Tallahassee Democrat from Tallahassee, Florida • 1

tn tml CLOUDY Cloudy with a 30-per- cent chance of rain today. Highs will be in the upper 70s, lows tonight around 60. (Complete weather on page 2A.) 74th Year, No. 99 Regional Final Florida's Capital Newspaper Monday, April 9, 1979 15 Cents Thousands Residents were evacuated from a 5-mile-wide swath of Okaloosa County north to the Alabama border and from part of Santa Rosa County, civil defense officials said. There were no serious injuries, even though the explosion occurred only a quarter-mile from tiny Milligan population 1,500.

By late Sunday, the Santa Rosa residents were allowed to return to their homes, a county Sheriff's Department spokesman said. Chemical experts tested the air and determined it was safe, the spokesman said. Much of the area is wooded including about half of Blackwater River State Forest. By ROBERT RIVAS Democrat staff writer MILLIGAN More than 5,000 persons were evacuated near Milligan Sunday after three of 15 derailed tank cars exploded, igniting several others carrying hazardous chemicals. The derailment of the Louisville and Nashville Railroad train occurred on a wooden trestle just east of the Yellow River at 9:15 a.m., causing windows to rattle as far as 6 miles away.

Thick yellow fumes from a burning sulfur car spread over Northwest Florida west of Crestview, sending at least three persons to the hospital for observation. Derailment scene, pages 12 and 13A The dense forest prevented a fire-control team sent from Eglin Air Force Base from reaching the site for most of the day. By late Sunday, reports indicated the sulfur car continued burning but railroad ties beneath the trestle had burned themselves out. Most of the cars were equipped with escape valves, railroad officials said, that allowed small amounts of gas to escape as pressure from heat grew. (Please see DERAIL, page 12A) yr -lA -i I j.

I McLellan Fidelis I I YELLOW 1 Berrvdale river I TRAIN DERAILED Baker EVACUATED AREA 'q' Maureen Panus Mike Filher Smoke billows from derailment scene as Carlie Brown, evacuated to Crestview Senior High School, worries about her dogs and chickens left behind Fallout, cancer mingle in placid valley 4 Second in a series By JAMES COATES and ELEANOR RANDOLPH Chicago Tribune ST. GEORGE, Utah Irma Thomas, 72, is a housewife and an artist, not a scientist. Her survey one recent afternoon of the cancer victims in her neighborhood was done by counting friends and relatives on her fingers. There were 17 in all, within a block of her home. "Let's see, Wilford had cancer, and he's in Salt Lake City now, and his wife, Helen, died of stomach cancer.

Carl, across the street, died of throat cancer, and Ernie, down the way, died of it, and his wife has it now," she began, her voice rising with each name. She went on to list persons with brain cancer, breast cancer, leukemia and Hodgkin's dis ease. Her husband has cancer, and her youngest daughter has a thyroid problem that Mrs. Thomas could not bring herself to talk about that afternoon. "Dammit, that's my beautiful young daughter, and that damned stuff did it," she said.

The "stuff" Mrs. Thomas talked about was radioactive fallout tons of it. Clouds from at least 84 atomic tests from 1951 to 1962 floated mostly eastward and dropped their heaviest loads of dust on Nevada, southern Utah, and northern Arizona. Now, 28 years after the first announced tests, evidence being declassified shows that the thousands of people in those areas were not as safe as the Atomic Energy Commission kept telling them they were. A study completed in 1965 by the U.S.

Public Health Service showed 28 leukemia deaths in southern Utah when statistically that area could expect 19'. The study came under criticism by the Atomic Energy Commission and was never released. Dr. Joseph Lyon, an epidemiologist from the University of Utah, published a study in last February's issue of the New England Journal of Medicine showing that twice as many children who lived under the fallout in those years died of leukemia than would have been expected. The Center for Disease Control in Atlanta has surveyed more than 2,700 soldiers who watched the 1957 "Smoky" atomic test in Nevada at close range.

They have found eight leukemia cases, at least twice the average for this age group. "You know this is LDS country, Latter-day Saints," Elmer Pickett reminded a reporter recently in his office in St. George. "People out here mostly live healthly lives. Don't smoke or drink.

Most of them work outdoors, and before this we hadn't seen cancer very much." Pickett, who now runs Elmer's Hardware store, said there was no history of cancer in his family until 1960. That year his wife died of leukemia. In the spring of 1961, his 5-year-old niece died of leukemia. His sister, who lived in Mesquite, a small town across the state line from St. George, died of breast cancer in 1962.

"St. George got more fallout than any of the others because we were down in a hole," Pickett said of the valley that has been his family's home since the 1860s. Pickett and 546 other residents of Utah, Nevada, and Arizona believe so strongly that the government should pay for their dead or dying that they have each filed a claim against the Department of Energy, the agency that has taken over the Atomic Energy Commission. (Please see FALLOUT, page 3A) Index Bridge 10A Classified 7-12B Comics 10A Crossword 10A Editorial Columns 4.5B Local News Names and Faces 14A Obituaries 2B People 8 A Sports 4-7B Television 11 A Theaters 9A Weather 2A Graham ignored Scoma counsel Billy Carter trip tied to bid for Libya trade I 5 I ,4 IH Li MfkeFWwr By HOWARD WIREBACK Democrat staff writer In hastily expelling Larry Scoma from the Leon County School Board last month, Gov. Bob Graham overlooked a state worker who might have bolstered Scoma's defense to charges that he willfully violated election laws.

Scoma contends that a lawyer paid by the state to work with Florida election statutes could have helped in his defense if Graham had afforded Scoma a hearing. Scoma also contends he has other potential witnesses. There was no hearing. In fact, a press conference announcing Scoma's removal was called less than six hours after Graham received an investigator's report on Scoma's compliance with the election laws. Scoma, who was appearing on a local radio talk show, was not told about his removal until an hour after the press.

Neither Graham nor his aides had talked to him. Graham removed Scoma from the school board March 15, asserting that Scoma did not legally reside in the District 3 area that he represented. But Graham had not consulted Ronald A. Labasky, the lawyer for the state Division of Elections. Labasky said Friday that he had told Scoma incorrectly that school board candidates did not have to live in their districts when they qualified for office.

1 A central part of Graham's case is that Scoma was never a legitimate representative of District 3 because he did not reside there when he qualified for the office. Regarding some of his own actions that resulted in his removal, Scoma said, "I relied on my talk with Ron Labasky and on my reading. I went to the FSU law library." The 36-year-old Scoma is not a lawyer. He owns three Learn 'N Play child-care centers in Tallahassee. Labasky was not interviewed during the state attorney's investigation into the Scoma matter.

Labasky's testimony might have indicated that Scoma was genuinely confused about the residency requirements, took steps to get legal advice about those requirements and then to some extent acted on that advice. The day before Labasky was interviewed by The Democrat, Graham's general counsel, Robin Gibson, said he doubted Scoma's earlier contentions that he had seen a lawyer for advice about the residency requirements. "I doubt that he was given incorrect legal advice," Gibson said Thursday. "They (those Scoma talked to) were not acting as lawyers. "They were acting as clerks." Gibson said Graham did not arrange for a hearing for Scoma because "I felt that we had all the essential facts." Scoma said his September talk with Labasky reinforced his understanding that he did not have to move into District 3 until he assumed office.

(Please see SCOMA, page 3A) New York Times ATLANTA Billy Carter's trip to Libya last September was the beginning of a plan for a corporate connection with the government of Col. Moammar Khaddafy. People who went with President Carter's brother to Tripoli, Libya, have disclosed the plans for the connection. Several participants in the trip said they expected that the plan still might be carried out. The trip led to Billy Carter's role in escorting a Libyan group when it toured the United States in January.

Mario Lianza, an Atlanta real estate broker, helped arrange the trip to Libya. He said that a corporation was to have been set up to funnel Libyan investments to the United States. Carter was to have held the controlling interest in the corporation. OTHERS WHO WENT with Carter to Libya say that the corporation was to have been a non-profit foundation to encourage cultural exchanges. Carter has said that his only interest in Libya was to increase U.S.-Libyan friendship.

The Department of Justice is investigating whether Carter should register as an agent of the Libyan government. He legally would be required to register if he handled business or public relations for Libya. A Justice Department official said Carter had not replied when asked in January for details of his relationship with the Libyans. Carter, who is hospitalized in California for alcohol abuse, was not available for comment. John Parks of Americus, is Carter's lawyer.

He said that he had no knowledge of any incorporation plans and that no Libya-linked Carter corporation had been registered with the state of Georgia. But people on the trip to Libya and federal Loan to Carter warehouse probed, p. 3A intelligence sources provided these details about the trip and the incorporation plans: LIANZA SAID that in early 1978, he was visiting his native Catania, Sicily. On the trip, Mischehele Papa a lawyer who represented Sicilian and Arab business executives suggested that he try to get President Carter's brother to visit Tripoli. Lianza said he had been told that he could make substantial commissions on Libyan property investments in Atlanta if such a visit were arranged.

But he told Papa that he did not know the president's brother and could not carry out the mission. In late April 1978, Lianza said, he received a written invitation for Carter in a letter from Papa. Papa said the trip would be paid for by Libyans. Two participants estimated that the cost for each person on the Libya trip might have reached $5,000. Lianza and others on the trip said the Libyan government had paid for the entire cost of the trip.

1 THE TRIP RESULTED in a plan to have a Libyan delegation visit the United States. It also was from the trip, Lianza said, that a plan emerged for setting up a corporation in Georgia that would be a conduit for Libyan investment. Lianza said Billy Carter had promised him 12V2 percent of the corporation and had given him the following breakdown of its distribution: Billy Carter, 40 percent; Floyd Hudgins, a Georgia state senator, 12 to percent; Randy Coleman, Carter's frequent companion, 12 V4 percent; Tom Jordan, an Atlanta real estate broker, 12 percent; and a 10 percent part for which a recipient had not been named. Larry Scoma watches proceedings school board meeting March 28.