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Dam Burst Kills 3; Damage in Millions
LOS ANGELES—(UPI)—Baldwin Hills area residents returned to their flood ravaged homes today thankful only three persons were killed when an earth reservoir dam burst and caused $10 million damage.
A warning of nearly four hours was credited with preventing it "from becoming one of the big disasters of all time."
WITH THESE WORDS, City Atty. Roger Arnebergh seemed to sum up the feelings of city officials that most residents of the heavily populated area escaped death Saturday when a wall of water destroyed or damaged nearly 1,000 homes.
However, there was a possibility the death toll might rise higher a residents and workers dug through three and four feet of mud.
A path of water, almost 40 feet wide, ripped through an area a mile and a half square with homes up to the $50.000 class;
POLICE THREW UP a cordon around the area to prevent looting and only residents with passes were allowed to pass. Hundreds of police-ment patrolled the muddy, debris-filled area.
Mayor Samuel Yorty yesterday appointed the heads of three leading universities in the area to nominate members for a blue ribbon fact-finding board of inquiry.
Rv Tom Coffman
Regents Allot Dorm Funds
The Board of Regents, which meet here Saturday, approved the plans for the new dormitory designed to house about 970 students.
The dormitory will be similar to other recently-built dormitories in construction and floor plan.
The regents, acting on the recommendation of Chancellor W. Clarke Weace, transferred $44,000 from the mill tax funds of the Ellsworth Hall construction account and $19,283 remaining in the Hashinger Hall construction account to the new dormitory account.
In other action concerning KU facilities, the board approved:
THE TRANSFERRED funds will cover planning and other preliminary expenses of the project.
- A recommendation by the chancellor that the 1964 Kansas legislature be requested to authorize the purchase of $65,000 worth of furniture and shelves from the restricted fees and research overhead funds.
- Funds amounting to $4,000 for the installment of security doors in the department of design in the top floor of Strong Hall.
IN PRESENTING the latter recommendation, Chancellor Wescoe pointed out that many valuable design exhibits have been stolen from the corridors in the past several years.
Two other Board of Regents actions will affect students living in residence halls, beginning in September. 1964:
- The residence hall social fee will be increased from $5 a semester to $8.50.
- Payment for living in residence hells will be made in 10 equal monthly installments of $70 each, which will include application fee, board and room, social fee, and insurance.
TWO KU professors and one instructor were granted leaves of absence for the spring semester. They were E. O. Stene, professor of political science, who will be a visiting professor at the University of Hawaii; Elin Jorgensen, professor of music education; and Marguerite Kerfoot, instructor in art education.
In statewide action, the board authorized an investigation into the amount of tax funds being used to support the athletic programs of KU, Kansas State University, and Wichita University.
Henry Bubb, chairman of the Board of Regents, said the investigation is in line with an effort to make all auxiliary programs of state institutions, including the athletics program, self-supporting.
The probe is expected to be completed by March 1.
The appointments were promptly accepted by Dr. Norman Topping president of the University of Southern California; Dr. Frankli Murphy, president of UCLA (former chancellor of KU), and Dr. Lee Dt Bridge, president of the Californi institute of Technology.
THE DEATH TOLL could have been staggering had the dam broken it night.
"Hundreds of the 16,500 resident would have been killed," said a policeman who helped clear the area. "Had it taken us another 15 minute ve probably all would have been ost."
Officer T. B. Mason said he and other policemen were sent to the cene immediately after a crack appeared in the north wall of the 500-foot long, 135-foot high dam. He said many residents didn't ever know the dam existed.
"MANY DIDN'T want to leave their homes," he said, "and had to be persuaded to evacuate."
Skies were clear when a crack appeared in the 12-year-old dam's construction foreman, Danie Guidezola, 51, said it was bull "exactly the way it should be done."
"If you could have seen the way we did it, layer by layer and rock by rock," Guindazola said, "if you could have seen that, then you would know for sure that it has to be something wrong besides the dam itself."
Subsidence caused by oil being removed by the many pumps that dot the area nearby was another possibility, as was weakening caused by movement of the earth and cracking and stretching of the earth in the area.
WHATEVER the cause, there were hundreds of homeless.
Among the dead was Maurice Carroll, 57, an employee of the Department of Water and Power, and the father of television actress Pat Carroll—a member of the "Danny Thomas Show."
The other dead were identified as Mrs. Hattie Schwartz, 73, and March Young, 58.
ONE MAJOR question in the minds of most residents who would pay for the damage. The Department of Water and Power is covered by $14.8 million in insurance, but if it is found the dam collapsed because of "an act of God" rather than structural failure, they might not be able to recover damages.
Most residents had no flood insurance, but comprehensive automobile insurance covers the damaged cars.
The Red Cross provided relief, and the area was declared a major disaster area.
Fire Chief William L. Miller said the disaster probably was the second worst in southern California history—the first being the 1961 Bei-Air fire which destroyed 520 buildings.
Breon Mitchell, Salina senior, has been chosen for a Rhodes scholarship for the Mid-West district.
Mitchell, who is majoring in humanities, German, philosophy and art, plans to study philosophy for two years at Oxford. He said he plans to reapply for the third year of study available to Rhodes scholars.
KU Senior Is Rhodes Scholar
Mitchell and the three other winners will study at Oxford University in England.
"It's the place I've wanted to study for a long time. I was very happy," Mitchell said.
Fach of the four winners will receive $2,520 a year. Mitchell and the three other winners were chosen from 12 applicants from Minnesota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Iowa, Missouri and Kansas.
Weather
Occasional light snow is forecast for tomorrow, according to the weather bureau. The low tonight will be 10. The high Tuesday will be in the low 20s.
Daily hansan
Lawrence, Kansas
Monday, Dec. 16, 1963
Student Loans May Soar With Federal, Bank Help
By Charles Corcoran
"STUDENT LOAN FUNDS EXHAUSTED UNTIL THE FIRST OF TEXT MONTH."
KU Students will be seeing less of his sign in front of the Office of kids and Awards next semester if a step by the KU Endowment Association to multiply long-term loan unds is successful.
Irvin E. Youngberg, executive secretary of the Endowment Association, said that the step is a new leniture in student loans.
"It will multiply some of the Enlowment Association's long-term loan funds by nine to twelve and one-half times by turning over the long-term loan field to funds obtained through the National Defense Education Act (NDEA) and to Kansas banks through the United Student Aid Fund (USAF)," he said.
YOUNGBERG explained that all new Endowment Association funds for student loans, received as gifts and bequests, are to be committed primarily to match federal grants through the NDEA program on a 1-9 basis or to provide an 8 per cent reserve fund for loans made to KU students by commercial banks in Kansas under the USAF program.
He said that the federal government will award a maximum of $250,000 annually for student loans if the Endowment Association can supply $1 for every $9 of the federal grant. Thus, the Endowment Association gets the benefit of $10 to loan, where before it had only $1.
Students who made NDEA loans need not begin repaying the borrowed sum until they have been out of school for one year. The interest
fund total is more than $1.2 million.
rate of 3 per cent does not begin to
accrue until that time.
THE BANKS' USAF program requires the Endowment Association to deposit 8 per cent of anticipated student loans as a reserve to act as a sort of collateral on the loans. These loans are administered by the banks and six per cent interest is charged from the date of borrowing, Youngberg said.
Thus, under the USAF program student borrowers will get the benefit of 92 per cent more money than if the Endowment Association had simply loaned them its money directly.
The Endowment Association's policy statement for 1964 states that "Long-term loans from general funds will be discontinued in favor of a short-term loan to become due within one year or on September 15 of the academic year following that in which the loan was made. Loans for longer periods will be available only through the NDFA and the USAF programs and certain special off-campus funds which are available to KU students.
Last year, more than $446,000 was loaned to 2,720 short-term borrowers, he said.
YCUNGBERG SAID that short term loans, the number of which has soared in the last few years, will increase because of the policy change, since more Endowment Association funds from gifts and bequests will be freed for loans of less than one year.
Generally, a student's short-term loan is for $500 or less, payable the following September 15. Youngberg
said that this kind of loan "tides over" the student until he can earn some money the following summer,
He said that if more money is needed after paying off the loan, the student is encouraged to re-borrow it. But the emphasis in short-term financing is to keep Endowment Association money active and working for the benefit of the maximum number of students.
BOB BILLINGS. director of Office of Aids and Awards, raid, "The Revolution in student attitudes toward borrowing has surprised college administrators."
He said the rising need for loans of all kinds was one surprise. Another has been the popularity of loans for women.
Loans for women once were believed to be out of the question, he said. No young woman, the argument went wanted to be graduated with a mortgaged diploma. "If she hoped for marriage, the overshadowing debt might be a dowry in reverse, an impossible barrier to romance." Billings said.
The possibility hasn't deterred KU women.
Lact year, there were 1,000 applications at KU for NDEA loans, and more than half, he said, were from women. The NDEA program is designed to encourage elementary and secondary school teaching, a popular career for women, Billings said.
Borrowers under the NDEA program who became teachers may have up to half the loan cancelled by teaching for five years. The NDEA program has been operating at KU for the past six years, and KU's
Proposed Sales Tax Increase Meets Officials' Disagreement
By Fred Frailey
The suggestion of an increase in the Kansas sales tax, made Friday by the chairman of the State Board of Regents, met with varied reaction from educators and others.
Most prominent of the dissenters was Gov. John Anderson.
Henry A. Bubb of Topeka, regents chairman, advocated the half-cent tax increase and said it should be earmarked specifically for higher education.
GOV. ANDERSON, who heard Bubb deliver his speech at a lunch- eon of the Conference on Higher Education in Kansas, said afterward that other sources of revenue should be examined before the sales tax is raised.
"Every state around Kansas has a higher liquor tax, and most of them have a higher cigarette tax," Gov. Anderson said.
He also mentioned a withholding tax on incomes as a source of additional revenue. He said the state loses $3 million annually to persons who leave the state before payment of the preceding year's income tax in April.
"A withholding of income taxes would also produce an extra $15 million its first year," the governor said. "The state would get income tax payments in April and at the same time receive the current year's taxes."
GOV. ANDERSON conceded that Kansas will need more money in the future, "but I'm not convinced we should raise the sales tax at the next se sion of the Legislature."
Bubb remarked that he was speaking mainly for himself in advocating the increase—to 3 per cent—in the sales tax, but added that he felt the majority of the State Board of Regents would agree with him.
"Even if we do not increase the tax this year, it is still clear that Kansas will have to eventually take care of its system of high education, both because of the influx of students into the colleges and the need to increase faculty salaries," Bubb said.
Bubb said a sales tax would be easier to pay than any other type of general tax.
"IF IT IS NOT earmarked for high education," he said, "then we'll have a battle with everyone else wanting part of the tax dollar."
"FARMARKING is a situation fraught with peril because it leads to a plaating of a commitment rather than an upgrading," Dr. Wescoe said.
He said members of the Legislature he has talked to agree that a sales tax increase would be the best way to pump additional funds into the state's colleges and universities.
Bubb's propasal was a major topic of discussion among presidents of the five state-supported colleges later Friday in a meeting of the conference.
Henry A. Bubb
Chancellor W. Clarke Wescoe of KU estimated a half-cent sales tax increase would net the state an additional $16 million annually and added it "is the only substantial source of tax revenue that can be added in a short period of time."
One president who was doubtful of Bubb's proposal was John E. King of Kansas State Teachers College in Emporia. But King said the speech represents "a challenge to the Legislature."
Dr. Wescoe cautioned, however, against earmarking the funds only for higher education.
The question of specifying that the half-cent of the sales tax go to higher educational systems was the subject of numerous comments, with most of the college presidents taking a dim view of it.
"I believe Mr. Bubb asked for this to get people thinking," Dr. Wescoe said.
"THEIS WAS a clear-cut proposal around which we can work," commented King.
"If someone in the state of Kansas doesn't say, 'We need X dollars which can be raised by an X increase in the sales tax,' then we could come out on the short end of the deal," Leonard Axe, president of Kansas State College of Pittsburgh, said. "It could be that by going on record now we are staking out additional funds for higher education."