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Show 1 1 National Friday, November 17, 1989 The Daily Herald, Provo, Utah As Democrats say they can beat Cason nod Residents evacuated, propane fire stili burning - Senate (AP) Democrats say they have the votes to defeat President Bush's controversial nominee for a top natural resources job and will prove it if Bush doesn't withdraw the nomination. Sen. Patrick Leahy, chairman of the Senate Agriculture Committee, said Thursday that he would seek a vote before Congress recesses for the year unless Bush acts. WASHINGTON A propane JASPER, Mo. (AP) fire shooting flames at least 100 feet into the air was allowed to continue burning today after many of the town's 1,000 residents were evacuated from their homes. ; No injuries were reported in the blaze that began Thursday, lighting up the southwest Missouri sky and visible at least 25 miles away. "I would say the flames are 100 to 150 feet in the air," said Charlotte Coates, a Jasper emergency services dispatcher. "You can see it from all over. It's like in the movies." The fire at a Williams Pipe Line Co. terminal about two miles south of Jasper was feeding on a underground storage cavern, burning propane at the rate of 300 gallons an hour, said Ray Pullen, a Williams official. Kenneth Graham, a Williams executive from Houston, arrived early today to coordinate the effort to put out the fire, said Judy Johnson, civil defense director for Joplin and ; 1 r xjr re 11 v . r v Li CTiliL .... high-rankin- j n0 'TrT ; Jasper County. About 20 tanker loads of water were trucked in during the night. AP Laserphoto A Highway 71, which runs north and south through the middle of Jasper, .vias closed in both directions, the Jasper County Sheriff's Department said. A rail line was closed and aircraft were warned not to fly in the area. About 500 of the town's residents were evacuated, Ms. Coates said. Residents were asked to go to evacuation points in nearby Carthage and Lamar, and Williams bused some people to hotels in Joplin, about 10 miles south of Jasper. The fire started as a work crew was performing routine maintenance on a pump, said Jim Gipson, a spokesman for Williams. Propane escaped and somehow ignited when it reached the surface, Gipson said. An attempt was made Thursday to stop the fire by injecting 2,000 gallons of water into the cavern, but the gas erupted again to shoot flames 200 feet into the sky. Officials then decided to order the evacuation and let the fire burn through the night until Graham and other company fire control experts arrived. Leahy, who has led the opposition to James E. Cason, said he would like withdrawal or a promise that Bush would not appoint Cason during the recess, an action that would circumvent the Senate confirmation process. g Cason, who has been a official at the Interior Department since 1982, was nominated to be assistant secretary of agriculture for natural resources and soil conservation. Leahy and others opponents say his record at Interior showed a preference for private development interests over environmental concerns. "James Cason would lose on the Senate floor because both Democrats and Republicans would vote against him," Leahy said. fireboat spews water as the ribbon is cut to reopen the Bay Bridge Thursday. ' "The votes are not there (to confirm him)," he said in a speech on the Senate floor. Leader Mitchell, George Majority said he was willing to go ahead with a vote, but Minority said Leader Bob Dole, Thursday he wanted to wait. "We totally support the nomination and have no intention of withdrawing it," said Alixe Glen, White House deputy press secretary. "None of us likes to turn down a president's request for a person for a job in his administration," Leahy said. "James Cason is the wrong man for the wrong job at the wrong time." John Tower, Bush's first choice for defense secretary, is the only nominee so far to be defeated on a floor vote. Unlike Tower, however, Cason was approved by the committee that interviewed him.. The Agriculture Committee voted 12-- 7 to send the nomination to the floor, despite Leahy's misgivings. However, Sen. Harry Reid, then exercised his right to put a hold on further action because he opposed Cason. "He's a James Watt clone," said Reid in a reference to the former Interior secretary whose policies angered ; - SAN FRANCISCO (AP) The San Francisco-Oaklan- d Bay Bridge was to reopen to cars tonight at midnight after a celebration of the quick repair job on the span that was damaged in the Oct. 17 earthquake. Singer Tony Bennett belted out "I Left My Heart in San Francisco" at the close of an open party on the bridge Thursday, but changed the line about "coming home to you, San Francisco," to make it "Oakland-Sa- n Francisco." The ceremony The politicians spoke from a stand just a few yards from the spot where the temblor sent one end of a section of the ot bridge's upper deck plunging onto the lower deck. One person died when the car she was in fell into the gap. Thousands of people walked from both ends of the bridge to the ceremony but stopped short of the damaged section, where some minor work remained to be done. Wilson jokingly reminded Agnos that he was "sitting in Oakland now;" the break was on the Alameda County side of the bridge. The two mayors had carried on a keen rivalry during the World Series between the Oakland Athletics and the San Francisco Giants. The series, symbolized by the bridge on and other items, was interrupted by the temblor. Those who marched on the bridge from San Francisco included Susan Palumbo, 42, who featured speeches by Gov. Deukmejian, San Francisco Mayor Art Agnos and Oakland Mayor Lionel Wilson, lauding the repair job on the bridge, which took exactly one month. Deukmejian called the bridge's reopening "the first major event of the rebuilding process" for Northern California, which was struck by a 7.1 magnitude quake that killed 66 people and caused $7 billion in damage. On Aug. 12, 1962, one day after launching Andri-a- n Nikolayev into orbit, the Soviet Union also sent up cosmonaut Pavel Popo-vicBoth men landed safely Aug. 15. h. - against them." Thigpen further quoted Julius as saying "he believed in God and knew he would not let him suffer." Julius had pinned a purple ribbon on the shirt of his white sweatsuit. Prison officials said the ribbon is worn by death row inmates to protest the death penalty. He was the fourth inmate to die in Alabama's electric chair this year and the 119th person put to death in the United States since the 1976 U.S. Supreme Court ruling allowing states to resume use of the death penalty. Julius had lost an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court about eight hours before the execution. The high court refused by a 2 vote late Thursday afternoon to spare Julius' life. Justices William J. Brennan and Thurgood Marshall, who oppose capital punishment in A man ATMORE, Ala. (AP) convicted of raping and murdering his cousin while he was on a brief leave from prison was put to death in the electric chair this morning, 11 years after the crime. Arthur James Julius gave two thumbs up and waved both hands, nodding in the direction of his brother, Clarence Byrd, and prison chaplain Robert Simmons, before being executed at 12:09 a.m. Julius, 43, of Birmingham, was sentenced to death for the 1978 rape and killing of his cousin, Susie Bell Sanders, at her gomery apartment. In his final words, Julius said "he held no ill feeling toward the warden or the two lieutenants that n were in the execution area," Prison commissioner Morris Thigpen said. "He understood they had a job to do and did not hold it 7-- Hol-ma- & LAUNDRY PLUS f 1 1 Exp I 12-- 1 l $io I 00 Gift Certificates Must br I'urihiM'ti by 17 15 m Wolff bulbs Available! TONING Unlimited I Musi hr Put! haMli . iylMVtw the quake. jury investigation, said Dakota County Attorney James Backstrom. America's first extene road sive hard-surfac- was built in Pennsylvania. Completed in 1795, it was known as the Lancaster Turnpike miles. and ran 62 379-738- 0 373-021- 0 will present special prosecutor the evidence, he said. "My mom says she doesn't understand why they didn't just put in him jail, why they had to kill him," said Blia Lor, sister of Basee Lor. Her mother, who had been shot several times while fleeing Laos, sobbed. "She says why don't the police kill her instead," Blia Lor said, speaking for her mother, who does Department ol Behavioral Median e UTAH VALLEY REGIONAL MEDICAL CENTER An IntermounlAin Hearth Care Faalrtv be a good neighbor We'll 9 it!. A I Slender You Located Inside Laundry Plus rhim Tree Shopping Center by ShopKo IVtween FiKd4Leh.sand Carousel !$orr00 I most-travele- Minnesota has the second largest contingent of Laotians in the United States, after California. The Hmong tribesmen began arriving from Laos in 1975 at the close of the Vietnam war. Outraged Iotiar.s have been calling Yang Vang, director of the Lao Family Community of Minnesota, he said. qIMV thing that needs trimming? d-- 10 TANS I The bridge, one of the d in the world, carried an average of more than 260,000 vehicles every work day before not speak English. se Maybe your Christmas tree isn't the only Limit 5customer I all circumstances, supported Julius' emergency plea for a stay of execution. Julius was serving a life term for a 1972 Jefferson County murder when he was released on a pass center from a prison work-releanear Montgomery. According to court records, Julius left on an pass at 11 a.m. on Jan. 29, 1978, and borrowed a relative's car from 3:30 p.m. to 6:25 p.m. During that time, Julius turned Ms. Sanders' apartment into a shambles, beating her and dragging her through rooms and subjecting her to "grotesque sexual abuse" before strangling her. Ms. Sander's body was discovered daughter. by her The victim's parents told reporters in January that the execution was long overdue. Her father has since died. Ybu'H love Bulk Prepay Dry Cleaning 75c Pants ! was in a bus on the bridge when the earthquake hit. "I didn't feel the quake, but it was scary because we were waiting for an aftershock to take the bridge down," said Palumbo. Meanwhile, a panel of engineers said the repairs have made the bridge as strong as it was before the Oct. 17 temblor, but said that another, similar quake would seriously damage the span. "Mother Nature performed an experiment that showed (the bridge) was not designed adequately," said geologist Robert E. Wallace, chairman of the Bay Conservation and Development Commission's Engineering Criteria Review Board. "It failed in a very distant earthquake," he said. INVER GROVE HEIGHTS, Minn. The shooting deaths of two (AP) sixth-grad- e boys at the hands of a police officer has outraged members of the Laotian immigrant community in this St. Paul suburb. Thia Yang and Basee Lor, both 13, were killed Wednesday by a shotsingle blast from a gun fired by officer Kenneth Murphy, said Mark Shields, superintendent of the state Bureau of Criminal Apprehension. Shields said Murphy, 54, a veteran of the force, mistook a screwdriver in the hands of one of the boys for a gun. The boys had been pursued earlier in a stolen car, police said. "Why would police shoot a young kid? Why didn't they just stop him? Those questions weren't answered," said Sau Thao, a friend of Thia Yang's family. "Officer Murphy, fearing his life was in danger, discharged his weapon," Shields said. Murphy was placed on paid administrative leave pending a grand A Man executed for slaying cousin 1 Immigrant community angered by slaying Thousands take part in opening of newly repaired Bay Bridge t. 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