Foreign rackets
A growing number of U.S. collegiate tennis programs are recruiting in foreign countries to bring talent and variety to their teams.
Story, page 11
Drug testing soon may be available in the privacy of your own home. A Dallas firm is marketing a drug test that will be sold over-the-counter to concerned, or curious, consumers.
Take-home test
Story, page 7
Don't believe it until it happens, but the National Weather Service says that the high today will be in the 70s and that it may get down to 50 degrees tonight. Sure.
Call of the mild
Details, page 3
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Vol. 97, No. 4 (USPS 650-640)
Published since 1889 by the students of the University of Kansas
Wednesday August 27,1986
Soldiers bury dead of volcano tragedy
U.N. reports 1,543 killed in W.Africa
The Associated Press
SOUBOUM, Cameroon — Soldiers,
their faces covered with bandanas to
mask the stench, worked yesterday
to complete the burial of more than
1,500 victims of a volcanic eruption
of lethal gases.
Witnesses to the disaster in the Cameroon Highlands said they saw the ground covered with corpses and entire villages devoid of life.
Most survivors fled this mountain village five miles from the Nos volacano, leaving herds of longhorned cattle bloated and rotting in the fields of this west African country.
In Nios, which had a population of 1,200, only one woman and her child survived, authorities said.
When the first group of reporters reached the stricken area in northwestern Cameroon, army units had buried most of the victims in shallow graves that marked the countryside
"If you had come two or three days ago, you would have seen corpses in the same way you see the cattle now," said Lt. Gen. James Tataw, the chief of Cameroon's ground forces.
On Thursday, at about 9 p.m., a volcanic tremor unleashed a huge bubble of gas that burst through the surface of Lake Nios with a thunderous clap, sending deadly
gases over a 10-square-mile area where 5,000 people lived.
"The smell was like cooking with kitchen gas," said Chia David Wambong, a farmer. "Everyone started coughing and spitting up blood."
In Geneva, the United Nations Disaster Relief Organization reported 1,543 bodies had been counted and others were being discovered. On Monday the government placed the death toll at more than 1,200.
Israeli army medical teams said the fumes also killed more than 7,000 cattle.
Tataw said relatives had buried many of the victims before his army units arrived Sunday, making an accurate count impossible.
A main concern was preventing an epidemic that could be bolstered by the decaying carcasses of cattle and other livestock. Tataw said bulldozers were on their way to dispose of them.
Viewed from a helicopter, lemon-shaped Lake Nios had the reddish-brown color of the clay that had been churned up from the bottom. A few yards away was a small pond of brilliant blue water.
Gideon Taka of the Ministry of Information and Culture in the provincial capital of Bamenda said word of
Experts unsure what lethal gas killed villagers
By SHANE A. HILLS
Staff writer
A KU professor, whose specialty is organic chemistry, speculated yesterday that hydrogen sulfide and carbon dioxide were the probable gases that killed 1.534 villagers in Cameroon on Friday.
But Albert W. Burgstahler, the professor, said he did not rule out hydrogen cyanide as another possibility.
See CAMEROON, p. 5, col. 1
Experts investigating the gases that escaped from Lake Nios are not certain exactly what gases killed the villagers of the west African country.
The New York Times reported yesterday that an educated guess had surfaced: hydrogen sulfide and carbon dioxide. But recent reports indicate that because of the scabs left on the bodies of the victims, experts are beginning to see hydrogen cyanide as another possibility.
"These gases weigh more than air, and will drift close to the ground." Burgstahler said. "Hydrogen sulfide is very insidious in high concentrations. A concentration of less than one percent (in air) is lethal. It could make you pass out in a hurry. A person could asphyxiate with only a few breaths.
"Usually you can smell hydrogen sulfide and get away from it. It smells like rotten eggs. Was surprised about the disaster in Cameron because usually you'd have enough warning to get away."
Burgstahler said hydrogen cyanide probably would not exist in a high enough concentration from a natural source to kill that many people.
See GAS, p. 5, col. 2
Disaster strikes closer to home for 2 students
By SHANE A. HILLS
Staff writer
On television they saw a disaster, and the death toll was rising daily.
First it was "at least 40," according to the New York Times.
It then became official: more than 1,500 had perished - asphyxiated in their sleep under a dense cloud of toxic gas.
They have been hearing since Friday that an unidentified natural earth rumble triggered the escape of toxic gases from the bottom of Lake Nios, which lies in a volcanic crater in northwest Cameroon.
Of the 10 million citizens of Cameroon, a country about the size of California in western Africa, two are students at the University of Kansas — Bichin-a numb AmTae Awasom, his cousin.
The cloud drifted through a valley only 50 miles from their hometown of Bamenda, in the northwestern province of Cameroon.
"I was just hoping the gas didn't spread very far," Ambam, a senior, said yesterday.
They made telephone calls halfway around the world to get the story from family and friends.
"If it had spread to Bamenda, it would have reached a densely populated area and killed thousands. And that's where my parents live.
"But one of my parents called to say it was not so bad."
Awasom, a sophomore, said he knew people in Wum, one of three villages most severely affected by the toxic gas.
"I have friends in Wum whom I haven't been in touch with," he said. "But the phone system in Wum is not very good, so that's not unusual. I'm not worried about them yet."
Tse Awasom
Bichin-a-nu Ambam
Ambam said he was curious about whether the gas was going to affect the food and livestock that people in the cities and villages eat.
Awaison and the Vendetta over the cellphone with a friend who worked for the government in Yaoundo, Cameroon's capital city. Yaoundo is about 600 miles north of Lola Nye.
"He said the information being broadcasted was very confusing," Awasom said. "But he did know that the army was digging graves."
Neither Awasam nor Ambam had ever been to Lake Nios, they said, but Awasam understands a tradition about the lake.
"The natives of Cameroon believe the lake is sacred," he said. "Swimming and fishing in it are prohibited. Europeans who didn't know this have tried to swim in the lake, and one or two have drowned.
"The natives won't even fish their bodies out of the water. I never went to the lake because I could not make use of it."
Star turtle floats off after rain
Staff writer
By NICOLE SAUZEK
The rain was heavy in July near Onion Creek in the southeast Kansas county of Montgomery.
In fact, it poured.
It poured so much that Omar floated away.
Omar, whose moments in the KU spotlight, were brief but bright, wandered back to the land she loves, possibly forever. Worse, she may never be seen or heard beeping again.
Omar, a 60-pound alligator snapping turtle, has been officially listed as lost since she escaped from the electronic tracking system researchers were using to trace her in Onion Creek.
Omar is one of only five alligator snapping turtles ever found in Kansas during the last century, and one of only two found alive. Omar, who was turned over to KU's Museum of Natural History, was the first of her breed to be handled by museum employees in the state.
Omar and friend, Joe Collins, a KU Museum of Natural History zoologist. Omar has been missing since July when he floated away in heavy rains.
Doug Blex, a Kansas Fish and Game Commission worker, found Omar in April in Onion Creek — which is southwest of Independence — and gave her to Collins.
"Whether Omar walked upstream or floated downstream, we may never know," said Joe Collins, a zoologist from the museum. "Omar just disappeared, and I'm afraid she's gone for good."
She also is the first to be lost.
File photo
After she was studied briefly, Omar became a star for an afternoon on Museum Day this spring. She was the favorite of adoring masses, a much-photographed celebrity turtle.
But fortune was fickle, and Omar found herself tagged and returned to the small creek where she once lived. She wore an electronic tracking device, a reminder of her moments of glory.
Omar was tracked by Marty Capron, a biologist from Oxford, Kan. for several days until almost 23 inches of rain around the creek area caused water levels to rise over the banks, making signals impossible to receive and Omar's living conditions unbearable.
injured. Aligator snapping turtles usually
stay in waters anywhere from 2½ to 6 feet, Capron said. When water levels in Onion Creek swam from 15 to 20 feet, Omar traveled to safety, possibly all the way to Oklahoma 10 miles downstream.
After the rains subsided, the search began. Capron camped along the creek, searching four miles downstream. Property owners upstream denied Capron permission to search.
Dangerous wading up and down Onion Creek provided no sign of Omar or Alice, as Capron calls her, and his search was abandoned.
It was then that Omar was declared lost.
Though researchers are disappointed about losing Omar, hopes remain high in finding another snapper just like her or bigger.
"She could be anywhere by now
People assume that turtles basically lay around all day. In reality, they travel great distances," said Capron. "Alice could walk 125 yards in 45 minutes. That's not bad for a 60-pound reptile."
"I've not optimistic about finding her ever again," said Capron, who still plans to start looking for Omar again in September. "Alice liked to move around a lot between midnight and sunrise — she never sat still."
"Right now, I'd guess she's just happy to be anywhere that we're not bugging her."
Experts study radiation
Chernobyl may kill 20,000
United Press International
VIENNA — Experts studying a Soviet report on the Chernobyl disaster projected yesterday that more than 20,000 people could die of cancer as a result of the accident, but some questioned the Soviet data used to make the estimates.
Earlier Western interpretations of the Soviet report on the disaster to the International Atomic Energy Commission said as many as 6,500 people could die of cancer caused by the accident.
But the initial translation of the report from Russian into English omitted the projected effects of exposure of the Ukrainian food chain to the radioactive element cesium-137.
Cesium-137 fission takes 30 years to lose half its radiation, while most of
The effect of cesium-137, a radioactive by-product of nuclear fission, is considered more significant than all the other types of radiation released by the plant, which was crippled by an explosion and fire on April 26.
the other types of radiation released have a half-life measured in days or months.
The figures were included in a 380-page report issued by the Soviets for use by 550 nuclear experts at a conference on the Chernobyl accident sponsored by the International Atomic Energy Agency.
The nuclear experts stressed that the estimates were only mathematical projections based on Soviet figures of the amount of radiation released by the damaged reactor.
Moscow presented the report on the disaster, which has been called the world's worst atomic power accident, to the agency last week. The figures on cesium-137 were accidentally omitted in an earlier English translation and were made public in a draft report released Monday.
An annex on health effects of the accident estimated the collective dose of exposure to cesium-137 by people living in the Ukraine and in the neighboring Soviet republic of
Byelorussian may lead to an increase in the cancer mortality rate not exceeding 0.4 percent of the natural mortality rate from malignant neoplasms.
A high-ranking Western nuclear power expert, who spoke on the condition he not be identified further, said the figures meant that during the next 70 years, as many as 20,000 people in the area could die from cancer resulting from exposure to cesium from Chernobyl. Another 6,500 could die of external exposure to radiation, he said.
U. S. nuclear power and health officials at the conference reportedly placed the cancer death toll caused by the radioactive isotopes from Chemnobly even higher Frank Cogel, a Nuclear Regulatory Commission official attending the conference, earlier told the Washington Post that the Soviet report indicated that 30,000 to 40,000 deaths would occur.
But the Western experts are con-
See CHERNOBYL, p. 5, col. 3
StudEx's action called improper
By KIRK KAHLER
Staff writer
Five senators said the committee violated a recently amended section of the Senate rules and regulations when it voted to postpone the hearings — known as "revenue code" hearings — until fall 1987.
The Student Senate Executive Committee acted improperly when they voted Sunday to postpone important budget hearings, some student senators said yesterday.
But other Senate officials, including David Espstein, student body president, defended the committee's action, saying it only used its power to act for the full Senate in an emergency.
The senators protested StudEx's action in a letter to Stephanie Quincy, StudEx chairman. The letter, dated yesterday, also was sent to David Ambler, vice chancellor for student affairs, and Caryl Smith, dean of student life. A copy also was delivered to the Kansan newsroom.
"It is obvious that the Senate Executive Committee's action at its most recent meeting is inconsistent with Student Senate's decision on this matter," the letter said.
Those who signed the letter were Brady Stanton, Nunemaker senator; Jason Krakow, Nunemaker senator and Minority Affairs Committee chairman; Martie Aaron, Liberal Arts and Sciences senator; Cindy Cohen, Nunemaker senator; and Kelly Milligan, Nunemaker senator. Nunemaker senators represent freshmen and sophomores in the college.
The senators said that in legislation passed in the spring, the full Senate declared that revenue code hearings must end by Sept. 15 and that StudEx could not change
the schedule.
Revenue code hearings are held every two years to determine how much money campus organizations receive. Student Senate allocates the funds for these groups by dividing up the student activity fee. Students pay the fee, now $28, at the beginning of each semester
"We were within the boundaries." Quincy said.
However, the senators and other Senate officials were unable to produce copies of the original legislation. In addition, an updated, printed version of the rules has not been compiled yet, officials said.
By Senate rules, StudEx handles the mechanical functions of Senate, such as scheduling meetings and putting items on committee and Senate agendas. The rules give StudEx the power to act for the full Senate when classes are not in session.
And, Senate officials said, StudEx has the power to act for the full Senate in an emergency.
Quincy said StudEx faced an emergency because not enough time remained for student groups to prepare budgets or for the senate to consider them. Therefore, the revenue code hearings had to be postponed, she said.
However, Aaron said StudEx was using its power simply to overturn a previous Senate decision.
The Senate voted in the spring to move its elections from November to April. Elections will be held in November and in April 1987.
Tim Henderson, Senate Finance Committee chairman and a StudEx member, said he voted to postpone the hearings because of the possible motives of political gain that might influence senators considering approval of the budgets.