israeli media reports.
Police said they detained an Israeli
woman in connection with the blast,
but declined any further comment.
Israeli media reported that she is a
young immigrant from Russia who
lives in the Tel Aviv area, and the
suspect spent Wednesday night at her
home.
The explosion was the latest attack
in five months of violence, which
contributed to Barak’s crushing loss
in a Feb. 6 election.
The Israelis have imposed a tight
closure on Palestinian areas to prevent
people there from entering Israel. But
bomb attacks have continued, and
each blast brings renewed calls for a
tough Israeli response.
“We are going to fight terror
without any reservations,” said Israeli
elder statesman Shimon Peres, who
is expected to become the foreign
minister in the government of Prime
Minister-elect Ariel Sharon.
But Peres cautioned against
imposing “collective punishment”
against all Palestinians and escalating
tensions. “I believe that Sharon doesn’t
want... this entire country to be
covered in blood,” he said on Israeli
television.
Sharon has said his top priority is
restoring a sense of security to Israelis,
and that peace talks will resume only
after all violence stops.
The Palestinians, in turn, say their
economy has been strangled by the
Israeli closure, which prevents many
Palestinians from commuting to their
jobs. They also accuse the Israeli
military of using excessive force in
the fighting, which has left 412 people
dead, including 339 Palestinians, 58
Israelis and 15 others.
Taliban leader orders destruction
of all non-Islamic religious imagery
■ Outcry erupts
for preservation
of Buddha statues
Associated Press
KABUL, Afghanistan — Using
everything from tanks to rocket
launchers, Taliban troops fanned out
across the country Thursday to destroy
all statues, including two 5th-century
statues of Buddha carved into a
mountainside.
Despite international outrage,
troops and other officials began
destroying images contrary to Islam in
the capital of Kabul as well as in
Jalalabad, Herat, Kandahar, Ghazni and
Bamiyan, said Qadradullah Jamal, the
Taliban’s information minister.
“The destruction work will be done
by any means available to them,” he
said.
Afghanistan’s ancient Buddhas—
175 feet and 120 feet tali — are located
in Bamiyan, about 90 miles west of
Kabul. The larger Buddha is said to be
the world’s tallest statue in which
Buddha is standing up rather than sitting.
The main museum in Kabul also
contains hundreds of pieces of Buddhist
statues and artwork, which Jamal said
will be destroyed.
“All the statues all over the country
will be destroyed,” he said.
In ordering the statutes destroyed,
the Taliban’s supreme leader, Mullah
Mohammed Omar, said Monday that
they were contrary to the tenets of
Islam, which the Taliban say forbids
images, such as paintings and pictures.
The international community, from
U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan
to Afghanist;ui’s closest ally, Pakistan,
pleaded for the preservation of the
ancient works of art.
“We hope the Afghan government
will show the spirit of tolerance
enjoined upon by Islam as well as
respect for international sentiment in
this regard,” Pakistan, one of only three
countries to recognize the Taliban, said
a statement Thursday.
Taliban Foreign Minister Wakil
Ahmed Muttawakil on Wednesday said
the Islamic militia was unmoved by
international concern.
The Taliban, who rule about 95
percent of Afghanistan, espouse a strict
brand of Islamic law.
Omar, in his edict ordering their
destruction, said he wanted to ensure
the statues were not worshipped in the
future.
There are no Buddhists living in
Afghanistan. Other than Muslims, there
are only Hindus, Sikhs and Muttawakil
promised their temples would be
protected. There also is one elderly
Jewish rabbi, who stays in Kabul to
protect a synagogue, which is a small
house in the center of the city.
The Taliban have not prevented
him from practicing his religion.
World Briefs
■ New report
strongly criticizes
U.S. health care
WASHINGTON (AP)-The
nation’s health care system is a tangled
maze that too often leaves Americans
with inadequate, outdated, even unsafe
therapy, according to a scathing report
Thursday that recommends an urgent
overhaul to bring 21st century care to
more patients. U.S. specialists
know sophisticated and effective ways
to fight killers like diabetes, heart
disease and breast cancer.
But too many patients slog from
doctor to doctor in search of one who
can even fit a basic physical
examination into their crowded
schedules, much less one who
understands and uses the best
treatments, says the report by the
Institute of Medicine.
The report is a follow-up to the
institute’s groundbreaking 1999
announcement that medical mistakes
kill between 44,000 and 98,000
hospitalized Americans a year.
■ Investigators
search for bodies,
clues in train crash
GREAT HECK, England (AP)—
On a wreckage-strewn stretch of rural
rail line, investigators searched
Thursday for bodies and clues to a few
fateful minutes that brought two trains
and a car together in a high-speed crash.
Thirteen people were confirmed
dead and more than 70 injured in
Wednesday morning’s collision in
northeast England.
For reasons not yet explained, a
Land Rover towing a car on a trailer
went off a highway, down an
embankment and onto a rail line. The
frantic driver was able to get out of his
car and call emergency services on his
mobile phone.
Less than a minute after the call
went through, he shouted, “The train’s
coming!” The passenger train,
reportedly traveling at about 120 mph,
hit the car at 6:12 a.m. and careened
into an oncoming coal train.
■ Clinton library
reveals donor list
WASHINGTON (AP)-House
lawmakers pored over a list of big
money donors to Bill Clinton’s
presidential library Wfednesday, trying
to find a dollars-for-pardons connection
as they prepared to take testimony from
three of the former president’s closest
aides.
House Government Reform
Committee leaders looked at the names
of the top 150 donors to the library
foundation, and later this week will see
how much they gave and when.
The William J. Clinton Presidential
Foundation, which is raising money for
the library to be built in Little Rock,
Ark., initially resisted giving the
committee the list of donors who gave
more than $5,000.
The committee chairman, Rep. Dan
Burton, R-Ind., then threatened to find
foundation director Skip Rutherford in
contempt of Congress.
■ Macedonia blocks
border town
as clashes continue
BOGORODICA MONASTERY,
Macedonia (AP)— Worried
Macedonian leaders have established a
wide exclusion zone to block access to
the border village of Tanusevci, where
government troops fought a three-hour
battle with ethnic Albanian militants
Monday.
More border firefights erupted
Tuesday and Wednesday in the same
area, near the Kosovo village of
Debelde. Such clashes are heightening
fears in Macedonia and in other
European nations that this former
Yugoslav republic could be the next
scene of Balkans conflict.
Ethnic Albanian insuigents are also
fighting with Yugoslav forces in a
neighboring part of southern Serbia, and
there are concerns the two conflicts
could upset the fragile stability
established in Kosovo by NATO and
the United Nation