NORTH COUNTY (California) TIMES

July 8, 2008

Report says farmworkers continue to feel effects of wildfires

Better disaster preparedness needed, CSUSM researchers say

By EDWARD SIFUENTES - Staff Writer

Local farmworkers continue to feel the economic effects of last year's wildfires, struggling to find work, housing and food, according to a report released Monday.

The report compiled by the National Latino Research Center based at Cal State San Marcos echoed concerns raised in earlier reports about inadequate evacuation procedures, the use of U.S. Border Patrol agents during the emergency and the lack of access to emergency relief.

"For us, the biggest finding was the fact that there was and there is no infrastructure to reach out to farmworker communities," said Arcela Nunez-Alvarez, the center's interim director and one of the report's authors.

Ron Lane, director of the county's office of emergency services, said he agrees with the report's finding that migrant workers and farmworkers have unique needs during an emergency. He added that the county is making efforts to address those needs.

The center's researchers questioned over 700 workers in San Diego County in the weeks after the fires, conducted several focus group discussions and interviewed community volunteers to compile the information in the report, Nunez-Alvarez said.

The wildfires, which destroyed more than 1,700 homes throughout the county in October, also destroyed 8,890 of acres of farmland. The fires destroyed $55 million worth of crops in the county, leaving many farmworkers unemployed, according to the report.

Many of those workers have been unable to recover economically and frequently rely on churches and charitable organizations for food, according to the center's report. Because many of the farmworkers are illegal immigrants, they are ineligible for unemployment and other government assistance.

Of the 700 people surveyed, nearly all ---- 99 percent ---- said they experienced temporary loss of work, 8 percent of them said they lost their homes and 13 percent of them said they lost their cars.

The report is scheduled to be presented at the National Council of La Raza's annual conference in San Diego next week. The national civil rights organization is scheduled to release a comprehensive report on the wildfires and its effects on the Latino community later this year, Nunez-Alvarez said.

There are an estimated 24,500 farm hands working in the county's $1.4 billion-a-year agriculture industry. Many of those workers are immigrants from Mexico and Central America, some of whom are illegal immigrants and live in poverty in substandard housing in North County.

More than 300 farmworker families lived in rural parts of North County ---- including American Indian reservations at Pala ---- Pauma and Rincon in trailers and makeshift camps, according to the report. Many of those homes were destroyed during the fires.

Because those families did not have phones, they were unable to receive the reverse 911 emergency calls that authorities relied on to send information about evacuations, according to the report.

Late last year, immigrant rights advocates also raised numerous questions about how fairly Latinos, farmworkers and immigrants were treated by authorities and employers during the wildfires. Some of those findings were included in the new report.

Civil rights groups, including the American Friends Service Committee and American Civil Liberties Union of San Diego & Imperial Counties alleged in two reports that:

 - Illegal immigrants may have been afraid to leave their homes because U.S. Border Patrol agents were used to help evacuate some neighborhoods.

 - Farmworkers were exposed to dangerous levels of smoke by employers who did not stop work during much of the first week of the fire.

 - Emergency shelters were poorly equipped to help people who did not speak English.

County officials responded to those reports, saying that while assistance centers were initially overwhelmed by the number of people seeking help, the county quickly mobilized its staff to provide assistance. They also said that there was an " abundance" of bilingual personnel at the emergency centers to help Spanish speakers.

During the October wildfires, farmworkers who lived on tribal lands said they were told to evacuate by neighbors and landlords, according to the National Latino Research Center's new report.

Some who did not own cars had to walk out of the area, according to the report.

Lane of the office of emergency services said the county is making efforts to reach remote farmworker communities in future emergencies by working with nonprofit groups, Spanish language media and community leaders.

"We are making special efforts to get the disaster preparedness message out and to assist them," Lane said.