(Also contributing to this article were staff writers Russell Cooke, Jim Detjen, Joyce Gemperlein, Thomas A. Gibbons Jr., Beth Gillin, Henry Goldman, Tom Infield, Larry Lewis, Amy Linn, Vernon Loeb, Steve Stecklow, Fawn Vrazo, Martha Woodall and David Zucchino.)
The four-day search of the MOVE compound in West Philadelphia ended yesterday with officials having reported the discovery of two shotguns, one rifle and three pistols - but no automatic weapons.
Assistant Managing Director Clarence Mosley, who has been overseeing the search at the MOVE fortress at 6221 Osage Ave., said last night that searchers had nothing that they believed to be an automatic weapon. He added, however, that some of the metal found in the house was so melted and misshapen that it conceivably could have been part of such a weapon.
Since the MOVE siege, Mayor Goode has made reference to machine guns having been used by MOVE members in the battle. Asked during a news conference Thursday why he had not gone to the scene during the battle, he said, "For anyone to suggest that the mayor of any city should go to a scene where there is a violent confrontation between people shooting with machine guns at police officers really is not thinking straight at all, in my view."
Police Commissioner Gregore J. Sambor said last night that he had "no idea" whether any automatic weapons had been found in the compound where 11 people - four of them children - died Monday.
But he said the MOVE members had "access to other properties. So whether there were other guns at 6221 I think has yet to be answered."
Police said earlier that MOVE members might have roamed during the gun battle from their compound to nearby houses, and Mosley said the search moved last night to 6219, 6223 and 6225 Osage.
Two of the bodies found in the burned-out MOVE compound were identified yesterday by Health Commissioner Stuart Shapiro. They are Frank James Africa, 26, and Rhonda Harris Africa, 30. Frank James Africa was the son of Louise James, who owned the house at 6221 Osage, and was the nephew of MOVE co- founder John Africa. Rhonda Harris Africa was the mother of Birdie Ward Africa, 13, one of two known survivors from the MOVE house.
Shapiro said the victims were identified by FBI fingerprint specialists, who lifted the prints "off very badly burned hands" and compared them to recorded fingerprints of the victims. "It was a very tedious process," he said.
Meanwhile, District Attorney Edward G. Rendell said in an interview yesterday that the city had legal grounds to move against the radical group as early as a year ago but it took no action because "we knew that death would result from trying to execute any warrants."
Rendell's comment seemed to contradict a statement from Mayor Goode on May 10, three days before the assault on MOVE's headquarters. Asked then if he expected a quick resolution to the MOVE situation, he replied, "We will continue to examine our legal options, and at such time that we feel we have a legal basis to act, we will act."
In another development, Samuel R. Pierce Jr., U.S. secretary of Housing and Urban Development, yesterday toured the stricken neighorhood and pledged $1 million in direct aid for the homeless. He also said the government would provide 49 temporary units in federally owned houses in the city.
The HUD secretary, who was accompanied on his 15-minute walking tour by U.S. Sens. Arlen Specter and John Heinz, said afterward that President Reagan was "deeply saddened" by Monday's events and had asked him to "do everything I possibly can to help remedy the situation, and that's what we intend to do."
Another top Reagan-administration official, Attorney General Edwin Meese 3d, told a group of California police officers yesterday that Goode's decisive action against MOVE set a "good example" for law enforcement.
Monday's assault on the MOVE compound, which included the bombing by police of the group's rooftop bunker, ultimately led to a six-hour, six-alarm fire that destroyed or gutted 61 homes on both sides of the 6200 block of Osage Avenue and on the south side of Pine Street.
Rendell, in the interview yesterday, said arrest and search warrants signed last Saturday by Common Pleas Court Judge Lynne M. Abraham, which formed the basis for Monday's attack on the MOVE house, contained essentially the same information as a 16-page memorandum prepared by the district attorney's office for city officials and dated June 21, 1984.
Rendell said police took no action last year, deciding instead to adopt a ''defensive posture," because of officials' belief that a confrontation between police and MOVE would cause deaths.
Goode, in a television interview with Channel 6, said he believed that MOVE represented a continuing threat to the city.
"How many more members are around?" the mayor said during the interview. ''Have we seen the last of this group? Are we going to be beset every other month? . . . As we piece this together, we must understand this is not over yet."
The mayor expressed similar concerns in an interview published yesterday in the New York Times, in whichhe said MOVE supporters might try to retaliate for the deaths of 11 members.
"There are sympathizers around," the paper quoted Goode as saying. "I think there are people in prison who will come out, that there will be attempts at revenge, and I think we're far from out of the woods on this."
Those concerns - and the city's sensitivity to MOVE - were dramatically demonstrated yesterday when about 50 heavily armed police cordoned off the 5300 block of West Girard Avenue in West Philadelphia for three hours after receiving reports that two men in dreadlocks were seen scaling a wooden fence outside a vacant rowhouse.
After entering and searching the house at 5325 W. Girard, officers removed the police barricades and left the area, calling the report a false alarm.
During his morning tour of the fire-ravaged 6200 block of Osage Avenue, HUD Secretary Pierce picked his way through the muddy debris to gaze somberly at the ruins of the MOVE compound. He was accompanied by Republicans Specter and Heinz, U.S. Rep. Lawrence Coughlin (R., Pa.), City Councilwoman Joan Specter and Goode, who led the tour. The officials huddled under umbrellas in the light rain.
"I am deeply stricken," Heinz said. "It is a sad, even terrifying, sight to see."
"It looks like a war zone," said Sen. Specter.
Pierce, at the news conference after visiting the area, said he would try to expedite the city's request to have the neighborhood declared a federal disaster area, which would make the city eligible for emergency money.
Pierce and the two senators declined to discuss the city's handling of the MOVE confrontation, saying they preferred to focus on assistance to the fire victims and on rebuilding efforts, estimated to cost $8 million.
Pierce said HUD would provide 60 federal housing vouchers that would entitle the homeless to rent subsidies of 70 percent on private housing, up to $550 a month. He said HUD would also make available 37 HUD-owned properties in the city and would, with the city's cooperation, set aside 12 federal scattered-site housing properties now held by the Philadelphia Housing Authority.
In addition, Pierce said, HUD would offer mortgage subsidies to those who could use them.
Many of the fire victims continue to take refuge in a Temple University dormitory and at a makeshift relief center set up for evacuees last weekend at St. Carthage Roman Catholic Church at 63d Street and Cedar Avenue.
The news conference also yielded the first public view of the permanent replacement homes the city has proposed building for fire victims as part of Goode's pledge to "make them whole."
Goode displayed photographs of drawings by architects for developer Willard Rouse 3d, who Goode said was acting voluntarily as the project's planner. The photographs showed drawings of a street lined with rowhouses compatible with - but far from identical to - those destroyed in Monday's fire. Lacking the Victorian detail of the houses they will replace, the sleek new structures looked more modern and less homey.
In Harrisburg, a spokesman for Gov. Thornburgh said yesterday that the governor had received the mayor's written request to declare the burned-out blocks a state disaster area, which could entitle the city to $5 million in state aid. But, the spokesman said, Thornburgh would probably have no response on the matter until Monday.
However, the state Senate's top Republican leader said yesterday that he opposed state aid for the area. Senate President Pro Tem Robert Jubelirer (R., Blair) said, "Let them raise it (the money) in Philadelphia. . . . Every time something happens in Philadelphia, they always have a satchel ready and they bring it to Harrisburg. As far as I'm concerned, they can return with an empty satchel."
The only occupants of the MOVE house known to have survived Monday's fire remained in official custody yesterday.
Birdie Ward Africa, 13, who escaped naked and burned from the MOVE house Monday night, was listed in good condition yesterday at Children's Hospital.
"He seems happy," said hospital spokesman Pat Usner. "He has been up and around . . . he is not strictly bedridden. Yesterday he did a little coloring."
Ramona Africa, 30, who was taken into police custody and charged with a battery of crimes, was moved Thursday from the Corrections Center to an unspecified hospital after showing signs of infection from second-degee burns that covered 40 percent of her body.
Prison Superintendent David Owens said that the tissue around Ramona Africa's burns had begun to swell and that she was running a fever. But he said that the complications were not life-threatening and that she was hospitalized "as a precaution."
The outpouring of private and corporate aid to the fire victims also continued. A warehouse at Seventh and Callowhill Streets was filled yesterday with donations of clothes, food, toilet articles, toys, bicycles and assorted other goods collected by Philadelphia school students.
The Public Utility Commission ordered Philadelphia Electric Co. and Bell of Pennsylvania to suspend collections on bills owed by those burned from their homes.
A PE spokesman said the utility would go a step further and cancel the outstanding bills of fire victims. In addition, the spokesman said PE would participate in the Greater Philadelphia First Corp. campaign to raise $500,000 for the fire victims and had encouraged employees to contribute clothing and other items to help the displaced.
Meese, speaking in California, said, "The public has to know . . . the situation that developed was caused by the criminals, not the police. " The remarks came in a speech to the 5,000-member California Police Officers Association in San Francisco. Meese, a former Alameda County, Calif., prosecutor, said Goode handled the confrontation in a "very rational, very reasonable way."
Meese's evaluation differed sharply from that of Pennsylvania state Rep. David P. Richardson Jr. (D., Phila.), who yesterday called the city's response to the MOVE standoff a "big, big error."
". . . We believe very clearly, very strongly, that had this been in a white community that this would have never happened," Richardson, a black legislator whose district covers Germantown and Northwest Philadelphia, said in an interview.
"This is America. How can you justify dropping bombs on innocent children?"
Several other state legislators from Philadelphia, interviewed as they left a meeting on the proposed Philadelphia Convention Center, said they were reserving judgment on the incident.
In August 1978, the last time police sought to oust MOVE members, the group was housed in a large Victorian home in Powelton Village. In that confrontation, officers stormed the building after a 55-day blockade.
Officer James Ramp was killed during the siege, and several other police officers and firefighters were wounded as police and MOVE members exchanged gunfire. Authorities bulldozed the house after the shooting was over. Nine MOVE members were later convicted on murder charges and are now serving prison terms.
MOVE members began about four years ago to take up residence in the Osage Avenue house, a property owned by Louise James, the sister of MOVE co-founder John Africa. In recent months, neighbors had complained to city officials about roach and rat infestation in the neighborhood and about night-long, obscenity-filled harangues delivered by MOVE members over a rooftop loudspeaker.
The complaints climaxed two weeks ago, when residents demanded that the city take action to evict MOVE from its heavily fortified home.
On Sunday, after negotiations between city and MOVE members broke down, police began evacuating residents in a four-block area surrounding the group's compound.
Police Commissioner Sambor delivered the city's ultimatum at 5:35 a.m. Monday, giving the group 15 minutes to leave their fortress. "Attention, MOVE. This is America," Sambor shouted over a bullhorn. "You have to abide by the laws of the United States."
When the police deadline passed, authorities opened up on MOVE's rooftop with tons of water from deluge guns, sparking a furious two-hour gun battle between police and members of the radical group. Under the cover of smoke and water, two seven-member police teams managed to reach opposite sides of MOVE's reinforced headquarters through the walls of adjacent rowhouses. But they were repulsed by gunfire and failed to flush MOVE members from the house with tear gas, which had been the plan.
Shortly before 5:30 p.m., when the confrontation seemed to be stalemated, a police helicopter swooped low over the MOVE compound and dropped a canvas satchel containing explosives onto the roof. The fire that came after the explosion spread to adjoining houses an hour later, eventually consuming both sides of the 6200 block of Osage Avenue and most of the south side of Pine Street.
MOVE's name is not an acronym and does not stand for anything in particular. It describes itself as a back-to-nature group whose members shun technology. All of its members use the surname Africa.