Shelby, N. C., Aug. 28.—
Collapse of the First Nation-
al Bank building here dur-
ing a rush business hour
this morning claimed an un-
determined number of dead
and injured.

At 12:45 this afternoon,
when excavation operations
had been under way only
three hours, a check up re-
vealed six known dead, 15
known injured, and a num-
ber of persons missing.

 
  

   
     

Police estimated the death
toll would mount steadily

as rescue
bodies.

No accurate check up
could be made of the miss-
ing persons, but it was
known that a dozen or more
had not been accounted for.

Early this afternoon the
crews had searched only
the edges of the huge pile
of debris, and it was feared
many more bodies would be
found toward the center.

The known dead:

Miss Ora Ethridge, secre-
tary to the bank president.
Guy Green, bank clerk.
Alex Boyd, bank clerk.

Zeb Bianton, a _ farmer,
who wag in the bank.

Carl Blanton, his son.

An unidentified white
man.

It was feared that a crew
of 17 negroes who were
working in the center of the
building were all killed. The
rescue crews had not been
able to get to the place
where the negroes were
working at an early hour
this afternoon.

It was knwwn that 15 per-
sons were injured, several
of whom were expected to
die. They were all taken
to a hospital here as they
were dragged from the fall-
en structure. |

Excavation work at a
nearby building was gener-
ally assigned as the cause of |
the collapse of the bank-
building. It wag known that
several persons were in a
grocery store and a tailor’s:
shop which were a part of
the building, but it was ex-
ected to be hours before
hat part of the structure
could be searched thorough-

y. |
_ The collapse occurred dur-
ing a rush hour on this lit-
tle town’s main thorough-
fare, and it was believed
that several persons in the’
street below were trapped
under the resounding deluge
of stone and timber.

The entire fire and police
forces of Shelby, referred
to as “The Summer Capital
of North Carolina,” were
taxed to the fullest in con-
trolling the crowds which
gathered around the scene
of disaster.

Many volunteers aided in,
arse operations.
e building was located
in a busy district, and was'
one of the largest in the’
 
WASHINGTON (AP) — The
United States and the Soviet
Union Thursday signed an
agreement in principle to limit
and possibly reduce their stock-
piles of offensive nuclear weap-
ons by the end of 1974.

President Nixon and Soviet
Communist leader Leonid 1.
Brezhnev raised their cham-
pagne glasses in toasts to suc-
cess at the ceremony in the
White House East Room.

The agreement, the out-
standing accomplishment of
their week-long summit, was
forged by Nixon and Brezhnev
earlier at Camp David, the
presidential retreat in the
mountains of Maryland. It is
designed to spur negotiators for
the two countries at the re-
cessed strategic arms limita-
tion talks (SALT) in Geneva.
 For the first time, the two
nations committed themselves
in principle to actual reductions
of their nuclear weaponry as
well as to permanent limita-
tions. Also significantly, the
United States evidently is bow-
ing to Soviet objections to on-
site inspections.

One of the seven stated prin-

ciples provides that ‘national
technical means’’ be the sys-
tem of verifying whether Wash-
ington and Moscow were living
up to a missile limitation.
- Surveillance of multiple inde-
pendently targeted warheads
MIRVS evidently would be re-
stricted mostly ‘o observation
by radar and spy satellite while
in flight tests.

Henry A. Kissinger, the Pres-
ident’s national security ad-
viser, briefing newsmen, said
 that ‘‘those MIRV agreements
that are not verifiable by na-
tional technical means would
be difficult to reconcile’ with
the objective of restricting
complex nuclear offensive
weapons.

The two nations agreed in an-
other provision that efforts by
one or the other to obtain a nu-
clear advantage would be in-
consistent with the goal of
strengthening peaceful rela-
tions.

The arms limitation envis-
ioned by the end of next year
would include not only numbers
but the quality of the missiles.

Nixon and Brezhnev also
agreed that limitation on
strategic offensive arms must
be subject to “adequate veri-
fication.”’ Both nations would be
permitted to modernize and
 replace weapons only under
conditions to be agreed upon at
Geneva.

The major points of the com-
pact include: (1) controlling
thermonuclear fusion; (2) re-
search on “fast breeder” reac-
 