The Courier-Journal from Louisville, Kentucky • Page 1

134 PAGES A GANNETT NEWSPAPER LOUISVILLE, KENTUCKY SUNDAY, APRIL 21, 1996 $1.50 4 METRO EDITION riHW Tornado smashes Berea as storms sweep state TWISTER RIPS SOUTHERN INDIANA A line of storms that stretched from Arkansas to central Illinois spawned a tornado that touched down early yesterday in northern Floyd County, Ind. The tornado sent Stanley May's mobile home airborne while May was inside. "I rode with part of the roof," said May, who owns a hair salon in West Louisville. The mobile home crashed against a tree, but May, received only minor injuries. In Bullitt County, south of Louisville, Red Cross officials said 118 homes were damaged.

Downed lines left thousands of people without electricity and phone service across the region. Story, B1 Lynch, a spokesman for DES. Residents joined forces yesterday to remove downed trees and drape plastic over missing roofs and windows. "You'll have one house perfectly all right, and the one next to it is missing the top half," Mayor Clifford Kerby said. In the business district, the roof of the town's old train depot now a tourist center had fallen in.

Police described a couple of homes as "flattened," and several stores were severely damaged in the "Old Town" section of Berea, where craftspeople make and sell high-quality furniture and other goods. The Parker Seal Manufacturing plant, which makes ball-bearings and is an important employer, was heavily damaged. Several businesses at the Interstate 75 exit to Ky. 21 were badly damaged. People's restaurant and Berea Sunoco were destroyed, while a canopy was blown off the Shell Mart, windows shattered at Burger King and the roof ripped off a How-See TORNADO Page 11, col 1, this section STAFF PHOTO BY SAM UPSHAW JR THUNDERATION: Plumes of fireworks shot up through a pink hue in this view of Thunder Over Louisville's fireworks extravaganza from the Gait House on the Louisville riverfront Story, more photos, B1 10 Years of Tragedy As ili j.LinywinW4wj By KIRSTEN HAUKEBO Staff Writer BEREA, Ky.

A tornado ripped through Berea before sunrise yesterday, damaging about 400 homes and businesses, tipping over three tractor-trailers and sending sleepy college students into the basements of their dormitories for safety. But authorities reported only minor injuries. Another tornado was reported in Lincoln County, where seven people were treated for minor injuries, including a 2-year-old child. The same storm system cause lesser damage mostly power outages and downed trees in several other counties primarily in Central and Eastern Kentucky. Berea, a historic community of about 8,000 known for its crafts industry and picturesque Berea College, appeared to be the hardest hit, according to Kentucky Disaster and Emergency Services.

About 100 National Guard members were on the scene yesterday, helping to clean up, divert traffic and safeguard businesses, said Mike Disaster still threat to millions Chernobyl. Ten years ago this week, it was transformed from an obscure place in Soviet Ukraine to a universally recognized emblem of nuclear disaster. The disaster continues. Hundreds of children have gotten cancer, and more than a million risk getting it. Their fate is in the hands of an overburdened health-care system.

Hundreds of thousands of cleanup workers and refugees are still suffering. Many of them are ill. Many more struggle under the burden of uncertainty and fear that is as much a part of Chernobyl's deadly fallout as the radiation itself. Millions of Ukrainians, Belarus-sians and Russians live in radiation-tainted areas or eat contaminated food. The reactor explosion at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant contributed to the disintegration of the Soviet Union by showing how quickly reformist leaders would revert to their old secretive ways.

But, along with freedom, the new nations emerged with tremendous economic, environmental and social burdens. Ukraine can't afford to clean up the ruined reactor. It can't afford to shut down the two similar reactors at Chernobyl, which pose the threat of another nuclear accident. Today, The Courier-Journal begins a four-day look at the aftermath of the worst industrial accident in world history. It begins with the story of Chernobyl, told through the experiences of its youngest victims.

In this scries TODAY: The story of Chernobyl as seen through the lives of its youngest victims and those trying to help them. In Forum, a look at nuclear safety this country. TOMORROW: Chernobyl has placed an enormous burden on Ukraine's struggling health-care system and created a living laboratory for examining the effects of radiation. TUESDAY: The area around Chernobyl is a ghostly dead zone to which only a few have returned. Those who had to leave, and those who came to help, wilt never be the same.

WEDNESDAY: Chernobyl's ruined reactor is still a danger, and similar reactors are still In operation. But Ukraine is too poor to solve the problems alone. cm Make a difference The 1996 Make a Difference Day Awards salute people who changed our world. USA Weekend Local residents are among the award winners. Metro, B4 NFL draft Several players from Kentucky college teams were taken yesterday in the National Football League draft.

University of Louisville offensive tackle Roman Oben went to New York, and Kentucky running back Moe Williams went to Minnesota. Sports, CI Nuclear summit The leaders of major industrialized nations concluded their summit by calling for quick enactment of a nuclear test ban. News, AS Retail boom With its ribbon-cutting last week, Kohl's department store became the third large retail chain to enter the Louisville market in the past 18 months. Business, El Pay the pipers On June 1, the musicians' interim contract with the Louisville Orchestra expires. Staff critic Andrew Adler says that means the orchestra board is going to have to decide whether to hold the line or renegotiate.

Arts, II Time bandits Why do we feel so busy? Blame it on all those "time-saving" inventions, says columnist Dianne Aprile. Features, H1 Fabric frenzy Thousands of folks will soon descend on Kentucky for one of the nation's truly colorful events. No, it's not the Derby, but the annual quilting blowout in Paducah. Features, HI FAMILIES Vaccine campaign A battalion of volunteers fanned out across Louisville's public housing projects yesterday to spread the word about immunizing children. Metro, B8 Child-care study The most comprehensive study to date has found that using child care does not harm infants trust in their mothers.

News, A3 FORECAST Early light Louisville area: Partly sunny early today, with storms possible this afternoon through tomorrow. High, mid-70s today, 70 to 75 tomorrow. Low near 60. Details, B2 INDEX S5 Youngsters fill a room at the Institute of Endocrinology In Kiev, where they are being treated for thyroid cancer resulting from exposure to radiation released at Chernobyl. Radiation in their food and milk Is a bigger problem today than the radioactive dust that lingers.

Cancer ravages the children's lives Poverty keeps Ukraine from proper health care GANNETT NEWS SERVICE PHOTO BY JYM WILSON STAFF MAP BY STEVE DURBIN rier-Journal on March 31. The 1992 campaign law was passed after a series of governor's races that were among the nation's most expensive. In addition to the $1.8 million spending limit which Patton and Forgy agreed to in return for a state subsidy the law also reduced the maximum legal contribution in all partisan races to $500, from $4,000 (a limit raised by the legislature this See PARTY Page 16, col. 1, this section inRussiA EUROPE I ASIAX I (AFRICA 7US fj RUSSIA UKRAINE ROMANIA WP Jp a BULGARIA Sea By ANDREW MELNYKOVYCH Staff Writer KIEV, Ukraine Natasha Fesh-chenko. Anton Lazar.

Anya Shapova-lova. Yura Boyarski. Sasha Tysenko. Nadia Horbachenko. These 4-year-old children spent the last normal day of their lives on Friday, April 25, 1986.

That was their last day in the nursery school in the Ukrainian town of Pripyat, two miles from the huge nuclear power plant where many of their parents worked. They had no way to know as they sang, painted and napped in the nursery that day that a reactor would explode in a few hours and spew forth more than 200 times the fallout of the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. They had no way to know that they and millions of other children in Ukraine, Belarus and Russia would be soaking up cancer-causing radiation. The next day, as some of Pripyat's children played in the strange foam being used to wash radiation from the Patton, would be elected governor. Their efforts and those of others, mainly in Eastern Kentucky, were stunningly successful and critical to Patton's razor-thin margin over Republican Larry Forgy.

The two fund-raisers plotted at the Landmark Inn, and held at Patton's Pikeville home, raised about a sixth of the Democratic Party's $2 million totala whopping $302,000 on Sept. 6 and $40,000 more nine days before the Nov. 7 election. "There was a table in front of the house that everybody laid their so starved for energy that it has to keep operating the remaining dangerous reactors at Chernobyl. It is a nation so starved for money that it can't make the reactors safe.

Victor Kozlov, another child in Pripyat 10 years ago, is facing his third surgery. The first two operations couldn't stop the relentless march of his radiation-induced cancer. It has eaten away his thyroid gland. Invaded his lymph nodes. Attacked his lungs.

He is 14 years old. Victor, and thousands like him, "lost their childhoods in a hospital," his mother, Anya Kozlova, said in a voice choked with a mother's anguish. In Ukraine alone, 1.5 million chil- See CANCER Page 12, col. 5, this section of Medicare; and a get-out-the-vote effort with statewide phone banks and more than 250 precinct workers in Jefferson County. While offering no proof, Forgy has charged that the Democrats "bought votes all over Kentucky both directly and indirectly." Patton has said he has no indication of violations by anyone directly under his control.

Attorney General Ben Chandler and other agencies are investigating Forgy's allegation, along with irregulanties in the Democratic effort that were reported by The Cou streets, they had no way to know that 50,000 square miles an area larger than the state of New York would be heavily contaminated by cesium and strontium, or that these poisons would linger for decades. They had no way to know, as they were "temporarily" evacuated, that they and 130,000 others were really leaving their homes forever. Now, 10 years later, the children of Chernobyl know that many of the town's grown-ups among 800,000 people who cleaned up after the explosion have fallen ill, been permanently disabled or have died because of the accident. Their parents seem to understand that the children aren't getting and may never get the quality of health care they need. Their newly independent Ukraine is checks on," said Sara Callaham of Inez, who was at the September event and participated in some of the Landmark meetings.

Party money was far more important in last year's campaign than before because Patton and Forgy agreed to limit their spending under a 1992 campaign-reform law. Much of the Democratic money went for things that party leaders said were the reasons for Patton's victory: polls that gave him critical data; television ads on national issues such as Republican efforts to trim the growth E. Kentucky donors' efforts critical to Patton win Arts 11 Metro B1 Business E1 Movies 12 Crossword H5 Racing C10 Deaths B10 Real Estate F1 Features HI Sports C1 Forum D1 Travel E10 Lottery A2 Weddings H4 By At CROSS, R.G. DUNLOP and TOM LOFTUS Staff Writers PIKEVTLLE, Ky. When some of the wealthiest and most powerful business and political leaders in Eastern Kentucky began gathering at the Landmark Inn in Pikeville late last summer, the nominal fare was hors d'oeuvres.

But the main course was politics plotting strategy and raising money tor the Democratic Parry to ensure that their friend and neighbor, Paul Auto Classified J1 Classified G1 40901" 10701.