The Philadelphia Inquirer from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania • Page 1

Eagles release Herman Edwards- Mm urn ttpw Thirty-Five Cents Vol.315, No. 57 Tuesday, August 26, 1986 1986, Philadelphia Newspapers Inc. CaN 665-1234 lor kmm horn (tohvary rem Toiatl 30 1 from as in Cameroon seeping from Nl0S CAMEROON OF GUINEA WZ'Wcgma' miles sr. wti. Rauurt By Arthur Max Associated Press YAOUNDE, Cameroon The Cameroon government yesterday raised the official death toll to 1,200 after a cloud of gas escaped from the bottom of a lake in northwestern Cameroon and apparently killed many villagers in their sleep.

As still-scant details of the disaster began to emerge, President Paul Biya cautioned that casualty figures were not complete, adding that 200 to 300 people injured by the gas were being treated at hospitals in this tropical West African nation. Army teams were searching the four-square-mile disaster area for more victims of the seepage, which apparently began Friday. Earlier yesterday, Information Minister Georges Ngango told reporters that military reports from the scene spoke of a death toll of at least 2,000. Ngango, speaking during a news conference in Yaounde, the capital, said that many villagers had fled and that others were evacuated from the region around Lake Nios in the province of Bamenda. The lake is about 200 miles northwest of Yaounde in the Cameroon Highlands, a dramatic chain of volcanic peaks and valleys that reaches into eastern Nigeria.

Numerous scientists said yesterday that the deaths probably were caused by the release of a cloud of carbon dioxide that suffocated villagers along the lake shore. Biya said he ordered that the dead be buried immediately to head off the threat of disease. "Troops are trying to check an epidemic in the region and are trying to isolate this area," he said. Specifics concerning what a government communique Sunday night called "a geological catastrophe" were still elusive. The initial government announcement said the gas was hydrogen sulfide, but volcanic experts yesterday questioned that analysis.

Haroun Tazieff, France's pre-eminent volcanologist, was quoted by the French press as saying that hy-(See CAMEROON on 12-A) A 'fantastic soda bottle blowing up' Anatoly Shcharansky embraces his mother, Ida Milgrom, in Vienna after she and relatives left the Soviet Union. A family rejoined in joy, sorrow in 1978. "I want to cry and I want to laugh," said the red-eyed Milgrom, as she parted from friends and relatives. She had spent a sleepness night chatting with a friend who had come from Donetsk in the Ukraine to see her off, and she was bursting with nervous tension and excitement. Milgrom refused to emigrate as long as her son was detained, and had seen him only six times in the last 9Vi years.

But yesterday, well, it was hard to take leave of so many others. Parting was even more bittersweet for Leonid, at 41 nearly four years older than his (See FAMILY on 13-A) By Steve Goldstein bufArtt Sun Writer MOSCOW When dissident Anatoly Shcharansky was freed in February after nine years in Soviet prison and labor camps, he joined his wife in Israel, but left the rest of his family behind. Yesterday, the Shcharansky family was made whole for the first time in nearly a decade. But the joy of reunion was tempered by the pain of departure. In an emotional farewell to friends and relatives at Moscow's Sheremetyevo International Airport, Ida Milgrom, 77, Shchar-ansky's mother, led her other son, Leonid, and Leonid's wife and two sons onto the jet that would carry them to the West.

"I'm waiting, just waiting for my meeting with Anatoly," said the bright-eyed matriarch, clad in a blue suit. "Now I don't have Soviet citizenship. Now I don't have a passport. But I have the dream of being reunited with my Anatoly, who lost his life and regained it. What more could a mother want?" The family flew from here to Vienna, Austria, where Anatoly Shcharansky greeted them in a private reunion.

Then they all flew on to Tel Aviv. Shcharansky and his wife, Avital, live in Jerusalem. Milgrom led the campaign to free Anatoly from a Soviet labor camp, where he began serving a 13-year sentence on spying charges By Fen Montaigne Inquirer staff Writer The disaster in Cameroon probably was the result of a freak natural occurrence in which a huge bubble of carbon dioxide rose to the surface of a volcanic lake and burst, emitting a cloud that suffocated nearby villagers, scientists in the United States and England said yesterday. "It's like a fantastic soda bottle blowing up," said Susan Russell-Robinson, a scientist with the U.S. Geological Survey in Reston, Va.

Russell-Robinson and others said that reports from Cameroon were incomplete and that no one knew for certain what caused the release of gas. Scientists expect to learn more after international experts, including two teams of Americans, visit the mountainous and remote location in northwest Cameroon. Some scientists said the deaths might have been caused by the natural emission of highly toxic hydrogen sulfide. But several volcano experts said that the most likely cause was the escape of a huge cloud of carbon dioxide from Lake Nios, located in the crater of a long-dormant volcano. A similar release of carbon dioxide from a nearby lake killed 37 people on Aug.

15, 1984, according to a report from two Rhode Island scientists. While the area around Lake Nios is dotted with dormant volcanos, active volcanos have for centuries emitted clouds of carbon dioxide and other gases that asphyxiated people and animals. Russell-Robinson said that a gas (See GAS on 12-A) Despite ruling, pay-equity gains are mounting wins on the issue. These victories which have not yet been matched in private industry are grounded in a growing political constituency for comparable worth, as well as an increasing feminizati of the work place. The recent gains include: In Washington state, about 35,000 workers including secretaries, nurses, food-service employees and others at the low end of the pay scale have begun receiving pay-equity increases averaging 4 to 5 percent a year through 1991.

The raises, ex-(See PAY on 10-A) By Huntly Collins ftupiiw Stall Wriur Helen Castrilli, a secretary at Western State Hospital outside Tacoma, has boosted her $17,232 annual income by $1,200. Evelyn Stewart, a city librarian on Chicago's Southeast Side, now takes home $19,416 a year, about $800 more than she used to. Debra Pitts, a data entry operator who works for a state agency in Atlantic City, has seen a $300 increase in her $10,300 annual salary. Similar raises have gone into the pockets of thousands of women across the country who work for about 15,500 workers most of them women who were earning less in certain jobs typically held by women, such as clerical work, than state workers employed in jobs usually held by men, such as truck driving. Although a lower court upheld the union's contention that the state was guilty of discrimination by paying women less than men with jobs requiring comparable skills, a three-member panel of the Ninth U.S.

Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco disagreed, saying the state was under no obligation "to eliminate an economic inequality which it state and local governments that have recognized "comparable worth" the notion that jobs requiring equivalent skill, experience and responsibility should be compensated with equal pay. The gains by proponents of comparable worth have come despite a federal court ruling a year ago that many thought would be fatal to the movement. Last September, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) lost its bid to force the State of Washington to award up to $1 billion in back pay to did not create." In effect, the panel held that federal civil rights law does not require governments to rectify wage differences that were created by market forces. "I thought the court decision was going to have a serious dampening effect," said Diana Rock, AFSCME's women's rights director. "But, in fact, that has not happened.

I have not seen any diminution in comparable worth." Since the federal court ruling, government workers around the nation have scored a number of significant Weather Index Study asks tougher restrictions on prescription drugs in Penna. prove regulations. It also proposed that the state consider new legislation to curtail prescription-drug abuse and urged greater cooperation among the state and private groups fighting the problem. "We must protect Pennsylvanians from the misuse, abuse and diversion of prescription drugs," said Muller. "Prescription-drug abuse results in more injuries and deaths in the United States than all illicit drugs combined." The study follows reports by the federal Drug Enforcement Adminis-(See DRUGS on 12-A) By Edward Colimore Inquirer Staff Writer Noting a "disturbing trend of prescription-drug abuse," state Health Secretary H.

Arnold Muller released a study yesterday recommending restrictions on the prescribing and dispensing of amphetamines and other addictive drugs. The study reported that nine medical practitioners were responsible for 23 percent of Pennsylvania's amphetamine purchases in 1984. It also said that state residents that year consumed amphetamines at four times the national average. Philadelphia's amphetamine consumption was 1 times the Pennsylvania average. Muller said in a statement that the findings involved "only a very small number of professionals who over-prescribe and improperly distribute prescription drugs." "However, at the same time the findings show that drug pushing in Pennsylvania is not limited to the heroin, cocaine and marijuana found in the street-level dealings," he said.

The study, prepared by officials in several state and federal agencies and professional organizations, called on the state's medical and osteopathic licensing boards to ap r3r I i 17 i I milium if L.miwtil Aboard the American Zephyr, the "Mystery Tour" has an unusual emphasis: murder. Daily Magazine, Page 1-C. Partly sunny today. High in the lower 80s. Increasingly cloudy tonight Low in the mid- to upper 60s.

Showers and a thunderstorm possible tomorrow. High in the lower 80s. Full weather report, Page 16-E. Profit-takers helped trim 16.03 points off the Dow Jones average of 30 industrials. Business, Page 9-D.

National lmmtionl Sections MrtropoHtan Section Channel 29 sale studied by owner York investment-banking firm of Goldman, Sachs Co. to set a value for WTAF and Taft's four other independent television stations. WTAF probably could be sold for about $175 million and the five Taft stations as a group could fetch $690 million, according to an estimate by Broadcast Investment Analysts a Washington appraisal and consult-(See WTAF-TV on 13-A) bring sweeping changes to the local broadcasting industry. The owner of WPHL (Channel 17), the Providence Journal put the station up for sale in June. In addition, a regional independent station, WSJT-TV (Channel 65) in Vineland, N.J., is also being sold, its owner announced recently.

Taft Broadcasting announced yesterday that it had retained the New By Neill Borowski fnufrar Staff Writer The Philadelphia television market's latest "for-sale" sign went up yesterday at WTAF-TV (Channel 29) when Taft Broadcasting Co. reported that it might sell its five independent television stations. This would put the city's two leading independent stations on the block at the same time, which could Dairy Magaiiw Section Tha PhilwMphn kiquirar APRIL SAUC Section SporttBwhwM PAYING TRIBUTE to the slain postal workers in Edmond, sorter Louise Johnson (left) and co-workers observe a moment of silence at Philadelphia's main post office, 30th and Market Streets. The tribute was marked nationwide yesterday, when the last of the 14 victims was buried. Story on Page 10-A.

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