Asheville Citizen-Times from Asheville, North Carolina • Page 1

7TT it CLOUDY COMMUNITY Means Cqx Hazardous honored waste UNC tailback, fViQci Free collection daY State defense VOTA yJ offered for top All-ACC team. WakiW homeowners. Page ID jEVy Page 18 Periods of rain and possible thunderstorms. Ill 60 10 46 11 McGuffey's feeds 1,000 for Thanksgiving. Gourmet Chef auction.

Page 1C TURNING COLD: Breezy and cooler starting Thursday. UK4'" Octal an ft 8 ASHEVILLE igi 1 TIMES VOICE OF THE MOUNTAINS Multimedia Inc. Tuesday, Nov. 24, 1992 ifzzzz cTr. aB 1 Officer dies in car chase Yancey mourns loss of Porter Robinson By Paul Johnson STAFF WRITER Yancey County is mourning the loss of one of its brightest young people, a former star athlete and top student who died Monday in the line of duty serving' as a police officer in Greensboro.

Two killed, dozens injured I INSIDE i -1 "A Twenty-four-year-old Porter L. Robinson was killed after his car crashed during a highspeed chase shortly after midnight Monday. As the news reached THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Tornadoes ripped across North Carolina early Monday, smashing houses and tossing a school bus full of children off a road before a deadly storm system headed out to sea. Two people were killed by tornadoes in North Carolina, boosting the death toll to 25 from the barrage of twisters that tore through 12 states between Saturday and Monday. Two other deaths in a car crash were blamed on heavy rain from the storm system.

Hundreds of people in the 12 states were injured and hundreds of homes were destroyed. "Several mobile homes are just frames laying in the middle of the road," rescue squad member Ray DeFriess said of the damage ifTHfflSborough, 30 miles northwest-of Raleigh. He estimated 40 to 50 homes there were destroyed. Meanwhile, a new storm grew stronger Monday in the Rockies. A blizzard closed schools and highways in Colorado and Wyoming, and avalanches closed canyon roads in B3P Storms leave many injured, homeless.

Page 2B Utah, where the Alta ski resort got 45 inches of snow in 24 hours. Wyoming state government offices closed in Cheyenne. Wind gusting to near 40 mph would lower the wind chill factor to near minus 30 degrees during the night around Colorado. Springs, Colo. In the South, the unusual November thunderstorm system first produced tornadoes in Louisiana and Texas on Saturday, damaging about 300 homes in Houston but causing only minor injuries.

An extension of the storm system set off tornadoes in Indiana and Ohio'. Alabama also was struck and a small tornado caused minimal damage at a Smithsonian Institution storage center at Silver Hill, Md. The National Weather Service said at least 45 tornadoes touched down in the 24 hours up to 7 a.m. EST Monday. In Pasquotank County in North Caroli- See Twisters on page 6A A I BU RG NC I I I ZKN-TIM ES Two-year-old Joshua Davis plays amid the damage wrought by tornadoes that swept through Hillsborough Sunday.

Clara Sykes, holding her granddaughter Ashley Howard, and Carl Lineberry sort through their possessions from their trailer that was destroyed by a twister. More miserable weather in forecast 13 Ohio: Thunderstorms Kentucky: Tornadoes kill Indiana: Thunderstorms cut power to 6,000 customers A look at the places hardest hit by storms that ripped through the South and the East Central states this weekend. woman, damage The National Weather Service was predicting rain and progressively cooler temperatures Thursday. property SI Tennessee: Tornadoes kill a young boy Porter Robinson Robinson's native, rural county" northeast of Asheville, a pall was cast over the community. "I can't tell you the kind of shock it is," said Mountain Heritage High School teacher Jack Tipton, who taught and coached Robinson.

"Porter was admired by everybody." Teachers and students grieved Monday at the high school in Burnsville. Robinson, who graduated from Mountain Heritage in 1986, played for four years on the football team as a guard and linebacker, making the all-conference team his senior year, said Tipton, a former head football coach. Robinson also served as a role model by making good grades in high school, then enrolling and graduating from Western Carolina University, Tipton said. The son of Leonard and Betty Robinson, he grew up in the Seven Mile Ridge community nestled near the South Toe River. Robinson, who had been with the Greensboro Police Department less than a year, tried to stop a speeding car about 12:10 a.m., Greensboro Police Chief Sylvester Daughtry said.

The Honda Accord picked up speed and ran a red light, Daughtry said. The wreck occurred just minutes after the chase began. The suspect's vehicle struck a light pole See Robinson on page 7A schools Monday because rain runoff flooded low-water bridges, fire inspector Steve Sudderth said. Elk Creek near Boone, the Watauga River in Foscoe and the New River near Boone Golf Course jumped their banks. Highlands had the region's biggest rainfall Sunday, the weather service said three inches.

Boone, West Jefferson and Rosman had more than two inches. The French Broad River at Blantyre near Rosman was two feet above flood level Sunday, the National Weather Service said. Avery County's Stamey Branch Road between Newland and Linville Falls flooded after rain-swept debris blocked a culvert, sheriffs dispatcher David Dellinger said. Much of Avery County's rains drain into Burke County, which was under a flash flood watch for much of Sunday. AP AND STAFF REPORTS Western North Carolina on Monday dried out from a weekend of stormy weather that caused havoc elsewhere in the state.

Forecasters said Tuesday's clouds will probably bring more rain to the area for Thanksgiving. Cold, wet weather predicted for the holiday one of the heaviest traffic days of the year has the state Highway Patrol concerned, District IV First Sgt. Tom Battle said. "That sounds bad," he said from the Asheville headquarters. "Encourage those folks to drive 55 miles per hour and not drink and drive." The National Weather Service was predicting rain and progressively cooler temperatures Thursday, with highs in the low 50s.

Monday's warm sunshine was a break between storms, weather technician Gil Wagi said. In Haywood County, about 4,700 people in the Jonathan Valley and Clyde areas lost electrical service when lightning struck a Haywood Electric Membership Corp. transmission line Sunday. Clyde regained power within 45 minutes, and the last of the Jonathan Valley residents was back on line by 1 a.m. Monday, a spokesman said.

The storms could have done more damage had they not been broken up by the region's mountains, Wagi said. Watauga County was the area's hardest hit, the National Weather Service said. Watauga County closed its A 1 Texas: Tornadoes damage 300 North Carolina: Tornado kills two people, injures others South Carolina: Tornado kills 74-year-old man in Saluda Alabama: Storms damage property Mississippi: Tornadoes kill 15 people, injure 150; Brandon, hardest hit homes in Houston, 900 homes in Harris County. Tornadoes spotted in other eastern counties. Louisiana: Tornadoes hit state SI Georgia: Storms kill six people SOURCE: AP Graphic by Knight-Ridder Tribune v.

Music legend Acuff dies mm. HI City debates prospects of mobile homes V1 During commercial breaks, he did yo-yo tricks and balanced his ever-present fiddle upright on the bridge of his nose. THE ASSOCIATED PRESS NASHVILLE, Tenn. Roy Acuff was a gentleman showman and flamboyant patriarch who THE MORNING REPORT A five-minute capsule of the day's news, business, sports and television. i v-.

v- ACUFPS HITS Some hits by Roy Acuff: "Great Speckled Bird" "Wabash Cannonball" "The Precious Jewel" "Wreck On the Highway" "Fireball Mail" "Night Train to Memphis" 'Cowards Over Pearl Harbor' "Come and Knock" "Freight Train Blues" earned the title "the king of country music" during 54 years of zesty singing and fiddling on the Grand Ole Opry. Acuff, known for such twangy tunes as "Wabash Cannonball" and "The Great Speck He was a gracious entertainer who always kept his dressing room door open backstage at the Opry where he warmly greeted visitors and swapped jokes. But more than anyone else, THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Roy Acuff, "the king of country music," gives a kiss to close friend Sarah Cannon, also known as Minnie Pearl, during a 1985 appearance at the Grand Ole Opry House in Nashville. Acuff died Monday at age 89. Page2A BUSINESS 5-8B CLASSIFIED 6-100 COMICS 6-7C COMMUNITY 1C DEATHS 4B LOCAL NEWS IB MOVIES 4C-5C OPINION 4-5A SPORTS 1-5P TELEVISION 4C Vol.

123, No. 329 23 Page By Ed Brackett STAFF WRITER The fine line between eyesore and affordable home split debate at a Monday hearing on the future of mobile homes in Asheville. Regulate mobile homes' aesthetics to preserve adjacent property values, some speakers suggested to City Council. But don't deprive modest income house hunters the opportunity to buy something they can afford, warn others. The Monday night hearing, at City Council chambers, was a cut- See Homes on page 6A led Bird," died at Baptist Hospital early Monday of congestive heart failure.

He was 89. Before Acuff entered the hospital Oct. 30, he sang on the Opry just about every weekend with characteristic, full-throated verve. Acuff also served as living link between today's billion-dollar country music industry and its more humble beginnings in the 1930s, when he joined a medicine-show string band that often played backwoods schoolhouses for a total gate of $25. Acuff had his first hit records when the recording business and radio were still in their infancy, and in 1938 joined the Grand Ole Opry broadcast that would make his name synonymous with that in stitution and country music during the 1940s.

As the popularity of country music grew, Acuff continued to be a central player in turning Nashville into "Music City," helping to See Acuff on page 7A 1992, Asheville Citizen-Times Publishing Co..