THURSDAY, AUGUST 29, 2002
NEWS
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN = 7A
A2
Firefighters struggle to tame Sante Fe wildfires
The Associated Press
FENTON LAKE STATE PARK, N.M. A wildfire burned Monday across 2,200 acres of ponderosa pine and pinon forest in northern New Mexico, quickly devoured four summer homes and forced campers and homeowners to evacuate.
"It's traveling quite rapidly, spotting along the way," said Dolores Maese, a spokeswoman for the Sea Fe National Forest.
People evacuated from Seven Springs, which Maese called a community of "a few hundred homes," and an area called Thompson Ridge. Fire officials did not know how many people fled.
"Before I left, I could see right down the canyon and the flames were leaping up the trees," said Doug Shuprine, who has lived in Seven Springs for 10 years. "That's when I knew it was time to get out."
It was not immediately known what caused the fire in and near Fenton Lake State Park, about 50 miles north of Albuquerque.
Shuptrine said he packed his medicine, his dog, some food and clothes. He planned to stay at a lodge.
Elsewhere, a helicopter that was fighting a wildfire in southwestern Colorado crashed Monday, injuring all four people on board.
The Bell 206 helicopter was
"Before I left, I could see right down the canyon and the flames were leaping up the trees."
Doug Shuptrine
Seven Springs resident
making an initial attack on a wildfire about 15 miles west of Saguache when it went down, said Larry Helmerick, a fire information officer with the Rocky Mountain Coordination Center.
One person suffered severe head, back and neck injuries. The others suffered minor injuries, according to Mark Struble, spokesman for the National Interagency Fire Center in Boise, Idaho.
In central Wyoming, firefighters guarded ranch houses against a wildfire that had grown to 5,120 acres in two days.
No structures had been damaged by the fire, which started Saturday in the Shoshone National Forest. Authorities asked 30 to 40 residents of Red Canyon and the occupants of 15 summer cabins along Pass Creek to evacuate.
Crews in southwest Oregon and northern California hoped to complete a nearly 300-mile containment line around a 500,000-acre wildfire Monday.
Strike could cause Boeing to close
The Associated Press
WICHITA — Boeing Co. plans to temporarily shut down commercial airplane production in Wichita if the Machinists union votes to strike, Jeff Turner, Boeing Commercial Airplanes Group's vice president and general manager, said yesterday.
Turner told reporters the company has offered a "fair and respectful" contract, and saw no point in extending the present contract and continuing negotiations. "We are at that point our employees need to decide," Turner said.
Union negotiator Garland Moore said the union was interested in continuing negotiations, but the company was not. Union leaders have characterized the contract as an attack on their benefits and the work force at large.
Boeing's Machinists union members vote today in Wichita and Seattle to decide whether to accept the company's contract
"The only winners in a strike at this point in our history will be our competitors," Turner said.
Turner also spoke to employees at the plant, urging them to accept the contract offer.
offer. and whether to strike.
If the membership votes to strike beginning Monday, pickets will go up at Boeing sites in Washington state, Portland, Ore., Wichita and at company headquarters in Chicago, union officials said.
turner said the company had contingency plans in the event of a strike, but hopes it will not have to use them. He said the company would not try to keep its commercial airplane production lines flowing during a strike.
Company officials said they had a set of priorities — such as military contracts and commercial work like repairs — it would focus on in the event of a strike.
"In the event that there is a strike we will put people to work — those
that come to work — on those priority items and we will follow that priority list as long as there is meaningful work," Turner said. "And then, if there is no meaningful work, we will continue to shut down the production."
Work will continue on airplane repairs and military contracts in spite of the strike, said company spokesman Dick Ziegler.
"We are not going to let democracy go wanting — our military customers go wanting — because we are on strike," Ziegler said.
The proposal presented Tuesday by Boeing included a 20 percent pension increase by the contract's third year and a boost in the ratification bonus — from 6 percent to 8 percent of a year's pay. But the union had sought a much higher pension as well as guarantees regarding job security for a work force that has seen layoffs since Sept. 11 slash its membership by 25 percent.
The company has proposed
delaying an increase in the employee share of health insurance premiums from July 2003 to January 2004.
The offer calls for a 2 percent wage increase in the second year of the contract and a 2.5 percent increase in the third year. There is no increase for the first year, when workers would receive the ratification bonus. Machinists make, on average, $50,000 a year.
The existing three-year contract covers about 25,000 union members in Washington, Oregon and Kansas. It expires Sunday.
While a simple majority can reject a contract proposal, it takes a two-thirds vote to strike. If strike authorization fails, the contract is automatically accepted.
Boeing's Wichita plant employs 12,680 workers, with about 5,900 of them represented by the Machinists Union. The union has struck twice in the past four contract negotiations, most recently in 1995.
Roberts pushing for drought aid
The Associated Press
TOPEKA — U.S. Sen. Pat Roberts said yesterday that he would push for quick action on a drought relief bill for farmer.
Roberts said his annual tour of the state showed him that farmers face serious economic problems because of the drought and that the farm bill Congress approved won't do much to help them.
Roberts is among four Repub-
means sponsoring $3 billion drought relief legislation. Democrats have their own plan.
"We need to pass a bill in September," Roberts told reporters during a Statehouse news conference.
Roberts had the news conference to mark the end of his tour of the state's 105 counties. He also discussed the possibility of an attack on Iraq, saying Kansans want the U.S. to remain cautious.
In discussing agriculture
issues, Roberts told reporters he thought Congress should have taken another year in writing a new farm bill. In 1996, Roberts, as chairman of the U.S. House Agriculture Committee, was an architect of the farm bill.
This year's farm bill increased price guarantees, or loan rates, for crops such as wheat and corn and revived a target-price program to provide supplemental payments when commodity prices are below certain levels.
The bill also continues fixed annual payments that started with the market-oriented 1996 Freedom to Farm law.
But Roberts said tying aid to target prices didn't help farmers who were seeing a good deal of their crops destroyed by drought.
"It is a paradox of enormous irony that this allegedly was the best farm bill ever, but in terms of the High Plains, certainly not working well," he said.
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