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About Oregon daily emerald. (Eugene, Or.) 1920-2012 | View Entire Issue (July 8, 1997)
I TUESDAY, JULY 8,1997 INDEX Opinion 2 Stranger Than Fiction 4 Sports 5 Classifieds 6 Horoscope 7 Crossword 7 TODAY Oregon Bach Festival’s On the House concert features Guy Few on tmmpet and piano at noon at the Hult Center. Free admission. INSIDE Stewart Smothers put the Ems up 1 -0 in the sec ond inning of Eugenes 7-4 victory over Yakima The biggest billboard advertising company in the Seattle area has agreed not to display tobacco ads WEATHER Mostly cloudy. High 75. Low 55. A SCHOOL DESTROYED Report an 4 arsonist 1-800-452-7888 MICHAEL CR ISP/Emerald A chain link fence blocks off the remains of Mohawk High School in Marcola, which burned down early Wednesday morning. Arson shocks Mohawk High School grads MARCOLA’S HISTORY OF FIRES ■ 1976: Marcola Elementary School, Wayne’s Market, Marcola’s only grocery store, and Marcola Tavern are destroyed by arson ■ 1981: Marcola Elementary School is j burned again, 3 homes are destroyed, The j Victory Theatre and the Buckboard Cafe and Tavern are destroyed by arson ■ 1982:12 suspicious fires occur in 14 months, and a man who residents sus- I pected of setting several of the fires is con- J victed of another unrelated arson ■ 1986: Three homes are set on fire in one evening ■ 1988: Marcola Tavern burns for third j time in 12 years— does not return to busi- 1 ness ■ FIRE: The district has not yet decided whether to rebuild Mohawk High School, which burned to the ground on Wednesday morning By Carl Yeh Associate Editor An early-morning fire last Wednesday destroyed Mohawk High School in Mar cola, a small town northeast of Eugene. The fire caused about $1 million in damage. Jim Brooker, the Marcola fire chief, con firmed that the fire was caused by arson and an investigation is in progress. “We’re just interviewing people about various times and what they’ve seen,” he said. “We right now don’t have any sus pects.” Some University students who graduat ed from Mohawk High School were in Marcola when they heard about the fire. “I was at my home in Marcola,” said sophomore Shawn Hoban, who graduat ed from Mohawk in 1995. “I heard about it eight hours after it hap pened,” Hoban said. “My first reaction was disbelief. I thought it was a bad joke.” However, he said he realized it was real when he drove by the burned school and looked at the remains. “It was basically this empty burnt hole where our high school used to be. It was pretty sad.” Junior Tammy Salman was house-sit ting for a friend when she learned about the fire. "My mom called me at 5:45 in the morning [after the fire],” Salman recalled. “She said the school burned down. I was Turn to FIRE, Page 3 Buildings donated for housing ■ HOUSES: The buildings are being offered to for-profit builders, non profit builders, and public agencies for use as long-term affordable housing By Michael Hines ^ Oregon Daily Emerald The City of Eugene will soon physically move six houses donated by the University for low-income housing. An intergovernmental agreement was signed in June to transfer the six buildings. Two were being used as University offices on Agate Street be tween 15th and 17th Avenues. The land under these two buildings will be used for the new law school project. The other four are in a cluster of seven homes on Moss and Villard Streets near East 15th Avenue. Of the remaining three, one will stay and be used by University Housing as a rental uWe don’t have a long term plan for [the space], other than to use it for University expansion. Chris Ramey University Planning Director home, one will be used for storage and crews and one will be moved to 17th Avenue between Moss and Columbia Streets. The land will temporarily be used by con struction crews for parking. “We don’t have a long term plan for it,” Chris Ramey, director of University plan ning, said, “other than to use it for University expansion.” The City of Eugene agreed to remove the four homes near 15th Avenue by Aug. 1 and the two buildings on Agate Street by Sept. 1. The six buildings, which range in size from two to four bedrooms, are being offered to for-profit builders, non-profit builders, and public agencies for use as long-term af fordable housing. Dates have not been set for the removal of the buildings. Pathfinder spacecraft sends back evidence of huge flood on Mars ■ EXPEDITION: The evidence that water once existed on Mars would support the theory that life was once sustainable on the red planet By Matt Crenson The Associated Press PASADENA, Calif. — Three days after landing on Mars, the Pathfinder spacecraft has yielded what scientists said Monday is unmistakable photographic evidence that colossal floods scoured the planet’s now barren landscape more than a billion years ago. “This was huge,” Pathfinder scientist Michael Malin said. “The comparable flood on Earth would be the flood that filled the Mediterranean basin.” Pathfinder’s photographs show boulders stacked by powerful currents, ripples in the rocky, salmon-pink landscape and stains left behind by long-evaporated puddles. The evidence that Mars was once inun dated is important because liquid water is essential for life. Geologists have known since the Viking missions 21 years ago that giant floods once swept the now-dry planet. But the Pathfinder pictures provide the most pow erful evidence yet. The water would have covered a swath of Mars hundreds of miles wide with hun dreds or thousands of feet of churning wa ter that reshaped the surface of the planet. Exactly how big the flood was is still being calculated. While Malin worked on his calculations, scientists wrote commands to send Pathfinder’s Sojourner rover on a ren dezvous with a rock named Yogi. With its nose right up against the rock, Sojourner was to snap the closest picture earthlings have ever seen of the Red Planet’s surface. At the same time it was to plant an X-ray spectrometer in the red soil to analyze its chemical content. The six-wheeled, remote-control vehicle the size of a microwave oven is the first movable craft ever sent to explore the sur face of another planet. The instrument has already examined two spots on the Martian surface. Results of those tests will be announced today. Sojourner has covered only a few feet of the Martian surface in its first two days on the planet. But even so, scientists are de lighted with its ability to reach rocks that Turn to EXPEDITION, Page 3 MARS INFO ■ PATHFINDER: A six-wheeled, re mote-control vehi cle the size of a mi crowave. Photos from Pathfinder show surface marks that greatly resemble those left by water ■ THE FUTURE: NASA plans to send out a craft in 2005 to collect rock samples
