NATIONAL PARK SERVICE
                           MORNING REPORT

To:        All National Park Service Areas and Offices

From:      Division of Ranger Activities, Washington Office

Day/Date:  Monday, January 29, 1996

Broadcast: By 1000 ET (Delayed today)

INCIDENTS

96-17 - Mid-Atlantic Areas - Follow-up on Flooding

Additional reports have been received regarding the impacts of last week's
floods:

* C&O Canal, Harpers Ferry, Great Falls - On January 26th, Secretary
Babbitt visited the three park areas to examine flood damage to grounds
and facilities.  The full-day visit consisted of both on-ground
inspections and aerial overflights.  Damage assessment teams and cleanup
crews continue their work in these and other areas within National
Capital Field Area.  C&O Canal is closed; portions of the park will
remain closed for months, while other areas will open in the near future. 
Portions of other parks are also closed.  Preliminary damage assessments
from these areas indicate that restoration costs will run into the
millions of dollars.  An SSO task force is assisting the parks with their
efforts.  Media coverage has been extensive.

* Delaware Water Gap - The park's damage assessment team has largely
completed its work and has prepared estimates of the cost of the damage
inflicted by the flood.  The total has been placed at $2 million.  About
three-quarters of that amount - approximately $1.4 million - is
associated with repairs to roads and bridges.  The road work includes
repairs to or replacement of riprap under bridges, culverts, potholes,
road heaves, drainage structures and road surfaces on Route 209 and nine
other roads in Pennsylvania and New Jersey. Most of the balance of the
sum is associated with necessary repairs and rehabilitation of Milford
Beach, Smithfield Beach, the boat ramp at Dingmans Ferry, and the
Dingmans Falls, Raymondskill Falls and Childs Park trails, all in
Pennsylvania, and the Depew picnic area and Kittatinny Point visitor
center parking lot in New Jersey.  The remaining amount stems from
washouts of numerous driveways and road entrances throughout the park and
from the replacement costs for signs, buoys, picnic tables, and similar
smaller items which were damaged or washed away by flood waters.  Many
areas in the park remain closed.

[Einar Olsen, CR, RAD/NCFA; Bill Halainen, DEWA]

96-21 - Crater Lake (Oregon) - Winter Storm Impacts

Over the past two weeks, winter storms dropped over 126 inches of snow on the
park, bringing snow depths to well over 100 inches at park headquarters.  A 30-
mile section of Route 62 from the park to the town of Prospect has been closed
by the state due to the presence of hundreds of downed trees across the road. 
The communities of Diamond Lake and Union Creek outside the park are without
power or road access.  Employees residing on the west side of the park have
been assisting the Forest Service with road clearing, since access to the park
is cut off and they can't get to work.  Several park employees residing in the
Forest Service complex at Union Creek have been forced to evacuate and are
living in barracks in Prospect or making their own arrangements elsewhere. 
Park road crews have managed to keep the eastern section of Route 62 and the
road to headquarters open despite frequent white-out conditions and snow
falling in excess of an inch an hour.  The road to Rim Village has been closed
to the public for more than a week, although a single lane has been opened
periodically in order to permit staff to check on facilities there.  More heavy
snows were predicted for this past weekend.  [Dispatch, CRLA]

96-22 - Santa Monica Mountains (California) - Gas Line Break; Evacuation

Rangers received a report of a natural gas line break in Cheeseboro Canyon on
the afternoon of January 26th.  The report was received from the pilot of a
Ventura County helicopter, who subsequently guided rangers to the location of
the break.  The 18" line had ruptured and was sending a gas plume about 600
feet into the air.  Both Cheeseboro and Palo Comado canyons were evacuated and
closed to public use.  The gas company manually closed down the line after
finding that one of two emergency valves had malfunctioned.  The ruptured line
created a crater about 20' deep and 10' in diameter.  The exact cause of the
break is unknown.  Repairs were to have been completed by today.  [Jon Dick,
CR, SAMO]

96-23 - Independence (Pennsylvania) - Burglary

At 5 a.m. on January 26th, park staff discovered that Carpenters Hall, a park
inholding where the first meeting of the Continental Congress was held, had
been burglarized.  Although a complete assessment of the building's inventory
was still underway at the time of the report, it appeared that nothing of
significant value was taken.  The burglary is under investigation.  [CRO, INDE]

RESOURCE MANAGEMENT

No field reports today.

OPERATIONAL NOTES

No notes.

OBSERVATIONS

Today's observation was submitted by John Mangimeli of White Sands:

"One of the things Westerners should ponder, but generally do not, is their
relation to and attitude toward the federal presence.  The bureaus
administering all the empty space that gives Westerners much of their outdoor
pleasure and many of their special privileges and a lot of their pride and
self-image are frequently resented, resisted, or manipulated by those who
benefit economically from them but would like to benefit more, and are
generally taken for granted by the general public.

"The federal presence should be recognized as what it at least partly is: a
reaction against our former profligacy and wastefulness, an effort at
adaptation and stewardship in the interest of the environment and the
future....the land-managing bureaus all have at least part of their purpose the
preservation of the West in a relatively natural, healthy, and sustainable
condition...

"[T]he land bureaus have a strong, often disregarded, influence on how life is
lived in the West.  They provide and protect the visible, available, unfenced
space that surrounds almost all western cities and towns--surrounds them as
water surrounds fish, and is their living element.

"The bureaus need, and some would welcome, the kind of public attention that
would force them to behave in the long-range interest.  Though I have been
involved in controversies with some of them, the last thing I would want to see
is their dissolution and a return to the policy of disposal, for that would be
the end of the West as I have known and loved it.  

"Neither state ownership nor private ownership--which state ownership would
soon become--could offer anywhere near the usually disinterested stewardship
that these imperfect and embattled agencies do, while at the same time making
western space available for millions.  They have been the strongest impediment
to the careless ruin of what remains of the Public Domain, and they will be
necessary as far ahead as I, at least, can see."

                                     Wallace Stegner, "Where the Bluebird
                                     Sings to the Lemonade Springs", 1992


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Prepared by the Division of Ranger Activities, WASO, with the cooperation and
support of Delaware Water Gap NRA.

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