8A
NEWS
THE UNIVERSITY BABY KANSAN
WEDNESDAY, APRIL 18, 2007
》 SPRING NOR'EASTER
Northeast residents sift through ruins
Robert E. Bukaty/ASSOCIATED PRESS
Residents view the damage done to two homes destroyed by a severe nor easter that lashed the East Coast on Tuesday in the Ferry Beach section of Saco, Maine. The homes are on the verge of being swept into the ocean.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
MAMARONECK, N.Y. — As the floodwaters receded Tuesday homeowners picked through ruined belongings and priceless keepsakes trying to determine what theyd lost.
Hundreds of thousands were still without power from Maine to North Carolina and nearly as many residents of Bound Brook, N.J., were still barred from their homes Tuesday as flooding persisted from the spring noreaster that has claimed at least 17 lives.
In Mamaroneck, described by Gov. Eliot Spitzer as the "the epicenter of the damage done here in the state." discarded belongings damaged by the flooded Sheldrake River lined an avenue.
Trash in the middle-class neighborhood included refrigerators, stoves, mattresses, dressers, a karaoke machine, even a 30-gallon aquarium somehow ruined by water.
An upright piano, its veneer peeling, made only off-key noises when its warped keys were pounded.
"I've been collecting this stuff since I was 14," said Robert Jackson, 39, a disc jockey, as he poked through his trove of old record albums, including some 78 rpm platters and many disco-album records. Like his deejay equipment, the records had been submerged when the water reached five feet high in his basement.
On Mamaroneck Avenue, the
village's main road, merchants were assessing the damage caused by 6.75 inches of rain and floodwaters from the Sheldrake and Mamaroneck rivers that reached as high as five feet in their stores.
Vincent Marconi, owner of Tri-City Auto Parts, said the store lost $75,000 in equipment. Flood insurance had been too expensive, he said.
You work your whole life and you
find something like this," Marcomi said.
In New Jersey, electricity had been shut off to the low-lying central community of Bound Brook
which received 9 inches of rain and the stench of heating oil from flooded basements hung in the air.
Nearly 1,000 residents were still barred from their homes until crews could determine the structures
were safe, said Hal Dietrich, Bound Brook's emergency management coordinator.
"If they go in too soon and turn something on that's not right, they could kill themselves," Dietrich said. "We lost four houses during the flood that caught fire and burned to the ground because we couldn't get the fire trucks to them through the water."
NEW JERSEY
Injured governor's SUV hit 90 mph
ASSOCIATED PRESS
TRENTON, N.J. — The sport utility vehicle carrying Gov. Jon S. Corzine was traveling about 91 mph moments before it crashed, the superintendent of state police said Tuesday.
The governor was critically injured when the vehicle crashed into a guardrail on the Garden State Parkway just north of Atlantic City last week. He apparently was not wearing his seat belt as he rode in the front passenger's seat.
The speed limit along that stretch of the parkway is 65 mph.
The state trooper-driven SUV was in the left lane with its emergency lights flashing when a pickup tried to get out of its way. Instead, it set off a chain reaction that resulted in the crash.
Corzine broke his left thigh bone, 11 ribs, collarbone and chest bone. He also fractured a vertebrae in his lower back.
He remained in critical but stable condition Tuesday and doctors were assessing when he might be ready to breathe without a ventilator. Spokesman Anthony Coley said Tuesday the governor was showing improvement.
Doctors have said he doesn't have brain damage or paralysis, and is doing well for someone who
sustained so many injuries.
The driver, Trooper Robert Rasinski, could be charged if the state police Motor Vehicular Pursuit Review Board determines the crash was preventable, Superintendent of State Police Col. Rick Fuentes said.
Fuentes said speed was a factor in the accident. A black box inside the SUV recorded the speed of the SUV five seconds before the crash. He said the executive protection unit has the discretion to move through traffic by stepping up its speed and using flashing lights when necessary.
"If it's a non-emergency situation, we would ask them to obey the traffic laws and the speed laws in the interest of safety," he said.
Rasinski and an aide to the governor were not seriously hurt. The trooper will remain out of work until he is cleared by a doctor to return, Fuentes said. The driver of the pickup truck was not charged.
There is no timetable for when Corzine might resume governing the state. Sen. President Richard J. Codye is acting governor.
Once Corzine is breathing unassisted, he should be able to speak. That milestone would make it possible for physical therapists to do more to help him regain use of his leg.
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Cold weather damages Kansas' wheat crops
ASSOCIATED PRESS
WICHITA - Spring freezes and a storm that brought heavy, wet snow have caused extensive damage to Kansas' winter wheat crop, with preliminary reports estimating nearly 70 percent of fields hurt to varying degrees.
In addition, the state's first cutting of alfalfa hay has been lost and some early corn sown in southeast Kansas will have to replanted, according to agricultural experts.
Kansas Agriculture Secretary Adrian Polansky, whose own wheat crop suffered freeze damage, said Tuesday that the hardest-hit part of the state is a corridor running from north-central to south-central Kansas. The most significant damage is around Salina and McPherson.
It will take another week to 10 days to assess the significance of
wheat-crop losses statewide, he said.
"I certainly believe that there will be a significant reduction in the Kansas wheat crop this year from several days of cold temperatures. I
think I can say that without doubt," Polansky said.
Polansky, who had just come from a state emergency board meeting on the topic, said the Agricultural Statistics Service would do a survey around May 1 in which it will be able document fairly accurately the yield losses so the state can seek emergency disaster declarations for affected counties.
Service reported Monday that just 31 percent of the winter wheat crop had escaped freeze damage. It estimated freeze damage to the rest of the crop as 25 percent light, 26 percent
"We can't plant corn. We can't plant anything. Nobody is doing anything other than wringing their hands."
JIM SHROYER Kansas State wheat specialist
Kansas Agricultural Statistics
percent severe.
"That has been devastating to the first-cutting alfalfa crop, but the good thing about alfalfa, it can come back," said Jim Shroyer, Kansas State University Extension wheat
specialist. "Wheat is not a perennial; it is an annual. If it is dead, it is done."
Damage to the wheat crop was related to the cloud cover during the Easter weekend freeze. It
was several degrees warmer in the western part of the state, where the cloud cover helped moderate temperatures, Shroyer said. But temperatures plummeted in the eastern and central parts of the state.
Freeze damage symptoms are showing up mostly in the eastern two-thirds of Kansas, he said.
Kansas farmers are trying to determine how destructive the freeze was, and fields are still too wet to replant.
"We can't plant corn. We can't plant anything." Shroyer said. "Nobody is doing anything other than wringing their hands."
Although some damaged winter-wheat acres may have to be torn up, Kansas farmers who had applied certain residual herbicides to their fields will be limited in what crops they can now plant, he said.
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