Evacuations

Tens of thousands of Bosnian Serbs fleeing the outskirts of Sarajevo are turning up in out-of-the-way towns like this one, only to discover that the anguished decision to leave the Bosnian capital marked only the beginning of their misery. More than 1,000 residents from Vogosca, Ilidza and other Serb-populated suburbs of Sarajevo are camped out here in school classrooms, burned-out houses and cramped barracks built years ago for construction workers. Many have no running water or electricity.

In a candid acknowledgment that efforts to preserve a multiethnic Bosnian capital are failing miserably, the NATO commander in the war-ravaged nation agreed Saturday to allow Bosnian Serb military vehicles to help evacuate residents from Serb-populated Sarajevo suburbs. The trucks, which will probably be driven by unarmed soldiers in civilian clothing, are expected to arrive in this northern suburb Monday.

A computer malfunction sparked a fire Wednesday night that damaged four apartments and displaced about 50 people, police and firefighters said. A woman working on her home computer about 8:50 p.m. "all of sudden heard a poof," Police Sgt. George Yezbick said. "Next thing she knew there were fire shooting out from the back," Yezbick said. "She got some water and poured on it, but that didn't help."

A three-alarm fire Thursday quickly spread through the air conditioning system of a two-story building, gutting several offices and forcing the evacuation of more than 160 people. The lunch-hour blaze filled the 50,000-square-foot office building at 690 Langsdorf Drive with smoke and cut electricity to the site's 25 tenants, which include legal and health professionals, authorities said. There were no injuries reported and the cause of the fire is under investigation. Fullerton Police Sgt.

U.S. military helicopters had evacuated 82 Americans and more than 300 other foreigners from Liberia as of Wednesday, but officials said that amid continuing fighting other Americans were having difficulty reaching the fortified U.S. Embassy compound where the flights are originating. With the capital, Monrovia, still tense despite a partly effective cease-fire that began late Tuesday night, the U.S. government pledged to evacuate all Americans who want to leave the nation torn by civil war.

A bomb threat issued by a computer-generated voice early Wednesday forced Cal State Fullerton officials to evacuate hundreds of students who were preparing for final exams, authorities said. Campus police said they answered a 911 call that came about 6:50 a.m. from a campus phone line. "What sounded like a computer-generated voice said, 'There's a bomb in McCarthy Hall. It will go off and people will die,' " campus Police Sgt. Sam Summerlin said. "It was repeated twice."

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention evacuated one of its buildings after nine people became sick shortly after arriving for work. The employees, suffering from nausea, headaches, diarrhea and rapid heartbeats, were treated at area hospitals Friday, a CDC spokeswoman said. It had not been determined immediately what made the third-floor workers ill, and the number evacuated was not available.

The first positive drug tests of the Atlanta Games cost two Russian athletes their Olympic medals, and a third athlete from Lithuania who did not medal had her results tossed out. Andrei Korneyev, bronze medalist in the 200-meter breaststroke, was disqualified after testing positive for the banned stimulant bromantan, International Olympic Committee spokeswoman Michele Verdier said Sunday.

A wildfire that began just outside the city zoo Saturday forced officials to evacuate about 2,000 visitors and move 30 animals to safety. Zoo workers wearing bandannas over their faces against the smoke bundled slow-moving tortoises into makeshift stretchers and scrambled to save koala bears, kangaroos and other animals as flames moved into the MetroZoo area. Zoo spokesman Ron Magill said smoke and panic were the greatest dangers to the animals.

All 2,000 students at Pasadena High School were sent home early Thursday and U.S. Army ordinance experts were called to the campus after a locksmith trying to re-key the lock of the school's aging walk-in safe activated an anti-tampering chemical device, authorities said. The device in the safe door with an unknown chemical was discovered when the locksmith began work shortly before 9 a.m, said Pasadena Unified School District Police Chief Jarado Blue.