Hurricane Belle adding to the news on this already over-wrought August 9th in 1976.
The edge of Hurricane Belle’s 110-mile-per hour fury brushed the southern tip of North Carolina’s Outer Banks islands at 11 a.m. today with up to 74 miles per hour. The center of the storm was 50 miles sea, picking up speed on a northerly course could sweep its full force into Long Island southern New England. “We got plenty of wind — 55 miles per gusting to 74,” said Mrs. U.L. Womach, family chose to remain in their home, three-quarters of a mile from the beach at south of Cape Hatteras. “They’re probably getting some pretty squalls and hurricane force winds in gusts,” Joe Pelissier of the National Hurricane Miami. Pelissier said the strongest winds were eastern or seaward side of the storm its northward movement and counter-clockwise rotation. Larry Palmer, 34, of Arlington, Va., whose family sought refuge in the Kitty Hawk Elementary School, said he heard a policeman saying that the beach highway is flooding areas.
“There are at least 1,000 persons in the school. Most are vacationers,” he said. “It’s really smooth. Nobody panicked. Everybody seems be enjoying themselves. The kids have been fantastic.” Palmer, who was with his wife and children, estimated there were 250 to 400 children in the school building.
News from Soweto wasn’t good as demonstrators tried repeatedly to break through a police cordon and march on Johannesburg. The police opened fire. the marchers eventually gave up their attempt to reach the city. They had planned to protest at police headquarters against the detention of students arrested during the rioting in Soweto in June over the use of the Afrikaans language in the township schools.
The police said blacks in Alexandria, a township of 100,000 on the north edge of the metropolis, stoned buses, burned schools and prevented blacks from going to work for white firms by throwing up roadblocks and ordering passengers, off buses. Students in Soweto burned two schools, threw up several barricades in the streets and stoned workers waiting at a railroad station for train to their jobs in Johannesburg, eight miles to the north. And again today, police fired into crowds of black rioters in suburban Johannesburg, killing three persons and wounding several more during a renewed nationwide outburst of antigovernment protests..
And finally, No hurricane, but plenty of disruption in Beirut as the latest ceasefire in the Lebanese civil war appeared all but dead yesterday, as fighting flared in scattered locations in Beirut and nearby mountains “The cease-fire is for all practical purposes nonexistent It amounts to no more than a piece of paper” a security officer said.
Along with news of the upcoming Republican Convention and updated Hurricane reports, that’s a little of what happened on this 9th day of August in 1976 as presented by The CBS World News Roundup.
