Firemen work to clear debris away from the fire
gutted Hirons Drug Store on Franklin Boulevard
Photo by James Link
Friday morning. The store was destroyed in a blaze
earlier that morning. Cause of the fire is unknown.
Hirons fire-cause unknown;
affects jobs, business, union
By DENNIS PFAFF
Of the Emerald
“Frustration” is the word
which sums up the aftermath of
the Hirons Drug Store fire, which
occured early Friday morning.
Arson is being investigated as a
possible cause of the blaze which
completely destroyed the street
level section of the Franklin
Boulevard store and is estimated
to have caused about $250,000 in
damage.
Aside from the monetary loss,
however, is the fact that eight to
ten people, employees of the
store, are now out of work.
Added to this, is the fact that the
Retail Clerks Union, which has
been on strike at the store for the
last five months, has seen its
efforts go to waste.
Jim McCormick, presiaem <x
the Union local 201 stated, “After
all of those hours they (the
picketers) put in, in the cold and
rain, to see it all go to waste, is
just really a shame.” Mc
Cormick expressed sympathy for
John Hirons, owner of the store,
saying, “We hate to see anything
like this happen to anyone.” He
also said that no decision had
been made on whether to con
tinue the strike at the Hirons
store at 185 E. 18th St. No
strikers were present at the store
this weekend, however. Ttie
major issue in the strike had been
the matter of union security at
the Franklin Blvd. store.
Hirons himself issued a plea to
area retailers by saying, “I’m not
going to be able to assimilate
eight or ten employees into the
18th street store, and they need a
place to work.” Saturday, he
said he had been calling stores as
far away as Cottage Grove to find
jobs for the displaced employees.
Hirons said that the full value
of the loss won’t be known until
insurance investigators have
assessed how much merchandise
can be salvaged from the
basement portion of the store.
Another complication is that the
drug store was connected to the
McKay’s grocery store, and that
both establishments were insured
as a single unit. Hirons said he
will make no decision cm whether
to rebuild until after the in
surance report is received.
Lloyd Davis, a detective with
the Eugene Police Department,
who is in charge of the in
vestigation into the cause of the
fire, said “There’s so much
debris, we’re still shovelling
through it to find out where the
fire started.” He said that the
lack of tar and smoke on the
windows indicated that the fire
consumed the building very
quickly, which is one charac
teristic of an arson-started fire.
However, he also said an arsonist
would have been prevented from
entering the building through the
doors, since firemen repo.ted
that they were all locked when
they arrived.
Davis indicated that the fire
would not be an easy one to in
vestigate, saying, “One of the
bad things about a drug store, is
that there is so much flammable
material inside that it’s difficult
to determine what started the fire
and just what kept it burning.”
He said that crime lab reports
should be back soon and in
dicated that the investigation will
be handled “like any major fire.
We always assume arson until we
are satisfied that it isn’t.”
He said that more definite
information should be available
by the end of the week. He also
said that he was unaware of a
report that a gas company
representatives had been
checking the Hirons premises for
leaks about ten days before the
fire.
Nevertheless, as a result of the
fire, the unemployment rolls
have risen, a union has been
stymied, and Eugene has lost a
business. “Frustration is a good
word to use,” was all Jim Mc
Cormick could say in conclusion.
LTD open to cutting
bus fares for students
If the University, student government and Lane Transit District
administrators can hammer out an agreement soon, University
students may begin to reap the harvest of a more convenient and less
costly mass transit system by next fall.
LTD planner Dave Reynarson, University planner Harry Van
Oudenallen, Survival Center Co-director John Eliassen and OSPIRG
representative Dan Mulholiand met Friday to discuss the possibilities
of increasing service and reduction of fares to 10 or 15 cents per ride
for students, the implemention of a pass system which would allow
students unrestricted use of the buses in return for a quarterly or
yearly subsidy paid to LTD, extended use of shuttles from the down
town transfer point to the University and the beginning of service from
certain areas of Eugene-Springfield direct to the University.
THE TWO MAIN stumbling blocks to any improvement of the
existing system are the present limited capacity of the transit district
and the necessity of obtaining additional funding from the University.
Dave Teynerson of LTD thought that the first problem could be sur
mounted, however.
“Given enough lead time, we can carry a fantastic load,” he ex
plained. While many buses are overloaded already, Reynerson
believes that the system could handle the increased loads by next fall.
He said that the transit district hopes to increase its daily capacity
from 16,000 to 20,000 riders within six months through the purchase of
more used vehicles. If the University did begin to generate more
riders through a reduced fare program, the LTD planner is confident
that the system would adapt.
“While we don t have any extra capacity right now, we ve always
been able to provide for extra capacity when it is needed,” he said. If,
however, the University were to opt for a pass system which would
allow students to board buses simply by flashing their I.D. cards, the
demand on LTD would necessitate the purchase of a number of new
vehicles. Since it takes 12 to 18 months from the time of order until
LTD receives new buses, the transit district would have to order now
to accomodate a large influx of riders in fall 1975.
AT PRESENT, REYNERSON said, LTD is readying an order. If
University hopes to make additional use of the system, LTD will have
to increase the size of its request. For these reasons, Dave Reynerson
would prefer to see a small increase in ridership for fall 1974(perhaps
fueled by reduction in token cost) and a larger increase in fall 1975.
If more students did begin to use the buses, LTD would accelerate
its plans to provide shuttle service between the mall and the
University throughout the day and move more quickly to set up direct
routes from areas of off-campus student concentration (such as south
Eugene) to the campus. At present, most travelers must take the
indirect path of going downtown and transferring to a University bus.
Lane Transit District is, however, reluctant to proceed with plans
for improved service for students until it receives some initiative from
the University. So far, Reynerson claims, it has received little. The
Legislature has exempted the University, Eugene-Springfield’s single
largest employer, from paying the payroll tax which funds LTD. If the
University were not exempt it would pay in the neighborhood of
$141,000 annually. Because the University does not contribute to the
transit system,Reynerson explained, some people in the area feel that
“money from the local business community is being used to subsidize
University students.
“If the University would take the initiative, I think it would carry
a lot of weight (in promoting a more comprehensive transit system),”
conjectured Reynerson.
In an effort to remedy the current impasse, representatives of the
survival center, OSPIRG, ASUO and the administration will meet
Monday morning. Among the possibilities they will discuss are the
subsidization of student fares by the ASUO or the Administration.
While it is unknown how much a “free” system would cost (because it
is not known how many students the buses would have to carry), it has
been computed that if the University sold 25,000 tokens per week it
would cost $50,000 a year to reduce the price of a token to a nickel or
$100,000 to bring the price of a ride down to a dime.
Conduct Code may face revision
Clark criticizes court acquittal
Hie Student Conduct Code may
be in for a revision or two as a
result of University President
Clark’s recent criticism of the
Student Court’s acquittal of two
University students charged with
disrupting a University
sponsored activity.
The students, Tony Gregg and
Esaway Amasha, were acquitted
of the charges of “intentionally
obstructing and disrating” the
February 15 luncheon of the
Oregon Newspaper Publishers
Association conference held in
the EMU Ballroom.
Clark, in a statement released
last week, called the court’s
decision “most disappointing’’
and said “if such intrusive
conduct were viewed as per
missible under the code, then no
campus event would be safe from
harassment or disruption.”
He went on to say that “if the
code cannot be construed to
reach such conduct as occurred
on February 15, then th/e code
itself must be strengthened and
improved. I shall call on the
faculty...to give prompt study to
remedying the code in all
necessary respects.”
Clark said Sunday that he has
been reeking advice on the
necessity and manna* in which
the code could be amended
from faculty members. He said
the present code could be
amended through faculty
legislative channels or the
Student Conduct Committee,
which reviews all decisions of the
Student Court, could go back to
the Student Court with a different
interpretation of what constituted
a “significant disruption.” In
either case, said Clark, the
acquittal of Gregg and Amasha
cannot be reversed.
The two students responded to
Clark’s written statement Friday
by issuing a statement of their
own. In it, they said Clark’s ef
forts to strengthen the conduct
code “is proof that Clark’s in
terests are not with the student
and human interest but rather
with the status quo.”
Gregg and Amasha, both
members of the Eugene
Liberation Coalition Movement,
called on Clark to “abandon this
reactionary way of solving
problems and open a line of
communication with the students
to help the farmworkers in their
struggle.”