University Daily Kansan / Wednesday, July 6, 1988
Campus/Area
3
Town dries out after flood
Rv Debbie Bengtson
Kansan staff writer
The Church of the Brethren in Lone Star did not have services this weekend. Damage from Thursday's flood prevented that.
"I've never seen anything bad like this," said Netty Kizer, who was clean the church basement Thursday when there sewn floods, but never like this."
Shirley Brandes couldn't understand why it happened.
"How could you ever expect this to happen with a dam and reservoir so small?"
Basements were not the only victims of the flood. The flood reached into homes, covering wooden floors, carpets and furniture with a watery sludge. It also uprooted outdoor propane tanks. Cars were moved hunter often to find refuge in deep pools of water. The church was badly damaged.
Although the flood did not find its way onto the main floor, it occupied the basement.
"There must be over 20,000 gallons of water down there." Raymond Flory said Thursday as he stood beneath the awning of the church.
trying to protect himself from the rain.
The damage estimate was $650,000.
Many residents said they did not have insurance to cover flood damages.
"Who would think that in the Kansasans need flood insurance?" *andrae* said.
Many others were in the same predicament. Lynette Moss and her husband were planning to leave Lone Star at 4 a.m. Thursday to return to home they attend school. They woke at 3 o'clock and find four feet of water on the ground.
"You can't even imagine it," Moss said. "It's like looking at the Colorado River and your house is in the middle of it."
their belongings were packed in their trailer. Not much would be sailed to Europe.
"Everything we owned was in our car and trailer. I guess we'll see what is worth saving and go on from there." she said.
Laura and Bob Slaughter lost a Volkswagen and a pickup truck in the flood. Later Thursday morning, they said someone had found the truck a quarter of a mile from their home.
Craig Lisher, Laura Slaughter's younger brother, couldn't save the truck or the car but did save the family dog, Ringo.
"It it was about 5:30 in the morning, and I looked outside and saw about two feet of water on the ground," Lisher said. "It was moving really fast, a lot of current and Ringo was on top of the skid house. I got into our boat and rowed over there, grabbed Ringo and tied him up to the porch." A skid house is a temporary shelter that provides shade.
Brad Silvers was suprised early Thursday morning when he was awakened by a booming crash in his basement bedroom. He got out of bed to find himself standing knee-deep in water.
"I opened the door of the basement that leads to the outside, and water came rushing inside," he said. "I didn't know what to do, except go upstairs and help my folks move their stuff."
The worst is over for Lone Star, but the cleaning will take a while. Virgil Flory, who has lived in Lone Star for 70 years, had a facetious explanation for the flood. "I guess the preacher prayed too hard for rain," she said.
David Erwin, 4, Lawrence resident, peers into the mud-drenched home of his grandmother, Shirley Brandes of Lone Star. Brandes was cleaning up after Thursday's flash floods.
After the rain, farmers wait
Storm may have done more harm than good to local crops
By Linda Gaumnitz
By Linda Gaumnitz Kansan staff writer
Kansan staff writer
Even though the much-needed rain finally came last week, area farmers may have to wait until October's harvest before they know whether the rain helped or hurt the crops.
A reported 12 inches of rain fell on Lone Star last Wednesday, forcing about 40 residents to evacuate their homes. The floods swept silt and mud from the canyon walls. Washington Creek area, about five miles southwest of Lawrence.
Adrian Fishburn and his father, Alvin, of Lone Star, lost two cornfields that would have been used as feed for their dairy cattle.
He said the corn and milo crops has been hit especially hard by the drowning.
"The cornfields are flattened; we lost 20 acres altogether," Adrian Fishburn said. "We're not hurting; we'll just try to conserve as much feed as possible."
because of the stage the crops are in."
"A lot of the crops have been hit hard and are just hanging on," Fishburn said. "It depends on the type of soil and type of crop. The corn and soybean crops needed rain, but needed it slow. It's already too late
"The beans weren't hurt by the rain," said Don Schick, Bond's son-in-law. "but there is a lot of silt on it and the rain needed the rain, but not 12 inches of it."
Schick said the crop could suffocate if the continued hot weather dries the mud on the soybeans. He also said the drought and damaging rain could cause prices to rise.
"The cash value for a bushel of soybeans is $8 to $9, but the drought is going to make a difference," Schick said.
Schick said the value of Bond's soybean crop, worth $3,000, could drop by $750 because of flood damage.
Raymond Hoover, Washington Creek area farmer, said the rain severely damaged his crops and machinery.
"I haven't yet time to look at my crops yet because I've been worried about my machinery," he said. "With damage to the machinery,
tools and lumber, I've lost about $125,000 or more."
Ooher said he lost probably 30 of the acres of beans and milk he plants.
"I had only half my hay left after the drought, and lost it all in the flood," Hoover said.
Corn needs enough moisture to pollenate, he said, but the corn crop needed the rain earlier than last season, when the rain came too late." Hoover said.
Because of the drought, Hoover said, all yields from the fall harvest would be cut in half, keeping grain prices high.
Debbie Fishburr said property and crop damages would have to total $1 million before the Lone Star area could receive federal aid. She said she had about $650,000 in property damage, not including crops.
"Hopefully, we'll get government financing, because if we don't, it's going to stay this way," Fishburn said.
The Lawrence Fire Department shut off two propane tanks after the rain uprooted them, severing the gas lines running to the houses.
Law students help Cuban detainees; project provides real-life experience
The floodwaters carried Lone Star resident Bob Slaughter's truck away and planted it under a tree.
Bv Carla Krause
"I didn't know how to celebrate," he said in a telephone interview from Chicago. "This is a violent place . . . Chicago is a big city. But I saw people from my window celebrating and shooting off fireworks in the street."
Gustavo Pique, a Cuban detainee from the U.S. Penitentiary at Leavenworth, was released from prison two weeks ago, but he didn't celebrate on Independence Day.
Pique is one of the detainees released from Leavenworth after students from the University of Kansas, University of Missouri at Kansas City and Washburn University represented them at their hearings before Immigration and Naturalization Services representatives. The hearings ended last week.
Pique was sentenced to prison for a robbery in 1894. He was at the federal prison in Atlanta last year when some Cuban prisoners rioted to protest forced deportation.
"I don't want to be judged by my past," he said. "I did something wrong, and I paid for it. The conditions in prison were horrendous. . . The only thing that kept me from killing myself was God."
Pique was detained by the INS and then was moved to Leavenworth. He is now at a halfway house in Chicago and hopes to return to college in September. He said that before his sentence, he was studying physics at the University of Wisconsin.
Pique was reluctant to speak of his prison sentence and said he feared that anything he said could get him into trouble with the INS.
"I'm still in the hands of immigration," he said.
"I'm not a free man."
Pique said he would be able to leave the halfway house in four months. After that, he has lots of plans, including the Peace Corps after college, but he plans on taking it one step at a time.
Tracy Dyer, third-year KU law student, is coordinator for Project Due Process, which directed the KU students representing the detainees. She said that of the 450 detainees represented by KU students in February and March, 138 had been released and about a hundred more were scheduled for release. Twenty-five prisoners have been denied release. The rest are waiting decisions.
A second round of 45 hearings was completed June 28. Dyer said the second round of hearings went smoother but that the results would not be known for at least two months.
Dyer said that more than a hundred students volunteered for the project during the spring semester and that 50 more completed the hearings this summer. The students went to Leavenworth in groups of 8 to 10 people, leaving at 5:30 a.m. each day. Once they got to the prison, their I.D.s were checked, and they were sent through a metal detector, photographed, stamped and tagged.
At the hearings, students asked the prisoners a set of questions prepared in advance. Dyer said that at the first hearings, they were not allowed to see their clients' files, and there was no interpreter present for the Spanish-speaking prisoners.
At one hearing, Dyer said, one prisoner's middle name had been misspelled, and the hearing examiners had the wrong file. When the student noticed the mistake, the correct file was brought out, containing considerably fewer conviction records.
"That was one case where I know we were doing some good," Dyer said.
Dyer said that only an interpreter, detaine, representative and two hearing examiners from the INS were at the hearings, and that the examiners often turned out to be from the border patrol.
"We were the only ones present with any sense of the law," Dyer said. "I think our presence alone established some sense of the natural process."
Andrea Oiness, second-year law student and participant in the project, said the project was a good learning experience for law students because they were dealing with real people instead of casework.
"We interviewed the clients, and a lot of times they weren't real honest or they were just plain forgetful, because they thought it would be better if they didn't use it. You could also provide information to them for better representation."
Dyer said that a lot of their clients were in prison for petty crimes and posed no threat to the student
"We went in there expecting these heinous criminals, but a surprising number of them were non-violent," she said. "I think we had more problems with overzealous representation and bleeding hearts than we did."
Carla Dudeck, a coordinator of the Atlanta-based Coalition to support Cuban Detainees, said that although the procedure was still not fair, she had received an overwhelming response from KU students who wanted to volunteer for the project. She said they provided moral support to the prisoners and ensured that they were able to speak for themselves at the hearing.
"We're dealing with a biased decision maker, with the INS acting as prosecutor and judge," she said. "But overall, the students' presence has to be a positive influence."
Dyer said that the Atlanta coalition was beginning a written appeals process in which the prisoners were given a seven-page questionnaire. The process would give them a chance to strengthen their arguments and add letters of reference or proof of sponsorship to their files.
"The INS is anticipating doing 125 appeals a month, starting in August or September." Dyer said. "And I've told them that if it's in September, when more people are back for school, I'd be glad to try to get more volunteers to help."
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