As days go, a rather quiet news one.
Starting with word from Youngstown Florida where eight persons were killed and 67 were hospitalized after a freight train derailed early Sunday near this Florida panhandle community and a cloud of chlorine gas from a ruptured tank car spread across a nearby highway. The dead included three teen who had smashed at their car’s window in terror after the doors of their old auto jammed, trapping them as searing fumes seeped in. Other motorists were felled when trying to flee after the chlorine stalled their engines by cutting off the oxygen needed for combustion. “It was instant death,” Al Smith, an emergency troubleshooter for the Environmental Protection Agency from Atlanta, said. “The kind of death we’re talking about, it literally burns your lungs up.” One survivor owed his life to his scuba-diving gear, which he grabbed as fumes filled his vehicle.
Shifting winds sent swirling clouds of gas over new areas Sunday night, forcing residents to flee and seek refuge in emergency shelters.
And the Israeli cabinet decided today not to alter its controversial policy regarding Jewish settlements on lands captured from the Arabs during the 1967 war. The cabinet’s decision was announced after a lengthy eight-hour debate that began at a special cabinet session last Monday and which was continued at its regular weekly session Sunday. During the interval there was speculation here that Prime Minister Menachem Begin’s government would change its settlement policy for the time being in order to ease the growing strain the issue has caused between Israel and the United States.
Finally: Tourist buses rolled through Richard Nix- on’s seaside estate Sunday for a quick glimpse of the home and grounds of Casa Pacifica but neither the former president nor his wife emerged during the day. An estimated 8,000 persons visited the the grounds from 9 a.m. until the tours ended at 5 p.m., spending about 10 minutes on the compound area and two minutes and 15 seconds creeping by the house itself. The Nixons had opened the grounds as part of the observance of San Clemente’s 50th birthday.
A spokesman at the ex-president’s office said by telephone that Nixon and his wife, Pat, had spent the day at home but, as previously indicated, did not come out to wave at or greet the visitors.
And even though it fell on a Sunday, that’s just a little of what happened, this February 26, 1978 as presented by CBS Radio News on the Hour.
