Campus/Area
University Daily Kansan / Wednesday, November 29, 1989
3
Stair steppin'
er, Kansas City, Mo., sophomore linebacker, races up the stairs of Anschutz Sports Pavilion during a drill.
By Travis Butler Kansan staff writer
San Francisco isn't out of danger from earthquakes, the deputy director of the Kansas Geological Survey said last night.
Don Steeples was in San Francisco during the October quake giving a seminar on a quake-related topic. Last night at Nichols Hall he discussed the causes, effects and probabilities for earthquakes in the California and the Kansas-Missouri regions.
Kansas-Missouri regions. The earth is made up of several plates that are in constant motion, he said. Earthquakes occur when the boundaries, or faults, between these plates slip.
Three major faults run through the San Francisco Bay area, he said. The San Andreas fault runs along most of the Southern California coastline and the west side of the bay, and the Hayward and Califaras fault runs along the east side of the bay. The October quake was caused by the slippage of the San Andreas fault about 25 to 30 miles south of San Francisco.
The slippage point for recent quakes has been moving northward, he said. This trend is a cause for concern because the San Francisco buildings will be subjected to increasingly stronger forces as the epicenters move closer.
closer.
Steeples said that the ground underneath buildings was another factor in the damage caused by quakes. In the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, the areas of the city built
Quake-slippage points nearing San Francisco
on bedrock suffered far less than the areas built on land reclaimed from the bay.
He said that there were structural changes that builders could make that increased older buildings' chances of survival. But Frank Wilson, survey geologist, said that these improvements could be expensive and may have the wrong effect.
than would probably have happened "It's more of an art than a science." Wilson said.
After the San Fernando Valley earthquake in 1971, engineers discovered that freeway sections tended to slide off of their pillars, Wilson said. So, on the Nimitz freeway, they tied those sections together to keep them from sliding off. But when the pillars collapsed on one section of the Nimitz in October, these ties pulled more sections down after the first one, causing more damage than would probably have happened otherwise.
"It's more of an art than a science." Steeples said there is no been a great deal of effort applied to measure earthquakes. Scientists can be fairly sure where an earthquake will occur by measuring the areas of a fault that is under stress. They were able to predict the magnitude of the October quake within a tenth of a point and predicted the area of slippage within
3 kilometers from comes with predicting exactly when the stress will be released, Steeples said. The predictions gave a 20 percent chance of the San Francisco quake occurring by the year 2020.
3 kilometers.
With these prediction problems, some question whether to spend money on improving the predictions or on building to reduce the effects, Steeples said.
Current methods can determine where earthquakes may occur, and efforts spent on mitigating the effects can be highly successful, he said. The 1988 earthquake in Armenia, where 25,000 people died, was as strong as the San Francisco earthquake, where fewer than 100 people died.
An earthquake zone, called the New Madrid, cuts through the Missouri boot heel and through the northwest corner of Tennessee, Steeples said. The earthquake danger there is almost as great as in California.
These building efforts have not been as strong in the Midwest's earthquake zone, Wilson said.
"There's a great concern about Memphis," he said. "A good part of Memphis is built on the Mississippi floodplain. If there's an earthquake on the New Madrid, it'd shake like a bowl full of jelly."
Kansas City has little reason for concern, Steeples said. By the time the shock waves from an earthquake on the New Madrid hit the Kansas City area, they would cause only minor damage.
Check isn't in the mail
Postal Service says violation due to a 'misunderstanding,' Association to appeal bill
Association to appeal bill
By Angela Baughman Kansan staff writer
A bill of $31,738 in back postage waived payment from the University of Kansas Alumni Association to the U.S. Postal Service, but Alumni Association officials have decided to appeal the Postal Services' assessment.
Lawrence Postmaster Bill Reynolds announced the amount of the underpayment yesterday and said that it had resulted from a misunderstanding about the use of a non-profit mailing permit.
Fred Williams, executive director of the Alumni Association said in a statement yesterday, "Our association will appeal our assessment. The Kansas University Alumni Association has always operated with the understanding that it was following postal regulations concerning the use of non-profit postage permits."
T
The University of Kansas and the Alumni Association are both really good customers of ours.'
-- Bill Reynolds Lawrence Postmaster
Reynolds said the underpayments had occurred in 55 cooperative mailings in which other organizations that did not have non-profit status advertised merchandise and travel packages. The promotions were intended to raise money for the Alumni Association.
raise money for the agencies.
Five travel agencies, which Reynolds declined to name, participated in the mailings that had cost 8.4 cents a letter. Because the agencies did not have non-profit status, the mailings should have cost the regular rate of 16.8 cents.
16.8 cents.
The Alumni Association is liable for the back postage but can seek reimbursement from the agencies, Reynolds said.
He emphasized that the Postal Inspection Service, which audited at least 70 associations, had found no intent to defraud the government and that the problem was one of misinterpretation.
"The University of Kansas and the Alumni Association are both really good customers of ours," Reynolds said.
Williams said in the Alumni Association's statement that several other universities' alumni association mailings had been inspected and that the associations were in the same boat as KU.
the same boat said he had heard that several universities had bills of more than $100,000 but that alumni membership size was mostly what determined the amount.
Senate tangles with magazine bill
ship size was Inventory The Postal Inspection Service began auditing association mailings in January 1988, including the University of Missouri.
Committees review request, question responsibility and planning
By Lara Weber Kansan staff writer
A Student Senate bill to finance a KU publication is causing disorientation among Senate committees.
Dehate about the Senate committee system arose last week after the University Affairs Committee reviewed a bill to finance Disorientation, an alternative student magazine. The bill was unanimously defeated.
The staff of Disoniation has requested more than $3,000 from Senate's unallocated fund to produce its issue, its sixth since 1965. All but the first issue of Disoniation have been financed through Senate.
The bill also was scheduled to be reviewed by the Senate Finance Committee last night, but several senators thought that because the bill had failed in one committee it should not have been heard in another committee.
"It it got killed in one committee, it should be killed everywhere," said
Christine Stanek, chairman of the University Affairs Committee. "I feel that Finance shouldn't have heard it."
Last night the bill passed the Finance Committee with a favorable recommendation. But, because it was killed in the University Affairs Committee, the bill will not be on the regular agenda at tonight's Senate meeting. Instead, Senate members will have to vote to bring the bill off the floor for consideration.
A letter from Alan Lowden and Pat Warren, finance committee co-chairmen, cited a clause in Senate rules and regulations that states: "If any piece of legislation fails to pass out of any committee to which it was referred, it will automatically be struck from the agenda of the Senate meeting."
meeting. Aaron Rittmaster, author of the bill to finance Disorientation, objected.
"Senate is not here to provide pre-publication censorship," he said. "We're here to make sure it's safe."
able for the students. If someone doesn't like it, they don't have to pick it up if they don't want to. The role of Senate is not to be a dictator."
Stanek would not comment on her opinion of the publication but said that as chairman of her committee she would defend the committee's decision to kill the legislation.
"I don't think it's our right to say what they can and cannot print," she said. "Yes, the content may have been questionable, but it's not our place to decide. We questioned their responsibility and lack of planning."
Questions also were raised in both committees concerning why the editors had not gone through Senate budget hearings in Spring 1989 rather than seeking money from the unallocated fund.
Brian Schwegmann, editor of Disorientation, said he was surprised at the amount of debate about the bill.
sehwegmann said the staff was not aware that they would be penalized for not going through budget hearings.
"All we can do now is say 'Gosh, we'll go through the budget process next year,'" he said. "I'm worried that the survival of the magazine would be contingent on what we do next semester. The whole purpose of Disorientation is to put out a service for the students."
Mike Mader, adviser for Disorientation, said the University Affairs Committee had addressed two concerns about the publication, including the budgeting issue and the content of the magazine.
He said he did not think it was right for the University Affairs Committee to discuss the financial aspects of the bill because that aspect would be discussed by the Finance Committee.
And regarding the content of the publication, Mader said every publication was political in some way.
"I feel we're not doing our jobs completely if we don't make someone mad." he said.
KU plans removal of radioactive part
Rv Kate Lee
Kansan staff writer
The University of Kansas will spend $80,000 to develop a plan for removing a radioactive piece of the nuclear reactor in Burr Hall.
The money was allocated by the Board of Regents at its Nov. 16 meeting.
The $50,000 would pay for the cost of finding a consulting firm to develop the plan, said Harold Rosson, associate dean of engineering. Additional money will be requested for the implementation of the plan.
"We won't know the total cost until the plan is developed," he said. "I don't think it is an astronomical amount."
The KU reactor is inactive when the nuclear fuel rods were removed and shipped to a represen- cing plant off campus in 1986.
"We're going to be cutting out about six to eight inches over a five-square-foot area," he said. "We only drill out the part that is active and then send it off to a nuclear junk yard, a nuclear waste disposal site. Then there will no longer be any sort of activity."
According to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, there are two other nuclear reactors in Kansas. The Wolf Creek Power Plant, near Burington, is active and the other reactor, at Kansas State University, is not active.
During the operation of the reactor, some of the aluminum and concrete became slightly radioactive, he said.
"All that is left is the containment vessel that housed the reactor when it was operational," he said.
The reactor has not generated power since then but a part of it remains radioactive, Rosson said.
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