History for Chron

Spokane-area officials were urged by an engineering consultant to better plan infrastructure repairs to help lower costs of that work.

William Thornton, a Bow Mar, Colorado, city trustee, said America’s streets, sewers and bridges were wearing out faster than they were being repaired.

“We in local government simply can’t wait for the federal government or someone else to solve the infrastructure problem for us,” Thornton said.

A power plant explosion left the entire Hawaiian island of Oahu in the dark.

The blast left area hospitals and the Honolulu airport operating on emergency generators.

It was the second island-wide outage in the past 14 months. Power was restored in as little as 90 minutes in some areas, but other residents had to wait hours.

Vice president hopeful Geraldine Ferraro said her husband had agreed to release his tax returns.

The controversy had dogged the campaign of Democratic candidates Ferraro and Walter F. Mondale for a week.

Ferraro’s husband, John Zaccaro, was expected to make his tax returns available at the same time as his wife.