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DESERT SUN (
January 19, 2009
Duroville residents strip wooden rooms
On the eastern fringe of the Coachella Valley, the dusty roads of
Duroville filled this weekend with piles of debris as residents stripped
ramshackle wooden rooms and porches from their overcrowded trailers.
U.S. District Judge Steven G. Larson last month ordered the illegal
wooden structures at the Desert Mobile Home Park, or Duroville, to be
dismantled for improved fire safety, officials said. Residents had to
discard certain propane tanks, too.
“The community has banded together” to help make Duroville safer,
Victoria Hurley said Sunday.
She is spokeswoman for the nonprofit group Duroville Renaissance Corp.,
which was formed to manage the park following frequent citations in
recent years for health violations such as open sewage, faulty wiring
and fire dangers.
Losing the wooden structures poses a new challenge for many of the
park's poverty-stricken families, who will have to crowd into even
tighter living quarters.
“It's difficult,” said Uvaldo Hernandez, as he cleared away remnants of
two wooden rooms attached to his trailer.
Hernandez, his wife, Ma Dolores Hernandez, and three sons now must share
the remaining single bedroom in the trailer, he said.
Other families reported the same overcrowding hardship. Some trailers
house as many as 15 people, Duroville Renaissance Corp. officials said.
“A lot of those people are migrant workers, so when there's work they
all bunk together. It depends on the season.” said Hurley, adding that
the corporation does what it can to help residents amid the massive
overcrowding.
Other residents, such as Elisa Pena, had to remove illegally installed
wooden awnings that help block the sun and keep trailers cooler in the
summer.
About 80 percent of the residents had removed wooden attachments as of
Sunday, according to Jose Huerta of Poder Popular, a Coachella-based
community outreach group assisting with the dismantling.
Some residents refused, citing their investment to build the structures
and the hardship removal would create, Huerta said.
Between 3,000 and 5,000 migrant workers and their families live in about
300 tightly packed trailers on the 40-acre property, part of the
Torres-Martinez Desert Cahuilla Indian Reservation.
In October 2007, the U.S. Attorney's Office, on behalf of the U.S.
Bureau of Indian Affairs, filed a lawsuit seeking a permanent injunction
to halt operations at the facility.
In April, Larson denied the request for immediate closure. Duroville
Renaissance officials said they've worked to improve life at the trailer
park as residents await its fate.
About 800 of the estimated 1,500 dogs that roam Duroville's narrow
streets have been spayed or neutered in an ongoing campaign, Hurley
said. The park recently added new fire access roads, she said.
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