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HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Goderich Signal-Star, 1979-08-16, Page 1Five-year-old Timmy McIver lends a helping hand to workers Tom Nigh, foreground, and Neil Illamn. They are installing ladder rungs as finishing touches on the Bayfield project. (photo by Cath Wooden) 132 YEAR -33 olice battle accident increase BY JEFF SEDDON The Huron Cpunty detachments of the Ontario Provincial Police released some alarming statistics this week showing traffic accidents, liqour seizures and in some areas traffic deaths increased dramatically in 1979. The four detachments. in the county released figures Tuesday which indicate liquor seizures increased nearly 30 percent this year while traffic accidents increased about 10 percent and fatalities increased 25 percent. Constable Bill Wilson, community relations officer with the Goderich OPP detachment, said Tuesday the police and the courts are initiating several plans to try to combat the problem. Wilson said OPP officers will . be making more use of radar on county and provincial highways while the courts have increased fines for liquor offenses and speeding. Wilson said the increased radar enforcment and steeper fines serve a dual purpose. Police hope to discourage people from risking their lives by mixing drinking and driving and also want people that don't mix the two to be able to drive in relative safety. Of the four county detachments Goderich and Wingham show the most dramatic increases in liqour offenses and accidents. From January to July of 1978 Goderich of- ficers issued 162 liquor violations while in 1979 that number increased to 189. In Wingham the 1978 figure was 123 and jumped to 250 in one year, an increase of over 100 percent. Goderich detachments investigated 175 accidents in the first seven months of 1978 and in the same period in 1979• were called to 215 accidents. Wingham officers dealt with 133 accidents last year and this year have responded to 164. Accidents in the Exeter and Seaforth patrol area increased very little in the past year but liquor seizures are up. Exeter had 127 last year and this year has 140. Seaforth, a one man detachment, had five seizures last year and this sewer year doubled that to 10. The most tragic statistic is highway deaths. Last year Goderich had six in its area and this year it has had nine. Exeter had three in 1978 and this year has two, Seaforth had none last year and has had one this year and Wingham had three both years. The total number of people that lost their lives in highway accidents is 15 in 1979, up three from last year. And police are concerned that if the practice of drinking, driving and speeding are not curtailed there will be more. Constable Wilson .pointed out that ap- proximately half of the fatal accidents are single car. The vehicles have gone off the road, rolled or struck something and the driver or passenger was killed. Police point to several habits drivers have that result in serious accident. Many county highways are gravel surface and drivers use excessive speed, are inexperienced drivers, don't pay enough attention to their driving or are under the influence of alcohol when they end their lives. Some off the most common reasons for multi - .car accidents are following too close,.improper turns and failing to stop where required. As an example of the heavy fines the courts hope will curb the problem Wilson explained that if a person had open beer in their car and was driving 120 kmh in an 80 kmh zone the fine would be $104 for the liquor plus $103 for speeding and six demerit points: Vandalism getting worse BY JEFF SEDDON Acts of vandalism against Huron County's 28 schools cost the countyboard of education just under $10,000 in the first six months of 1979. - That startling figure was given to the board Monday night along with another surprising statistic. Just under one third of the vandalism occurred in Clinton where Central Huron Secondary School was the vandals' main target. In an effort to determine the severity of vandalism in the county board administrators began charting incidents in January of 1979. The total cost and the school affected by each act of vandalism was recorded and the results of the reporting given to the board Monday night. Central Huron suffered the most damage by far. In the first three months of 1979 vandals caused $1,726.58 worth of damages through vandalism while in the last three months $1,275.25 worth of damage was done. The six month total of $3,001.83 in damages by far tops any other school. ti South Huron District High School was another favorite target for vandals. Damages. 1. THURSDAY, AUGUST 16, 1979 �r:•.t ����ss�e.... ;:ccs;`° • CENTS PER COPY Township -board agree on deal BY JEFF SEDDON The Huron County Board of Education agreed recently to deed just over an acre of land at Holmesville Public School to the township of Goderich provided the township use the land for a proposed community centre. In a telephone vote in July trustees unanimously agreed to give board owned land to the township on the basis thatit be used for a recreation centre. The board agreed to the deal because it hopes to have students at the elementary school make use of. the township centre. In an informal session with township council last month board trustee Shirley Hazlitt, director of education John Cochrane, suprin- tendent Don Kenwell and Holmesville principal Ron McKay outlined possible• advantages the. school would have if the township centre was adjacent to it. The board is interested in having its land used for the centre. because .of somewhat cramped conditions at the school. Holmesville School has a very small auditorium which forces the school to split its Christmas concert and graduation into two evenings to ac- comodate parents. Indoor athletic events are also limited because of the small auditorium. The township would benefit from the deal because it could shave construction costs by ,sharing septic services, water and main- tenance costs with the board. Both the board and the township are in agreement on the deeding and all that remains is ' approval of the ministry of education. Township council wanted an immediate response from the board because it hopes to begin construction on the project in the fall. The request for land at Holmesville was one of three the board dealt with Monday. The village of Hensall sent a letter to the board indicating a chunk of land on the playground at Hensall Public School was badly in need of attention. Village• council told the board if it was not planning on maintaining the land it may consider giving it back to the village. Zurich trustee Herb Turkheim told the board. he had walked the Hensa 11 play area and found no area not properly maintained, He said the grass may have been a few inches too long but it had been trimmed during the summer. Turkheim suggested the board tell village council it was not interested in land to the village. The Zurich trustee said the board may tell the village it may be interested in giving up the land if the village wanted to use it for some type of municipal. recreation facility. That suggestion sparked a discussion on the practice of the board giving its land away. The board had just finished deeding a small chunk of the Seaforth Public School playground to the town of Seaforth to permit a street to be con- structed. Goderich trustee Dave Gowe said the board should be looking at all theggsituations and finding out if it is not wasting money. He said in some cases benefits to the board may warrant giving land to municipalities but in others the land may be better sold than given up. He added that the board may be setting precedents • by giving land away and may find more requests such as the ones from Hensall - and Seaforth. Last year the board gave some land from Victoria Public School to the town of Goderich for street improvements in that town and traded a chunk of land from Colborne Public. deeding any Farmers go to aid of tornado victims BY JIM FITZGRALD Organizations and individualE•people alike have quickly come to the aid of the several thousand residents affected by last week's devastating tornado that swept through Woodstock, and parts of Oxford, Haldimad. and Jvo'rfolkcounties. of inflation, many won't be able to rebuild without aid. Monetary help so -far from the Clinton area includes a $500 donation from Clinton town • •. council, a $643 donation from the Monster Bingo fund, and a $200 donation from'the Huron County Pork Producers. As well, many in - Turn to page 9 • nTornado unhkel_ here Even though it's a busy time of the year for Y Huron County farmers, many have already volunteered to go down and help with the clean- • up of the estimated $150 million dollar damage caused by the storm, that suddenly struck at suppertime last Tuesday night, August 7, killing three people and wiping entire villages off of the map. Many people from Huron County have left their work and fields to help, as the Huron Federation of Agriculture is co-ordinating car pools to go to the devastated area. Federation member Adrian Vos said on Tuesday that 11 carloads contaning 44 men went down on Monday and a similar number were set to go Tuesday. The Mennonite Disaster Relief Fund organizers say that help will be needed at least until the end of next week, so more volunteer workers are needed. If you can be of any help, contact the Federation office between 9 am and 4 pm at 482- 9642, and it would be ,most helpful, says organizer Brenda McIntosh, if some workers could bring chain saws, and wrecking tools. Already, hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations have poured into the W000dstock area to help the victims, many of Whom lost a whole lifetime of work in a' few minutes. Insurance covers some of the loss, but because Last week tornados ripped through South- western Ontario leaving a trail of destruction in the Woodstock, Oxford Centre and ..Vanessa areas. There was little warning of the tornados and it has been estimated that as many as six touched down in the ravaged area. But residents of Goderich may be relatively safe from tornado activity. A tornado is a violently rotating column of air with upward spiraling winds. The column is generally small with the whirling base usually - less than one kilometre. ' There are more than 1,000 tornados across North America each year and more occur in the United States than anywhere else in the world. Tornados only form with violent thun- derstorm activity and Graham Campbell of the Goderich Weather Office stressed there must be an explosive development in the cloud. Violent thunderstorms carry cold air aloft and tornados only develop with warm, humid air on the land surface. Due to the proximity to the lake of this area, the cooling effect of lake`winds and lake water force tornados to seek warm air inland. "You could say we are geographically suited because without the Great Lakes there woulu be more tornados here," Campbell said. "The danger zone would be in the Dublin, Seaforth area and maybe even Clinton." Tornados move in a rapid South-West to North-East direction and may skip across,land Turn to page 9 • Court date set Tim Sheardown, 28, of Goderich, will appear in court August 23 for a preliminary hearing into a charge of using a firearm with an intent to wound. Sheardown was in court Monday facing that charge and two others including possession of a weapon dangerous to the public peace and use of a firearm while committing an indictable of fence. The charges stem from an incident May 23 when a man weilding a shotgun entered the Canada Manpower Centre in Goderich and ordered employees of the office into a storage room. The man then exchanged some fire with police surrounding the building and after a 12 hour standoff surrendered his weapon. No one was injured in the incident. School for fencing to permit widening of the county road adjacent to that school. Gower said the board shouldbe looking at all Turn to page 18 • to that facility totaled $1,386.82. Seaforth District High School suffered $787.96 while secondary schools in Goderich and Wingham suffered $450.20 and $411.34 respectively. Grey Central Public School.in Grey township was hardest hit amongst elementary schools. Damages to that school totaled $1075.08 in three incidents. The other 23 elementary schools had damages ranging from none to $750 with the average around $300. The board seemed unconcerned about either the cost of the vandalism or the number of Turn to page 18 • It's not our problem. it's yours ••. • BY JEFF SEDDON The Huron County Board of Education plans to investigate ways school officials can get rid of unauthorized persons in county schools. The board received a memo from the ministry of educatioh at its August session which dealt with methods teachers and prin- cipals can use to cope With persons on school property uninvited. The memo is attached to a lengthy report on the matter and the board, rather than attempt to delve into the report, sent it to its management committee to look into and come up with recommendations for policy. Director of education John Cochrane -told -the - - board the report could be useful to school personnel. He said ' teachers here sometimes have problems with people coming in the schools and misbehaving; He said former students come back to see a buddy or someone comes in the school to see a girlfriend and the uninvited guests give teachers a hard time. • Seaforth trustee John Henderson, a member of the management committee, did not agree that the subject was one the management committee should be dealing with. He felt if board personnel were having problems with uninvited guests the board's personnel committee should be looking into the matter. "Management has nothing to do with people molesting teachers that's a personnel problem," he told trustees. The report was given to the management committee. Byron Philipson does some grooming to his dog Brutus at sponsored by the Goderich Su Events Program at Judith Goo last minute the pet show Amer Special erham Park, Monday: After Byron got the clothes end hat . ad jested a d paraded Brutus in front of the judges he walked off with first place ib the costume cal egory. (photo by Dave Sykes)