VOL.100,NO.116
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
s f b s
i n a w e
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THE STUDENT NEWSPAPER OF THE UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS
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MONDAY MARCH 26,1990
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Fire in NY social club kills 87
The Associated Press
NEW YORK — A man bounced from a Bronx social club for quarreling with an ex-girlfriend returned with a fire of gasoline and set a fire that killed 87 people at the nightspot, which had been ordered closed, police said.
Most of the dead suffocated in thick smoke in the pre-dawn blaze Sunday, authorities said. Some people were trapped to death; others broke hole through a wall to obtain fire in a desperate attempt to live.
Emergency workers described bodies felled by smoke so quickly that they still had their legs wrapped around a bar stool, gripped
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drinks or held hands. Only three people managed to reach safety by way of the two tiny exit doors on the front of the two-story Happy Land social club.
"People literally were stacked on top of each other," said Anthony De Vita, the Fire Department chief. "It was a firerap."
Authorities early today began raiding and shutting down some of the 732 other illegal social clubs where residents said were operating in the city.
The fire occurred 79 years to the day after a blaze at the Triangle Shirtwaist Co. in New York City that claimed 145 lives, many of them immigrant garment workers. That blaze led to reforms around the nation in workplace safety.
It was the deadliest fire in the continental United States since the 1977 blaze at the Beverly Hills Supplant in South Georgia, Ky., that
Julio Gonzalez, a Cuban immigrant and former boyfriend of a Happy Land's ticket seller, was charged with arson and murder, Police Commissioner Lee Brown said he was to be arrested later today.
killed 164 people. A New Year's Eve 1986 fire at a hotel in San Juan, Puerto Rico, killed 96.
Gonzalez, 36, was bounced from
the club after a quarrel in which he tried to woo back the woman, police said. After warning, "I'll be back," he returned and sprinkled gasoline on the floor, said Lt. James Malvey.
Gonzalez cried with remorse under questioning, said Lt. Raymond O'Donnell, a police spokesman. "Basicly, he's saying he did it," O'Donnell said.
The impoverished Latino neighborhood near the Bronx Zoo was thick with mourners, who were asked to identify relatives from snapshots of the bodies posted on the wall of a high school.
"Most of the bodies were in dance clothes," Emergency McCarthy, a specialist Christopher McCarthy said. "They were out have fun."
Killed were 61 men and 26 women, most of them Honduran
Alva Romero, a Honduran immigrant, lost six relatives, including a daughter, both brothers and a sister. Jerome Ford lost five relatives. The local Honduran soccer club lost several players.
and Dominican immigrants
Happy Land was ordered shut in November 1988 and a year later because of inadequate exits, sprinkler systems, emergency lighting and signs, Dinkins said. It had no liquor or cabaret license.
New count to increase federal aid for county
KU students will
Keith Thorpe/KANSAN
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Hungary
University Daily Kansan / Friday, March 23, 1990
Socialists expect to lose vote
The Associated Press
Premier Miklos Nemeth, a reform-minded Communist and a key engineer of the nation's conversion to democracy, declared moments before he voted that he was relinquishing control with a clear conscience.
BUDAPEST, Hungary — Millions of Hungarians cast ballots yesterday in the first free national elections in 43 years, and many expressed hope for the future and fear of the Communist past.
Despite occasional rain showers, voter turnout appeared brisk at Budapest polling stations, with election officials reporting a turnout of 50 percent for the 30-mile race.
As in East Germany, where Eastern Europe's first free ballot in decades took place March 18, the Communists were expected to fare poorly in the elections. They competed with 11 other national parties for parliament seats.
on, four hours after the voting
gan and eight hours before polls
used. About 7.8 million people were
gible to vote.
Few irregularities were reported b.p.m., when the voting officially ded. Several international servers monitored the election. Nemeth, who voted at a state-run eldergan serving as one of 11,000 station acres on the nation, elicited to predict the chances of the politicalist Party. That party has governed since reform-oriented Communists formed it after defecting in the Communist Party in October.
stead of crediting the Socialists volunteering to play by democratic rules, most voters remember excesses of more than four decades that have de Communists unpopular without the Soviet bloc.
"The only thing I hope for is that a long government is created," meth said, adding that only a gernment not hamstrugr by the position could deal with the ion'sailing economy.
tis comments reflected widee
tid acceptance, even among
participants; party would not
d despite its reli on the
Hunty to democratic reform.
roughout the monthlong cama for 394 parliamentary seats, list candidates attempted to once the electorate of their coment to a multiparty system.
'I won't consider it an act of God ifn't make it into government." both told reporters. "I will hand the reins head high and with a conscience. I don't have bitterness in my heart but satisfaction."
1 pre-election opinion polls indi-
cates the Socialists would finish no
r than fourth place, with a
mum 10 percent of the overall
ingary's last elections were in when the Communists won a major majority, largely through 1. A year later, they consolidated and forced all other parties out of existence.
oil of 5,000 people published by mate MTI news agency less than our before polls closed indicated center-right Hungarian Demo-Forum would finish strongest, it seats.
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