Published in the Current
Supporters of President Georg e W. Bush and those critical of his policies lined Black Point Road Aug. 3, hoping to catch a glimpse of the president and show their feelings.
The largest group was between 60 and 80 protesters of all ages, organized by Peace Action Maine and the Maine chapter of Veterans for Peace. The main theme was “no new war in Iraq,” according to Greg Field, the executive director of Peace Action Maine.
“The administration is clearly moving towards war,” Field said. He urged the government to seek other alternatives to economic sanctions and bombing. “Support for the people of Iraq is not support for Saddam Hussein,” Field said.
The protest was originally scheduled to take place at the corner of routes 77 and 207, but was moved, at the request of Scarborough police, to the driveway of the Scarborough Sanitary District, opposite the entrance to Scarborough Beach State Park.
Field said he had no objection to being moved closer to the presidential event, and said the police had also told protesters to stay on one side of the road, rather than lining both sides.
Field said a number of Bush administration decisions needed more attention, including plans to invade Iraq. “Terrorism is impossible to fight by landing troops,” Field said, charging Bush with “using the tragedy of 9/11 as a pretext” for attacking Saddam Hussein.
He also said new laws intended to increase domestic security needed review. “The Bush administration isn’t making us more secure,” Field said.
He suggested the government enter negotiations with the Iraqi government to deal with the poverty in that country, and to begin economic development programs in Iraq.
Elizabeth, a protester from Cape Elizabeth who asked that her last name not be used, said she opposed military action in Iraq. “I don’t think it’s a good solution to the problem,” she said.
She encouraged the U.S. to send food and medicine to Iraq and back off military spending, as well as working with other world leaders to deal with global social issues.
Jack Bussell of Portland, a retired U.S. Army warrant officer and board member of the Maine chapter of Veterans for Peace, said he wanted to “abolish war as an instrument of foreign policy. ”
Arguing that war should serve a higher purpose, Bussell said, “Veterans have given their lives in battle in the hopes that their sacrifice will advance the cause of world peace.”
He said a huge segment of the U.S. economy serves the military-industrial complex, and suggested that factories convert their production for peaceful means.
“Suppose Bath Iron Works built Stealth hospital ships,” Bussell said, that could be used to “sneak into” foreign harbors and treat sick children.
He said the nation had a “unique opportunity” after Sept. 11 to “step back and look at the causes” of violence and terrorism. He then suggested that the entire nation take a “30-day retreat” to “sit back and look at ourselves,” to answer the question, “what is America all about?”
The protest attracted honks of support from passing cars and peace signs from people in SUVs.
It also found its share of counterprotesters. One man slowly cycled by saying repeatedly, “Anyone wearing petroleum products, please put down your sign.”
Another man ran up and down the line carrying an American flag and a “Steven Joyce for Congress” sign, chanting “We support the president.”
Elsewhere on Black Point Road, people gathered in smaller groups on their front lawns, setting out chairs to try to get a glimpse of the president as his motorcade went by.
And though Bush arrived by boat from Kennebunkport, there was a motorcade of large black SUVs that went down the road, as people waved from the roadside.
One family parked their RV in the front of their driveway, to be able to sit in air-conditioned comfort during the wait for the motorcade.
As the afternoon wore on, Scarborough police, acting at the direction of the Secret Service, closed off a large section of Black Point Road, from the intersection with Route 77. Several Prouts Neck residents, as well as a few guests with invitations to the presidential event, were stuck outside the security blockade for nearly 45 minutes.
Residents and local police officers had been told that morning that residents would be allowed down into Prouts Neck throughout the afternoon, but that changed with a Secret Service directive that traffic should stop whenever the president moved around the event area.
After a wait in which several people got frustrated but remained calm, residents were allowed to proceed down Black Point Road, while would-be beachgoers and others continued to be stopped.
At about 5 p.m., the motorcade made its way back out Black Point Road and headed south on Route 1, again without the president on board.
Released from duty for the afternoon, three Secret Service agents assigned to the president’s father in Kennebunkport grabbed a bite to eat at the McDonald’s in Oak Hill.
Their three black SUVs were parked out front, two with Texas license plates and a third with Maine plates.
“Just trying to catch a quick bite,” one of them said.
Thursday, August 8, 2002
Rabid fox bites child
Published in the Current
A rabid fox bit a 2-1/2 year old girl Tuesday at a day-care center in Cape Elizabeth.
Just before 5 p.m. Tuesday, a fox ran from a brushy area 20 feet from Funny Farm Daycare on Old Ocean House Road. Ten children were playing in the driveway, supervised by two adults. The fox ran directly to the group and bit the girl on her arm, breaking the skin. The fox then ran back into the underbrush between the day-care and the yard next door.
Cape Elizabeth Rescue responded and transported the child to a Portland hospital.
According to the day-care owner, she was treated and released from the hospital and is now home with her family. Two day-care teachers, who may have been exposed to fox saliva, also are being treated.
Officers Vaughn Dyer and Mark Dorval were able to locate what they believed was the same fox. When found, the fox charged the officers, who shot it. The body is now in a state lab in Augusta.
The lab confirmed on Wednesday that the fox was rabid, which came as no surprise to Cape police Capt. Brent Sinclair. “That’s just not normal behavior” for a fox, he said.
Scott Rockwell, an owner of the day-care, said he has seen foxes in the past, but has never had any problems with them.
Ironically, he said, “I had just taken the kids on a walk” on the town greenbelt trail behind the day-care property. The kids had gone inside for a drink and then headed outside to play in the driveway, he said.
Rockwell said that parents had been understanding about the event, and though the bite victim was not at the day-care the following day, “everyone (else) brought their kids back here today. ”
Rockwell said the girl was fine and at home with her parents on Wednesday.
He said the day care routinely talks about animal safety with the children in its care, teaching them “the importance of staying together in the woods.” He added that people encountering foxes should be wary.
“If you see one, don’t go near him,” Rockwell said.
Sinclair said the teachers at Funny Farm had done everything right by taking the kids inside, getting medical treatment and notifying parents. “They did exactly what they should have done,” he said.
Dr. Jon Karol, an emergency medical physician and director of Maine Medical Center’s Brighton First Care facility, said the standard treatment for a human bitten by a rabid animal is two shots on the first visit, both given in the upper arm. One shot is rabies immune globulin, given just once in a dose
based on the patient’s weight. The other shot is a rabies vaccine.
The patient also has to return four times over the month following exposure for additional doses of the rabies vaccine, Karol said.
A rabid fox bit a 2-1/2 year old girl Tuesday at a day-care center in Cape Elizabeth.
Just before 5 p.m. Tuesday, a fox ran from a brushy area 20 feet from Funny Farm Daycare on Old Ocean House Road. Ten children were playing in the driveway, supervised by two adults. The fox ran directly to the group and bit the girl on her arm, breaking the skin. The fox then ran back into the underbrush between the day-care and the yard next door.
Cape Elizabeth Rescue responded and transported the child to a Portland hospital.
According to the day-care owner, she was treated and released from the hospital and is now home with her family. Two day-care teachers, who may have been exposed to fox saliva, also are being treated.
Officers Vaughn Dyer and Mark Dorval were able to locate what they believed was the same fox. When found, the fox charged the officers, who shot it. The body is now in a state lab in Augusta.
The lab confirmed on Wednesday that the fox was rabid, which came as no surprise to Cape police Capt. Brent Sinclair. “That’s just not normal behavior” for a fox, he said.
Scott Rockwell, an owner of the day-care, said he has seen foxes in the past, but has never had any problems with them.
Ironically, he said, “I had just taken the kids on a walk” on the town greenbelt trail behind the day-care property. The kids had gone inside for a drink and then headed outside to play in the driveway, he said.
Rockwell said that parents had been understanding about the event, and though the bite victim was not at the day-care the following day, “everyone (else) brought their kids back here today. ”
Rockwell said the girl was fine and at home with her parents on Wednesday.
He said the day care routinely talks about animal safety with the children in its care, teaching them “the importance of staying together in the woods.” He added that people encountering foxes should be wary.
“If you see one, don’t go near him,” Rockwell said.
Sinclair said the teachers at Funny Farm had done everything right by taking the kids inside, getting medical treatment and notifying parents. “They did exactly what they should have done,” he said.
Dr. Jon Karol, an emergency medical physician and director of Maine Medical Center’s Brighton First Care facility, said the standard treatment for a human bitten by a rabid animal is two shots on the first visit, both given in the upper arm. One shot is rabies immune globulin, given just once in a dose
based on the patient’s weight. The other shot is a rabies vaccine.
The patient also has to return four times over the month following exposure for additional doses of the rabies vaccine, Karol said.
Quick work stops gas spill contamination
Published in the Current
A fuel truck spilled 3,500 gallons of gasoline in a Pleasant Hill Road parking lot just before 7 a.m., Aug. 6, briefly threatening the Nonesuch River and the Scarborough Marsh. But quick work by a crew from Maietta Construction kept the spill from spreading very far.
At 6:42 a.m., the Scarborough Fire Department got a call that a tanker truck had hit a pillar protecting fuel valves and had sprung a leak.
The truck, owned by Abenaqui Carriers of Windham, was carrying both diesel fuel and gasoline, and had just finished making a diesel delivery to the Penske truck leasing business on Pleasant Hill Road.
As it was pulling away, the truck hit a concrete pillar, damaging the discharge manifold the truck uses to dispense fuel, according to Fire Chief Michael Thurlow.
Gasoline from that compartment of the truck began to spill, and the emergency valve, also damaged in the collision, didn’t work properly to cut off the flow.
Neil Maietta was at the Maietta Construction company just next door when he heard the accident happen. “We saw gas coming out of a tank truck like it was coming out of a fire hydrant,” he said. “I didn’t know when it was going to stop coming out.”
About 2,000 feet from the spill site is the opening to a culvert with no outlet except the Scarborough Marsh. Maietta said his nephew Mikey and other Maietta workers were able to put a big pile of clay and sand into the culvert’s opening before the gas flowed through.
“We had a lot of pressure but everybody stayed pretty calm,” Maietta said. “My guys, they reacted really well.”
Thurlow said their efforts “certainly saved a substantial environmental impact.”
The first firefighters on the scene decided there was a large explosive hazard and asked Central Maine Power to shut off the power. Electricity was cut off for much of Pleasant Hill Road and a large section of Route 1.
Power was restored to most of the area when the danger of explosion diminished, Thurlow said. A couple of buildings near the spill were without power for several hours.
South Portland firefighters brought over some of their spill containment equipment, which they have on hand in case of an incident at the tank farm there, including a foam truck and booms to help control the flow.
Clean Harbors Environmental Services, a South Portland environmental remediation firm, brought over a large amount of pumping equipment to empty the catch basins and then the pool created at the base of the dam.
When Maietta’s crew had filled in the culvert, it was dry, without even any water running through. He took Clean Harbors workers back to the dam and found the dam had worked.
“There was two feet of pure gasoline at the dam site,” Maietta said.
Also on scene were people from the U.S. Coast Guard, the state Marine Patrol and the state Department of Environmental Protection.
Most of the firefighters left when the DEP deemed the scene safe around noon, according to Deputy Fire Chief Glen Deering. While gas fumes had been thick in the area earlier in the day, air quality tests showed safe levels before the fire crews departed.
Some firefighters did remain on the scene, though, pumping water into the drainage area just north of the Hannaford Bros. office building, working to flush out remaining gas from the dense underbrush.
There may be further activity required to clean up the site, Deering said, but that would be under the jurisdiction of the Department of Environmental Protection.
Jon Woodard, DEPsupervisor for response services for Southern Maine, said the cleanup should be relatively quick. Workers went through the underbrush area to be sure they had collected all of the gas possible. The foliage will probably die off this year, but will return next year, Woodard said.
Work was expected to be completed the evening after the spill, Woodard said. Further evaluation might result in additional cleanup work, he said, but he expected it to be a small-scale cleanup over the long term.
“What’s dissolved in the water and what’s a sheen really can’t be cleaned,” Woodard said. Most gasoline in a spill, he said, evaporates before it can be cleaned up by remediation crews.
Sampling of the water upstream and downstream of the spill will help the DEP determine what contamination has occurred, he said.
Abenaqui Carriers, Woodard said, is considered the responsible party in the incident, and has “stepped up” and is paying for the cleanup.
Woodard said he thought the truck could have held more gas, possibly three times as much as spilled, and noted that the “quick thinking” of the Scarborough firefighters and the Maietta crew in building the dam helped quite a bit.
“It could have been a lot worse,” Woodard said.
A fuel truck spilled 3,500 gallons of gasoline in a Pleasant Hill Road parking lot just before 7 a.m., Aug. 6, briefly threatening the Nonesuch River and the Scarborough Marsh. But quick work by a crew from Maietta Construction kept the spill from spreading very far.
At 6:42 a.m., the Scarborough Fire Department got a call that a tanker truck had hit a pillar protecting fuel valves and had sprung a leak.
The truck, owned by Abenaqui Carriers of Windham, was carrying both diesel fuel and gasoline, and had just finished making a diesel delivery to the Penske truck leasing business on Pleasant Hill Road.
As it was pulling away, the truck hit a concrete pillar, damaging the discharge manifold the truck uses to dispense fuel, according to Fire Chief Michael Thurlow.
Gasoline from that compartment of the truck began to spill, and the emergency valve, also damaged in the collision, didn’t work properly to cut off the flow.
Neil Maietta was at the Maietta Construction company just next door when he heard the accident happen. “We saw gas coming out of a tank truck like it was coming out of a fire hydrant,” he said. “I didn’t know when it was going to stop coming out.”
About 2,000 feet from the spill site is the opening to a culvert with no outlet except the Scarborough Marsh. Maietta said his nephew Mikey and other Maietta workers were able to put a big pile of clay and sand into the culvert’s opening before the gas flowed through.
“We had a lot of pressure but everybody stayed pretty calm,” Maietta said. “My guys, they reacted really well.”
Thurlow said their efforts “certainly saved a substantial environmental impact.”
The first firefighters on the scene decided there was a large explosive hazard and asked Central Maine Power to shut off the power. Electricity was cut off for much of Pleasant Hill Road and a large section of Route 1.
Power was restored to most of the area when the danger of explosion diminished, Thurlow said. A couple of buildings near the spill were without power for several hours.
South Portland firefighters brought over some of their spill containment equipment, which they have on hand in case of an incident at the tank farm there, including a foam truck and booms to help control the flow.
Clean Harbors Environmental Services, a South Portland environmental remediation firm, brought over a large amount of pumping equipment to empty the catch basins and then the pool created at the base of the dam.
When Maietta’s crew had filled in the culvert, it was dry, without even any water running through. He took Clean Harbors workers back to the dam and found the dam had worked.
“There was two feet of pure gasoline at the dam site,” Maietta said.
Also on scene were people from the U.S. Coast Guard, the state Marine Patrol and the state Department of Environmental Protection.
Most of the firefighters left when the DEP deemed the scene safe around noon, according to Deputy Fire Chief Glen Deering. While gas fumes had been thick in the area earlier in the day, air quality tests showed safe levels before the fire crews departed.
Some firefighters did remain on the scene, though, pumping water into the drainage area just north of the Hannaford Bros. office building, working to flush out remaining gas from the dense underbrush.
There may be further activity required to clean up the site, Deering said, but that would be under the jurisdiction of the Department of Environmental Protection.
Jon Woodard, DEPsupervisor for response services for Southern Maine, said the cleanup should be relatively quick. Workers went through the underbrush area to be sure they had collected all of the gas possible. The foliage will probably die off this year, but will return next year, Woodard said.
Work was expected to be completed the evening after the spill, Woodard said. Further evaluation might result in additional cleanup work, he said, but he expected it to be a small-scale cleanup over the long term.
“What’s dissolved in the water and what’s a sheen really can’t be cleaned,” Woodard said. Most gasoline in a spill, he said, evaporates before it can be cleaned up by remediation crews.
Sampling of the water upstream and downstream of the spill will help the DEP determine what contamination has occurred, he said.
Abenaqui Carriers, Woodard said, is considered the responsible party in the incident, and has “stepped up” and is paying for the cleanup.
Woodard said he thought the truck could have held more gas, possibly three times as much as spilled, and noted that the “quick thinking” of the Scarborough firefighters and the Maietta crew in building the dam helped quite a bit.
“It could have been a lot worse,” Woodard said.
Thursday, August 1, 2002
Kids design race shirts
Published in the Current
Come race day, Beach to Beacon competitors and volunteers, as well as participants in the children’s race, will be wearing shirts designed by Cape students.
The T-shirt designs were developed in a contest open to all Cape Elizabeth students, many of whom participated through their art classes.
Ten-year-old Kylie Tanabe created the design for the children’s T-shirts as part of her fourth-grade class last year, with Pond Cove School teacher Ogden Williams.
“He got us going on drawing the lighthouse,” Tanabe said. She also takes art lessons from her grandmother, and prefers to do tole painting, copying and adapting photographs and paintings. She had painted a lighthouse as a gift for her parents, and drew a similar lighthouse, adding in a small house and other elements to resemble Portland Head Light.
Her father, Keith, said Kylie is “fearless” and always ready to try new things. She recently went on her first upside-down roller-coaster and grinned widely when asked what she thought of it. She will be running the kids’ one-kilometer race on Saturday.
Joanna Wexler will be a senior next year at CEHS, and designed the logo that will be printed on the runners’ and volunteers’ shirts. Her design was also an art class project from school.
In the class, with high school art teacher Richard Rothlisberger, students created thumbnail sketches and then fleshed out their ideas in various mediums.
“We went through many stages,” Wexler said. “It was really open to what you wanted to do.”
Wexler, a cross-country runner and lacrosse player at CEHS, will not run the race this year, as she tried to register after the field was full, but will volunteer.
Her design includes Portland Head Light, as well as a wave and a path with footsteps. “I definitely wanted to include the beacon,” Wexler said.
Come race day, Beach to Beacon competitors and volunteers, as well as participants in the children’s race, will be wearing shirts designed by Cape students.
The T-shirt designs were developed in a contest open to all Cape Elizabeth students, many of whom participated through their art classes.
Ten-year-old Kylie Tanabe created the design for the children’s T-shirts as part of her fourth-grade class last year, with Pond Cove School teacher Ogden Williams.
“He got us going on drawing the lighthouse,” Tanabe said. She also takes art lessons from her grandmother, and prefers to do tole painting, copying and adapting photographs and paintings. She had painted a lighthouse as a gift for her parents, and drew a similar lighthouse, adding in a small house and other elements to resemble Portland Head Light.
Her father, Keith, said Kylie is “fearless” and always ready to try new things. She recently went on her first upside-down roller-coaster and grinned widely when asked what she thought of it. She will be running the kids’ one-kilometer race on Saturday.
Joanna Wexler will be a senior next year at CEHS, and designed the logo that will be printed on the runners’ and volunteers’ shirts. Her design was also an art class project from school.
In the class, with high school art teacher Richard Rothlisberger, students created thumbnail sketches and then fleshed out their ideas in various mediums.
“We went through many stages,” Wexler said. “It was really open to what you wanted to do.”
Wexler, a cross-country runner and lacrosse player at CEHS, will not run the race this year, as she tried to register after the field was full, but will volunteer.
Her design includes Portland Head Light, as well as a wave and a path with footsteps. “I definitely wanted to include the beacon,” Wexler said.
Monks calls for corporate responsibility
Published in the Current
Part-year Cape resident and former Republican U.S. Senate candidate, Bob Monks, spoke out against corporate accounting scandals July 29 at a Portland campaign event for Democratic Senate candidate, Chellie Pingree. He called the current financial, accounting and legislative climate “a watershed in America.”
Speaking alongside Bevis Longstreth, a former member of the Securities and Exchange Commission and also a part-year Maine resident, Monks called for Democratic control of both houses of Congress, saying it was the only way corporate financial reform would truly happen.
Monks was a Reagan appointee at the U.S. Department of Labor and has been a member of the boards of several public companies. A Republican, he challenged now Sen. Susan Collins in 1996, and now is supporting Pingree. “Who you vote for makes a difference,” Monks said.
He said the American economy has succeeded as a direct result of the trust investors had in publicly traded companies. “That has enabled our standard of living,” Monks said. But corporate and government irresponsibility has badly hurt the credibility of the system.
“We may have killed the golden goose,” Monks said.
He roundly criticized the U.S. Senate for regulating specifics of the accounting profession, saying legislators “can’t tell people how they should add.”
Corporate officers have had huge pay increases that do not relate to the value of the work they do at a company. Instead, Monks said, CEOs have formed a powerful group of people who serve on each other’s boards and increase their own salaries.
“When people change the rules, vote themselves the money and get 1,000 percent pay increases, that’s just wrong,” Monks said.
Also, he said, 75 percent of stock options go to the top five corporate officers in a company. Stock options are at the center of a national controversy about accounting practices, with companies claiming they are not expenses, while critics say stock options have value and therefore are expenses.
“It’s about Mr. Big getting bigger, ” Monks said.
Part-year Cape resident and former Republican U.S. Senate candidate, Bob Monks, spoke out against corporate accounting scandals July 29 at a Portland campaign event for Democratic Senate candidate, Chellie Pingree. He called the current financial, accounting and legislative climate “a watershed in America.”
Speaking alongside Bevis Longstreth, a former member of the Securities and Exchange Commission and also a part-year Maine resident, Monks called for Democratic control of both houses of Congress, saying it was the only way corporate financial reform would truly happen.
Monks was a Reagan appointee at the U.S. Department of Labor and has been a member of the boards of several public companies. A Republican, he challenged now Sen. Susan Collins in 1996, and now is supporting Pingree. “Who you vote for makes a difference,” Monks said.
He said the American economy has succeeded as a direct result of the trust investors had in publicly traded companies. “That has enabled our standard of living,” Monks said. But corporate and government irresponsibility has badly hurt the credibility of the system.
“We may have killed the golden goose,” Monks said.
He roundly criticized the U.S. Senate for regulating specifics of the accounting profession, saying legislators “can’t tell people how they should add.”
Corporate officers have had huge pay increases that do not relate to the value of the work they do at a company. Instead, Monks said, CEOs have formed a powerful group of people who serve on each other’s boards and increase their own salaries.
“When people change the rules, vote themselves the money and get 1,000 percent pay increases, that’s just wrong,” Monks said.
Also, he said, 75 percent of stock options go to the top five corporate officers in a company. Stock options are at the center of a national controversy about accounting practices, with companies claiming they are not expenses, while critics say stock options have value and therefore are expenses.
“It’s about Mr. Big getting bigger, ” Monks said.
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