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UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Monday, August 21, 1995
15A
Trains crash in India after hitting cow
The Associated Press
NEW DELHI, India — At least 250 people died and 400 others were injured Sunday when a passenger train rammed another train that had stopped suddenly after hitting a cow, Indian news agencies reported.
Cows are sacred to Hindus, who form the majority of India's nearly 900 million people.
More than 15 hours after the collision, rescue workers were still pulling bodies from the twisted debris and expected the death toll to rise further. Cranes were being used to lift the smashed cars, which had telescoped into each other.
"The entire area was reverberating with cries and shrieks," said
Manas Patnaik, who was traveling from the eastern state of Orissa to New Delhi.
"I stumbled several times on severed limbs and some people — I don't know whether they were sleeping or dead, *Patainak*, 29, told the United News press agency.
The accident outside Firozabad railway station in northern India occurred when a signalman sent the Puroshottam Express onto a track without realizing that the Kalindi Express had stopped ahead, the Press Trust of India news agency said, quoting unnamed railroad officials.
Railway officials said most of the 2,200 passengers aboard the two trains were sleeping when the collision occurred. Both trains were bound for New Delhi, 185 miles north of Firozabad.
The injured were admitted to hospitals in Firozabad and in the nearby towns of Tundla and Agra.
In New Delhi, Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao expressed sorrow over the deaths and directed a senior government minister to supervise rescue operations.
More than 200 people have been killed this year in six separate railroad accidents in India, where trains are the most common form of transportation. Sunday's accident was the worst in recent years. In 1898, 107 people were killed in southern India when a train plunged into a river.
Knight-Ridder Tribune
Dancing bears set free
The Associated Press
KARACABEY, Turkey After years of being trained to dance for paying crowds,a dozen brown bears were set free Saturday after being taught how to live in the wild.
The bears were among 27 that were treated for a year for injuries suffered while in captivity, the daily Hurriyet newspaper said.
One baby bear was found to be dependent on alcohol. The soles of the feet of some were burned — apparently with hot irons when they failed to dance during their initial training.
Bears moving on two feet to tunes played by their owner is a favorite street show in poor neighborhoods of some Turkish cities. Nearly 200 bears are believed to be used throughout the country.
Animal-rights activists began a campaign last year to rescue bears from owners who mistreat them.
The bears, who were treated at Uludag University's veterinary school, about 188 miles southwest of Istanbul, were kept in a specially created wildlife sanctuary while they were taught how to live in the wild.
Several die, others lost in peak's avalanche
The Associated Press
LONDON — Two Spanish climbers rescued from the world's second-highest peak confirmed Saturday that British climber Alison Hargreaves was among those killed when an avalanche struck the mountain.
In a telephone conversation with Jose Bermudez, a fellow climber and researcher at Cambridge University, the Spaniards said they had seen the Briton's body on K2 in the Himalayas. They identified it from clothing and climbing gear.
It was still unclear Saturday how many climbers died when an avalanche and bad weather struck the mountain last Sunday.
U. S. Embassy officials in the Pakistani capital, Islamabad, have confirmed that American Rob Slater and Bruce Grant of New Zealand are still missing.
Spain's national news agency EFE quoted the Spanish ambassador to Pakistan as saying Saturday that rescue teams located the frozen bodies of three missing Spaniards.
Earlier in the week, climbers buried the body of Canadian Jeff Lakes on the mountain. He apparently died of altitude sickness.
In May, Hargreaves, 33, became the first woman to reach the top of the 29,026-foot Mount Everest alone without using oxygen. She wanted to be the first woman to climb the world's three highest peaks — Everest, K2 and India's Kanchenjunga.
A helicopter airlifted the two Spaniards, who are suffering from frostbite and exhaustion, to the town of Skardu, 150 miles north of Islamabad.
The men told Bermudz they found Ms. Hargreaves last Monday afternoon, 4,600 feet below the summit.
Bermudez said their five-person expedition failed to reach the summit.
Authorities may sue man feared drowned
Workers searched as 'victim' walked away
The Associated Press
WICHITA — More than 50 rescue workers spent one day last week looking in vain for the body of Rich Sargent, who had bet a buddy he could swim across the flooded Walnut River.
After the friend lost sight of him, volunteers left work early Thursday to look for Sargent. One worker for the Augusta Department of Safety was treated for heat exhaustion, and a lifeboat was punctured as the day wore on.
But they needn't have spent the energy; Sargent turned up alive and well eight hours after he was reported missing, headed on foot for a trailer 25 miles away where he was staying with friends.
Authorities are considering filing a civil lawsuit to try to recoup the thousands of taxpayer dollars spent on the search.
ized people were looking for him when he saw helicopters zooming overhead and rescue workers tackling the choppy waters in lifeboats. But he allowed the search to continue out of fear of
being caught
on an old
arrest warrant.
And there
was another
issue:
Sargent, 32, told police he real-
"He just plain didn't like cops," said Butler County Undersheriff John Everett. "So he wasn't about to come over and tell us anything."
Police said Sargent had been drinking. "It's pretty disappointing that somebody
kid, but we've never had anything of this magnitude."
Officials cannot jail Sargent, but they are considering a civil lawsuit.
"There is simply no criminal
"It's pretty disappointing that someone would use the system like that."
would use the system like that," said Grant Helferich, director of Butler County Emergency Medical Services. "We occasionally get a prank call or two from a
Grant Holferch
Butler County EMS
violation, so we had to let him go," Everett said. "But we're hoping to hold him responsible through the legal system." He said the futile rescue effort wasted thousands of taxpayer dollars because many people left their jobs early, emergency workers collected overtime and
the boat was punctured.
But Everett also wondered whether a lawsuit would be fruitful.
time job," he said. "We don't want to spend $50,000 in taxpayer money to sue if we're not going to gain that money back and more."
Police and fire officials were sent to the river, south of Augusta and one mile west of Gordon in Butler County, about 1 p.m. after a friend reported Sargent missing.
"Sargent doesn't hold a full-
The friend, who made a bet with Sargent to swim the river, lost sight of him in the murky waters and feared he had drowned.
Eight hours later, police followed up on a tip by a motorist that a suspicious person was walking near a farm field six miles west of where they were looking. Police found Sargent headed for the trailer park
"What he did was a real dumb thing that never should have happened," Everett said. "Our men risked their lives in those boats and in the air. I never did hear an actual apology from him."
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