The News Tribune from Tacoma, Washington • 12

A12 The News Tribune Sun Oct 16 1988 Oct 16 has history of being a date to remember In 1978 the College of Cardinals ended 456 years of Italian monopoly on the papacy by electing Cardinal Karol Wojtyla of Poland as Pope John Paid IL return to the wild 81 Residents of Mount Lebanon Pa got an alarming wake-up call before dawn Friday when a siren normally reserved for a nuclear attack was accidentally activated But few paid attention Only about 30 people out of the Pittsburg suburb's population of about 34400 called to find out what was going on said Fire Chief Steve Walther Walther said the alarm was accidentally bumped setting off the wavery wail shortly before 5:30 am He did not say who set it off Walther said the siren continued sounding for about three minutes as programmed also learned our cancel button doesn't Walther said Compiled from News Tribune news services by Rick Nelson operation In 1859 abolitionist John Brown led his raid on the arsenal at Harper's Ferry Va (now WVa) in what was to have triggered a slave uprising It didn't and Brown went to the gallows six weeks later In 1916 Margaret Sanger opened the first birth control clinic in the United States on the revolutionary some said blasphemous contention that the poor should be able to control the size of their families She later founded Planned Parenthood In 1946 10 Nazi war criminals who personified the worst of Hitler's outrages were hanged In 1962 the Cuban missile crisis began with President Kennedy ordering a blockade of Cuba that brought the United States and the Soviet Union as close to nuclear war as they have ever been In 1964 China became the fifth member of the nuclear club exploding its first atomic bomb If you woke up bored don't go back to bed quite yet Oct 16th has a better chance than most days of finding a significant niche in history and you'd feel awful if you missed it The date has started and ended eras scrambled the balance of power and sent us to the edge of war In 1793 Queen Marie Antoinette whose extravagance and them eat cake" attitude toward the poor made her a symbol and cause of the French Revolution went to the guillotine in Paris In 1815 Napoleon Bonaparte arrived at the island of Saint Helena off the West African coast where he was exiled after his loss to the British at Waterloo In 1846 a Boston dentist William Morton demonstrated the use of ether as an anesthetic during a jaw Wildlife experts say a 1 -year-old female bald eagle a species that normally shuns humans arrived on Saltspring Island BC two weeks ago for mating season and began courting local residents The 6-pound bird with a 6-foot wingspan terrorized islanders by dive-bombing them to say hello stealing their sandwiches or landing on their shoulders and sinking Its talons into their flesh The Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals in this island town northeast of Victoria finally caught the bird and sent it to a wildlife center like an overaggressive said Robin Campbell who runs the center Campbell is going to try to persuade the bird to Dukakis Continued from A1 fi going into the top of the eighth four runs behind and Michael Dukakis needs to keep the fans in their seats as much as he needs to score runs Democratic consultant Geoffrey Garin of our people will get discouraged and not turn To counter that danger Dach said Dukakis will return to the economic issues on which he prefers to campaign believe those issues are what concern Dach said we will use the events of the current week the staggering new trade deficit numbers and the anniversary of the stock market crash to raise the Ads have just begun running in which the governor talks directly to the camera about his concern for the problems of working families They will be joined campaign officials said by parallel ads attacking Bush for indifference and failure in economic fields what one official called worry be attitude lowing the final debate pointed to a Bush victory Dukakis campaign field directin' Charlie Baker said he found no of in a post-debate round of calls to state coordinators leading a Dukakis field staff of 3000 workers Other aides blamed the news media for a rush to that the debate sealed victory Many of the key states have been closely contested But position is clearly precarious fin any sign of a trend to Bush could trigger an avalanche Oregon Gov Neil Goldschmidt a Dukakis supporter said is at least even and probably a bit ahead here but given our history it would be amazing if we went for the Democrat while the country was voting Republican If it looks like over nationally a lot curity issues as Bush campaigns in Illinois Missouri Michigan New York and New Jersey Late Saturday the Dukakis strategists started working on a speech the Massachusetts governor will deliver Monday in Ohio as a keynote for his closing drive an effort said one aide to set a message that he can reiterate in his personal appearances and ads Democrats outside the Dukakis campaign said the nominee faces a daunting triple challenge with 23 days to go He must find a way to blunt the Republican advertising and stump-speech attacks that so far have controlled the campaign dynamic He must focus minds on his own plans for the presidency And he sas Louisiana and Georgia While the Dukakis forces were scrambling to regain their footing for the finish Bush strategists expressed confidence that the Republican nominee is on a straight path to winning will be no change in said campaign manager Lee Atwater adding that the campaign will continue to mix attacks on Dukakis with positive proposals from Bush in the same proportions that have built the current Bush lead Next week the advertising focus is scheduled to shift to national se World Series the football season and the fall foliage going into the top of the eighth four runs said Democratic consultant Geoffrey Garin Michael Dukakis needs to keep the fans in their seats as much as he needs to score Although virtually every poll fol must revive the fears of George Bush that have faded fast since Bush took the mantle of Republican leadership from President Reagan last summer For Dukakis to do any of those three things he first has to keep voters interested in the campaign despite the rival attractions of the Spur Continued from A1 problems it caused but for possible air pollution from vehicle exhaust A spur it was thought would make it easier for commuters and trucks bound for the port to pass through downtown and would improve air quality at the same time During the final two years of construction city traffic studies show that weekday traffic on Pacific Avenue studied on a 24-hour basis has been reduced today to about 20000 vehicles daily from about 30000 City traffic engineer Bill Pugh says traffic northbound on Pacific Avenue is busier during the morning rush hour into downtown then becomes busier southbound during the afternoon rush hour But the highway is expected to affect more than just the central business district spur is going to have an impact on people as far away as people come from to drive to says Loring that there is good access to downtown development should follow also going to open the entire southern shore of Commencement Bay up to Kevin Shoemaker who manages CI Shenanigans seafood restaurant on Ruston Way certainly hopes so Now that South King County residents have an alternative to the slower route over surface streets he thinks they may for the first time find it attractive to come to his restaurant live in Edmonds and when I go home now I no longer use Pacific Avenue to get on he said spur should help us in the summer I'm waiting to see whether it will have an effect in the slower winter Backers of the spur also think it could help the Port of Tacoma if a non-stop freeway spanning the Tide-flats and linking Marine View Drive and the 21st Street ramp were built The road estimated to cost up to 8150 million is currently the subject of low-level but intense negotiations Competing with the plan is another idea to rebuild the Blair Bridge and to improve 11th Street as the main east-west route across the Tideflats into downtown Deciding between the two plans may be as monumental a task as building the spur was For years city officials had trouble convincing Congress to provide any federal highway funds to build it said City Manager Erling Mork "Nobody thought it connected two he said of connecting two cities Congress saw it as a road that connected Tacoma to an interstate and because of that they refused to consider it We jist had to keep hammering away at Some thought the environmental challenges involved would be insur-'mountable were moving into the environmental-impact era during the planning stages without any said Thompson of us didn't even know how to draw up an environmental-impact As planning progressed Loring said state officials discovered toxic chemical spills from past train derailments along the spur route in which copper ores and other carcinogens had seeped underground The toxins eventually were re sit HuntorTha Nmn Tribune Art Gollahon doesn't worry about being bypassed by the spur if you run your business right customers will always find you he says Tacoma spur moved adding an estimated $5 million to the cost of the project Loring said As time passed construction of the spur seemed less and less likely to some always seemed like something that was going to happen but never said US Rep Norm Dicks (D-Bremerton) Dicks who with former US Sen Warren Magnuson generally shares most of the credit for getting the highway built By 1978 Dicks and other city officials had convinced Congress to consider the spur part of the federal interstate system to be attached to 1-5 This enabled the spur to qualify for 90 percent federal funding with the remaining 10 percent to be matched by state funds was the key decision to revitalizing downtown" Dicks says now spur gives the city the distinguished entrance it never had ple downtown than a new highway without a public destination point Perhaps more important than anything about the spur's impact is what people say it has done to enhance the City of image as Puget second city the city with a national reputation for foul air think it's one of the most beautiful views of any city in the Ralph Kerslake a former state district highway engineer says of what he sees while taking the spur into downtown almost makes the city look bigger than it really In changing the city's image some hope the spur will improve fortunes used to have to come into downtown through back says Thompson changed the entryway to something with class and style and that can be the beginning of turning some things around" opened it in phases its impact has been quite be says still moved traffic in the city I've received more complaint calls on minor street-widening projects than taken on the spur In fact I remember a single complaint about it" The spur did generate complaints but today even its harsher critics say it was not a total waste of money Tacoma needs improved access which the spur has says Larry Faulk the Republican candidate for Pierce County executive we still have a deteriorating downtown at the end of the In the past Faulk proposed that the funds used to build the spur might have been useful in developing Union Station as a rail transportation center He also thinks building a center" botanical gardens with surrounding shops in downtown would attract more peo Construction began in 1983 and generally proceeded on schedule and about 15 percent over budget plans About a week ago the southbound lanes from downtown were the last to be opened The highway runs south from Shuster Parkway to 1-5 It has northbound exits at Stadium Way as well as at 26th 21st 15th and A streets and southbound exits at 9th 13th and 21st streets As with many large highway projects construction of the spur caused havoc Once the current route was chosen it meant that Union Station had to be abandoned along with much of the nearby railroad track The state also had to pay for construction of the an Am Irak station on Puyallup Avenue to replace Union Station But considering its size and potential impact on the city Thompson thinks the spur was not as disruptive as it could have been that we built and rad HartTIm Naw Trflwna MSBMaraeBeiatimmKwi Aging Continued from A1 Whales Continued from A1 tute researchers said that the approach is to assume that research advances will occur and that they will propel medicine ahead at least at its current rate for the next 50 years If that happens it is reasonable to assume that mortality will continue to drop at least at the current rate of about 2 percent a year the researchers said as the mortality declines of the past two decades have been unexpected future declines of this same magnitude may also be unexpected but must be the researchers wrote In fact the researchers argue there is much evidence to suggest that some of the major diseases that now cause premature death will be reduced if not eliminated over the next half century a contention not shared by census experts The official census position is that because mortality rates have been slowing in recent years they will continue to do so shortly reaching a point where they are at a standstill with neither decreases nor Increases in the annual American death rate Since such an assumption could be wrong just as the USC and national institute assumption also could be wrong some census experts say privately and unofficially that they will be watching the situation carefully over the next few years for indications of change Price Bower a heiicoptor pilot for the North Slope Borough reaches out toward one of the three whales trapped in a shrinking blow hole near Barrow Alaska the North Slope Borough "You can walk right up to the edge and take a look been bumping up against the ice and their heads are scraped and cut Taking a closer look at them I don't think they have more than a week or so to Car-roll said Biologists have said they feared the breathing holes could freeze over or be slammed shut by the drifting ice wind had kind of changed yesterday coming more from the northwest which Car-roll said could close the major lead and if that doses then all our (rescue) efforts are pretty No icebreaking vessels are closer than 200 miles and suggestions ranging from blasting a trail through the ice to the open sea or tranquilizing the whales to somehow move them to freedom have been discussed and discarded biologists said The Alaska Army National Guard meanwhile authorized the use Saturday of a huge Skycrane helicopter which is capable of lifting up to 25000 pounds of cargo The helicopter is to be used to transport a from the Prudhoe Bay oilfields to where the whales are trapped near Barrow a the rates leveled off suggesting the researchers said that rates had reached a lower limit and that there was little likelihood of any further Without any apparent reason in 1968 mortality rates began to drop at a rate of about 2 percent a year Now mce again that drop has begun to wane suggesting to many population experts that finally America may have reached a limit beyond which it cannot reasonably expect to extend life It was on the basis of such assumptions that the Census Bureau and the Social Security Administration made their predictions for the year 2040 But the USC and institute researchers contend that to base projections for future populations particularly elderly populations on such uncertain assumptions is risky business Moreover the researchers note population projections rarely have proved to be an exact science largely because there is no way of predicting the vi it array of variables that can alter population figures dramatically Census experts for example never anticipated the surge in fertility rates following World War IL which resulted in the baby boom of the 1950s Even though they too could be wrong the USC and national insti nizing death With the stress been under the not going to be of a very good quality anyway a desire to put them out of their misery rather than an attempt to harvest Carroll said Arnold Brower a village elder and whaling captain said community leaders want to meet with government officials this weekend to sort out the options looks like they haven't rested for a long period of Brower said struggling there just like we are fighting for survival We have to do something Decide to put them to sleep or help them The people in Barrow who harvest a small number of larger bow-head whales each season for food and other uses have begun talking about the possibility of killing the whales if they remain trapped much longer don't want to make any attempt to speak for everybody up here but couple of (whaling) boat captains I talked to said if the whales can't be gotten out of the ice hate to watch them Carroll said rather quickly and efficiently put them out of their misery than watch them die a slow and ago distance of about 200 miles said Mike Haller a Guard spokesman be heading north at first light (Sunday)" Haller said probably will take us all day to move from (Anchorage) to Prudhoe Then we'll go to work to get the barge to Barrow We could be there sometime Monday If things go as planned the icebreaking barge would be used to clear a path to open water Haller said "We don't know how much time we have but we understand it's (situation) getting pretty critical" Haller said.