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VOL.101, No.118
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAS
THE STUDENT NEWSPAPER OF THE UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS
ADVERTISING:864-4358
WEDNESDAY, MARCH 27, 1991
(USPS 650-640)
NEWS: 864-4810
Hailstorm leaves path of dents, cracks
Sudden storm drops golf ball-sized hail
A cyclist rides through water at 25th and Haven streets while a bus waits to be pulled from the mud. All 20 KU on Wheels buses in service received damage.
By Jonathan Plummer and Patricia Boias
Kansan staff writers
Though yesterday's sudden hailstorm only lasted about 10 minutes, that was plenty of time for many students and businesses to sustain damage to their property.
Walburn said the storm left dent in the roofs and home of about 400 cars that were parked outside.
"I guess we're going to have a hell of a hail sale," said Larry Walburn, sales manager of Jim Clark Motors, 2121 W. 29th Terrace.
"It didn't matter whether it was a $6,000 or a $30,000 car," he said. "It did spare any of them it was."
Walburn said the company's insurance agent would have to assess the damage done to each car.
Jared Treul, an employee at the Paradise Cafe, 722 Massachusetts St., said the hail broke skylights in the apartment.
"The alleys were like a flowing river; Massa-
chusets Street was like a flowing river. Treul
Jacques."
Kyle Pettle, general manager of Dos Hombres, 815 New Hampshire St., said customers were forced inside from the restaurant's patio, and one of the decorative lights on the patio was shattered.
On campus, buildings and cars did not fare much better.
Bob Porter, assistant director of facilities operations, said that 30 minutes after the storm, there were about 24 calls from buildings all over campus.
"We've got windows broken out and blown out, root leaks and floods," he said. "We've had calls for punctured roots and water backing up floor drains."
An emergency crew will fix reported damages. Porter said.
Ken Stoner, director of student housing, said he would know today the full damage done to reside-
David Platt, director of Joseph R. Pearson Hall, said several windows that were not protected by fire ledges, such as those in the main lobby and in stairwells, had been cracked or broken.
Security crews at JRP* checked for broken windows last night and put up signs warning users about the threat.
of cracks in windows, most calls were from students whose cars had been damaged.
"In fact, my car was parked in front and had the side win-dow broken," he said. "Another car in the front had the en-tire bent."
Jessica Gremmel, Wichita freshman, whose car was parked in front of Elsworth, said that she did not plan to repair the car.
"My car is just something I can go somewhere in, so it makes no difference to me," she said.
She did not have her Chrysler Reliant K repaired when it sustained half damage, four years ago, and she did not plan to repair it.
Platt said that though he had received a few calls
Scott Radford, owner and manager of Allied Body Shop.
23rd Street and Haskell Avenue, said that because most steel in new cars was light, the panel of a car damaged by hail failed to close.
Radford said that at his shop, replacing the roof of a mid-sized car such as a Chevrolet Beretta would cost about $700. Customers began calling before the storm ended, Radford said.
"We've had a lot of calls. people have been calling their insurance agency and then wanting to set up appointments." he said. "We have appointments starting two weeks from today."
KU Weather Service provided the following information about the storm.
Lawrence yesterday about 4:30 p.m.
- Wind gusts of 59 miles per hour and golf ball size hail hit
The storm was caused by a warm, moist air mass from
Gulf of Mexico that contrasted with a dry air mass from
Mexico.
- The temperature yesterday was a record high 85 degrees but dropped by more than 20 degrees in a half hour when the storm moved in. The normal high for this time in March is 58 degrees.
- Lawrence received about two inches of precipitation from the storm.
- Funnel clouds were reported over Eudora, and some areas near Lawrence reported baseball size hail
Kansan reporters Katie Chipman and Mike Vargas contributed information to this story.
Ivan Huntoon, Prairie Village sophomore, and Sandy Wilder, Montevallo, Ala., freshman, smear each other with mud after the storm.
Oliver residents cavort in the water after rains filled the retaining pond west of the hall. Storms brought two inches of rain to Lawrence.
Storm brings fun in the mud to Oliver
By Patricia Roias
Kansan staff writer
She said she heard people playing outside in the mud and decided to take a closer look. Closer was too
"I am cold, and I have mud in my mouth," said Jeanie Cooper, El Dorado sophomore.
Shivering, muddy bodies filled the lobbv in Oliver Hall yesterday.
"It was fun, but it was cold," she said as she cleaned the mud from behind her left ear.
Cooper was one of about 100 students who ended up in a muddy drainage area west of Oliver yesterday after a halftornst h Lawrence.
'it's an Oliver tradition. This is what college is all about.'
Joe Kurtzman Shawnee junior
close. Four muddy bodies grabbed and dragged her.
"I was screaming and yelling my head off to let me go," Cooper said.
happening, "Hogarth, Chicago freshman, said, "Then my friends sort of attacked me. It was fun, but at first I was mad."
Joe Kurtzman was among the muddy grabbers dragging others to the hole.
"First they put mud all over me," she said. "Then they threw all in."
"They were clean, and they were laughing," Kurtzman, Shawnee who had gone were out here risking pneumonia; they were out there laughing at us."
"I just went out to see what was
Kurtzman said this was the third time he had played mud games at silver. The drainage area behind the bank was also a stormy place. Every time there is a storm it gets
flooded, he said.
A mud flood now means football to most Oliver residents.
"It's an Oliver tradition," Kurtzman said. "This is what college is all about."
Kent Hayes, Fort Scott senior, described the start of muddy yesterday.
"We started playing football," Hayes said. "Run and dive and catch the ball. People started going out, running to the mud fight. Then we had a mudslide."
And soon they also had a muddy hall.
Children of poorest families are denied food so rent can be paid, hunger report reveals
WASHINGTON — One in eight
the United States doesn't
get enough sleep.
The Associated Press
Those 5.5 million children who do go hungry come from the poorest families. These families spend so much of their income on housing that they can afford an average of only 88 meals per meal for each meal, according to the Food Research and Action Center, which released the report yesterday.
These children are far more likely to get sick and miss school than are youngsters who do have enough food according to a childhood hunger study.
The door-to-door survey was conducted in seven areas that reflected the needs of the community.
According to Executive Director Robert Fersh, the nutrition advocacy group's three-year, million-dollar survey of 2,335 randomly selected families paints a disturbing picture of the day-to-day struggle of low-income households to maintain a nutritionally adequate diet.
"It shows that shelter costs dominate the budgets of most households, leaving little money for food and other necessities," he said. "It shows that people cannot afford those with a member employed full time, cannot escape hunger."
overall low-income population.
The organization said it was the most rigorous and comprehensive study of childhood hunger ever conducted in the United States.
The people surveyed came from families whose annual income was 185 percent of the federal poverty level or less.
The government's poverty level in 1990 for a family of four was $12,700. Families of four at 185 percent of poverty would earn $23,495.
The 185 percentage figure was used because it is the one used to determine eligibility for free school lunches and food stamps.
Court shifts on coerced confessions
The Associated Press
WASHINGTON — A deeply divided Supreme Court yesterday veered dramatically from its previous decisions banning all coerced confessions as evidence in criminal trials.
By a 5-4 vote, the court said using such confessions may be a harmless error if other trial evidence is sufficient to convict the defendant.
But the justices, in a patchwork of shifting coilings, uphold rulings that require a new trial for him with killing his 11-year-old daughter.
The five court members who said
She said the decision would not allow for coercion to be used to obtain a confession, but added that
Anne Dayton, KU associate professor of law, said she was concerned about the decision.
"I'm sort of skeptical that a confession of any kind can be harmless," she said. "You're creating a situation where there really isn't any reason not to use coercion to get a confession."
coerced confessions sometimes could be used were Chief Justice William Rehnquist and Justices Sandra Day O'Connor, Antonin Scialia, Anthony Kennedy and David Souter.
coercion still happened
"It happens. It doesn't happen very often," she said. "At some point it goes beyond questioning. At other times it is not a product of their own free will."
"Police officers are like everybody else. You have a few bad apples in the barrel, and this can happen."
In a series of decisions dating back to 1884, the court has said confessions are coerced if not made freely, voluntarily and without compulsion or inducement of any court.
- Kansan reporter Amy Francis contributed information to this story.
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