The Los Angeles Times from Los Angeles, California • Page 11

A THURSDAY, MAY 6, 1999 All TORNADO LOS ANGELES TIMES Continued from A3 Though residents had the all-clear to return to Bridge Creek, National Guard troops periodically evacuated them throughout the day to search for bodies. The tornado killed 11 people here, and authorities were still finding body parts Wednesday. They also were looking for at least a few missing residents but could not say exactly how many. "The number keeps going up and down," a state trooper said with evident frustration. As the search continued, the official Oklahoma death toll stood at 38 on Wednesday.

The tornadoes also killed five people in Kansas. Hospitals reported they had treated 669 injured victims around Oklahoma. And early estimates of property damage nudged close to $1 billion. Bridge Creek, a fast-growing neighborhood 30 miles southwest of Oklahoma City, was hit by the biggest and most powerful of the four dozen tornadoes that rampaged across the state. The winds that roared through the modest homes and wide-open fields of this rural community topped 260 m.p.h., prompting meteorologists to classify the twister as an F-5, the most intense class of tornado on the Fujita wind damage scale.

No one around here would argue with that call. The tornado flattened block after block, leaving huge chunks of Bridge Creek looking like a landfill. Car fenders dangled from treetops. The Baptist church was utterly crushed. A blue recliner chair sat at least a half-mile from any living room, one of its arms stripped clean of fabric.

rA.r ljj 1 i Ji 1 uiry 1 1 Left, Mary Leas wipes mud from a picture as she salvages items from her tornado Associated Press damaged home in Moore, Okla. restore power to an estimated 20,000 residents. With the grass ripped out, the whole neighborhood took on the red-brown hue of Oklahoma soil a color relieved only by the pink fluffs of insulation twisted around bushes and on fences. Grit swirled through the air and stung the eyes. Everywhere, residents tallied up their possessions and found they had precious little to their names.

"We've lost everything," said Earl Ollison, a construction worker. "And it's not like it's just me. Everyone lost everything." Even in his misery, Ollison had to marvel at the tornado's capri-ciousness. The winds peeled back 1 Mars Global Surveyor Antenna gimbals Magnetometer Propellant tank I Mam horizon jk" I I 1 sensor Solar ifl Altitude 1 II panel Struggles of the Surveyor Despite engineers' failure to free a jammed antenna, the Mars Global Surveyor is resuming mapping of the red planet The antenna problem has seriously affected the craft's ability to communicate with Earth. No one knows what is causing the problem or how to fix it The antenna may be blocked by a piece of jp00X-r Electron reflectometer AgenceFrance-Presse Above, utility the frame of his trailer, pushed the entire foundation two feet from the front steps and knocked down several enormous trees.

Yet not a single mirror in his home was broken. The big propane tank in his front yard was not dented. But the storm somehow managed to twist his toddler's favorite matchbox car in half. That toddler, 3-year-old Jacob Lee, was so traumatized he refused to get out of the car when his father drove him to the smashed remains of their trailer. He feared trees might fall on him.

He worried the winds might return. He couldn't understand LORENA INIGUEZ Los Angeles Times mapping data that NASA scientists had hoped to gather. As an alternative, flight controllers could just turn off the mapping instruments periodically and shift the spacecraft to transmit the data to Earth. That would allow the craft to maintain the same perspective for mapping purposes, but would sharply curtail the amount of data that could be gathered during the mission. "I think we would not be happy" with either option, said Michael Ravine, advanced projects manager at Malin Space Science Systems in San Diego, which designed and operates the surveyor's on-board cameras.

"It will be a significant reduction in the data we will get back. "But it would not be the worst thing. Whatever we do get down is definitely going to be worth something," he said. "And the fact we are in business now means there is some time to find an angle that can be worked out." insulation, a loop of cable or even a loose screw. Source: NASA x-rV Solar jiT CJ Mars relay JIW "Camera CHN- Celestial sensor I Brag f.

lens assembly I Thermal Thermal emission spectrometer MARS: Surveyor to Resume Mission workers in Haysville, work to where his house had gone. "His whole little world's gone," Ollison said. "When he' comes here, you can see it on his face." Ollison then brightened a little, remembering that he had found his TV and VCR intact and that he had hopes of digging some of his clothes out of the mess. "At least," he said, "we have something to look through." He had a point. Just a few blocks away, Robin Varner had nothing to look through, not even- a pile of lumber.

Her entire house, the home she and her family had built over 14 years, had been lifted off its MISSING Continued from A3 When Parris learned of Ford's confession, he got in line to interview the trucker, who lived in a trailer park in nearby Areata and has family in Eureka. It was a long line. Investigators from all over the state and across the West wanted to talk to Ford about unsolved slayings of women dating back to 1986. Parris spent three hours with Ford. The trucker said he had nothing to do with Mitchell's disappearance.

Unconvinced, Parris said he tracked down cars owned by Ford's relatives that the trucker might have driven. Something Parris won't say what that the detective found in one car aroused his suspicion. Parris said that he is awaiting the results of DNA testing and that he should know in a couple of weeks whether the tests link Ford to Mitchell. Attorney Kevin Robinson, who is representing Ford, declined to comment, citing a gag order that a Humboldt County judge issued in the case. In the meantime, Parris stays in weekly touch with Mitchell's family: the aunt and uncle she was living with when she disappeared, the mother who sent her to Eureka because she thought it was a safer place for a teenager than Whittier, where Mitchell lived with her mother and brother until junior high school.

Whatever Mitchell's fate, the detective has assured the family, he won't rest until she is found. Falling In With the Wrong Crowd Mitchell's mother, Mary Casper, recalled how she and her daughter decided together, when Mitchell was 13, that the girl should live in Eureka, and how happy they both were with the decision. "I was a single mom, working full time, and I never got home before 6 p.m.," Casper said. "Karen was falling in with the wrong crowd." Mitchell came home for holidays and summer vacation, and hoped to graduate early from high school and attend Humboldt State. The morning Mitchell disappeared, she and her mother had been filling out the college application over the phone.

Casper remembered well her reaction when Parris phoned to tell her one year after her daughter vanished about Ford turning himself in. The detective told her that he considered the trucker a suspect in Mitchell's case, Casper said. "Physically, my body just went into shock," beginning to shake uncontrollably, Casper said. "Still today, when Dave calls and talks about Ford, I still shake." And yet, Casper said, she refuses to believe that her daughterwho loved nature and dreamed of becoming a politicianis dead. "For me not to have closure is OK.

I still have hope," she said. Ford remains in Humboldt County's jail in lieu of $l-million bail. He was indicted last month by the local grand jury on one count of murder, for the woman man in denim overalls. "This is my home. I'm staying here." Next time, however, he planned to spend the $1,500 it would take to dig a decent storm cellar like the one at a neighbor's house that saved his life Monday.

"Maybe I'll put one in the house and one outside," he said. "We're going to build one big enough for everybody around here." Ollison, too, said he planned to dig a cellar. But he figured he wouldn't ever need to use it. "I'm going to rebuild right here because the odds of another one hitting the exact same spot are pretty slim," he said. "I hope." SHAUN WALKER For The Times in and around Eureka, have of Karen Mitchell.

ing her dog near her home in Seaside, just east of Monterey. The girl's body was discovered Jan. 12, three miles from where she was last seen. In February, dozens of FBI agents investigated the disappearances of Carole Sund, her 15- year-old daughter and a 16- year-old friend near Yosemite National Park. Parris wondered how things might have been different if the same attention had been paid to Mitchell's case.

"I try not to think about it, because I don't have time to argue with them," he said. "But if they could have given us personnel, we could have pursued the many leads we had in the beginning. We have 14 volumes of lead sheets, and it has taken myself and my staff the last year to go through them." FBI Agent Gordon Grotz, spokesman for the San Francisco office, said the bureau did not get involved early on because she was not "a child of tender years." Federal law says the FBI should investigate an unwitnessed abduction if the victim is a "child of tender years," and the bureau has interpreted that to mean anyone 16 or younger. Every year, Grotz said, thousands of teenagers are reported missing and later turn out to be runaways. Sheriff's Deputy Dennis Lewis said he again contacted the FBI's Child Abduction and Sex Crimes Unit a year after Mitchell's disappearance.

"At first, they couldn't believe that they weren't fully involved," Lewis said. "Eventually, the bureau sent a profiler unit to Humboldt and gave Parris their software for processing leads." But that help, Parris and Walker said, came too late to be of much good. "People ask me: How come you've got all these FBI agents working on the Sund case and we didn't have them looking for Karen?" Walker said. "I don't really have a good answer for them. We just don't get the same kind of attention up here that you get in the more metropolitan areas." Waiting in Whittier, Casper also wishes that the FBI had become involved sooner.

She thought about it again as she watched television coverage of the search for the Sunds and their friend. "It is hard," she said. "That would have been very nice, to have had 50 FBI agents involved in Karen's case." 4 mn concrete foundation and whisked away. All that remained were a few of the tiles from her kitchen floor, a dented brass doorknob and a photo of her daughter that a neighbor had found about two miles away. With nothing to salvage and nothing to rebuild, Varner had already decided she would leave Bridge Creek.

"All the trees are gone," she said. "All the grass is gone. I just don't think we can get past the devastation." Others, however, were determined to return. "I ain't letting no tornado beat me," vowed Fritzmeyer, a burly MISSING Karen MM Reward fliers posted for months brought few solid leads in the case he allegedly strangled to death and dismembered in his trailer. Her identity has never been determined.

Trial is set for July 21. Investigators say the other killings Ford confessed to were in Kern, San Joaquin and San Bernardino counties. No charges have been filed there. Prosecutors are working to consolidate the cases under a new state law that allows suspects accused of multiple murders in more than one jurisdiction to be tried in one county. Meanwhile, investigators from several agencies are trying to link Ford to other unsolved murders, although none will talk about those efforts because of the gag order.

Parris said that while he awaits laboratory reports, he and Humboldt County Sheriffs Det. Dave Walker, who has assisted in Mitchell's case, continue to follow other leads. For the last year, Parris has been methodically tracking down 1,200 registered owners of 1976-77 Ford Granadas and Mercury Mon-archs the two models are almost identical in Northern California. That search began six months after Mitchell disappeared, when a man said he saw her get into a car matching that description. The man said he was driving on the road where Mitchell was last seen, at the time she was believed to have been abducted, and was forced to brake hard when the driver of a light blue car picked her up.

It has taken a year to contact each car owner, Parris said, because his resources are so limited. Parris said he requested FBI involvement the day after Mitchell was reported missing but was turned down. "We were told that the FBI's protocol on abductions says that they don't get involved in unwit-nessed abductions of 17-year-olds," he said. Eureka police and the Sheriff's Department got off to a slow start taking a report from Mitchell's family the night she disappeared and only launching a search three days later, after Thanksgiving. They added several detectives, dozens of volunteers, a search and rescue team and search dogs to the hunt.

But they could not sustain the manpower commitment for long. Parris said he couldn't help but feel a twinge of envy when he saw the FBI dispatch 50 agents to search for Christina Marie Williams, a 13-year-old who disappeared June 12, 1998, while walk 4 k'k 1 Consequently, flight controllers can move the antenna to keep it trained on Earth only by moving the entire spacecraft, like a spectator with a stiff neck trying to keep a view of a passing parade. If they move the craft so it points at Earth as they will have to do after February they also will swing the instruments out of line with Mars. To salvage the mission after February, JPL planners and flight controllers at Lockheed Martin Astronautics in Denver are evaluating two plans. They could tilt the craft slightly to keep the antenna aimed at Earth, while still pointing its instruments down at Mars.

That would allow the craft to transmit data continuously, as NASA had intended, but it also would change the spacecraft's angle of view, affording its instruments only an oblique look at the planet's surface. That would make it harder to collect the integrated global Continued from A3 "We were in our final mapping position two weeks ago, with all the instruments pointing at the planet, and then suddenly, when we moved to the next position where the antenna had to move a little more, it stopped," said project scientist Arden Albee at Cal-tech. "There is some kind of obstruction that keeps us from having total motion." Flight operations manager Joseph G. Beerer at JPL said there were three possible causes of the problem: A fold of insulating thermal blanket may have fallen into the joint mechanism. A loop of cable may be blocking it.

A screw may have unthreaded itself several turns, sticking up just enough to prevent the antenna from swinging freely. None of those things can be fixed, Beerer said. "I think we are in a. situation where we will just have to work with it." ISRAEL Continued from A3 of a bitter tug-of-war between Israel With Immigration and Shas, a religious party whose members for the most part are Sephardim Jews of Middle Eastern or North African origin. Barak, who met with immigrants Wednesday night in the northern city of Haifa, has said he too would consider giving the Interior Ministry post to the Israel With Immigration party.

Smith and other pollsters say the reasons for the recent shift include Barak's new focus on Russian voters and his campaign's effective use of his military background to ease their worries about security under a Labor government Barak is a former army chief of staff and Israel's most decorated soldier. At the same time, the pollsters say that in Russian immigrants' eyes, Netanyahu has been hurt by his close links to Shas and its powerful leader, Aryeh Deri, who recently was convicted on corruption charges and sentenced to four years in prison. Agence France-Pre sse Labor Party candidate for prime minister Ehud Barak, right, and former Likud foreign minister David Levy, center, campaign together in a Haifa market. Sharansky, whose party holds prime minister. "Our party was seven seats in the outgoing parlia- established to support the immi-ment and may gain one or two grants, not this or that candidate more this time, has not endorsed for prime minister," he said either Barak or Netanyahu for Wednesday..