A Neighborhood of Terror : San Bernardino Residents Refuse to Return After Calamities

Like a lot of young couples, Tommy and Vickie Milligan had to flee Los Angeles to secure their dream house. They found it about 60 miles away, in a working-class section of San Bernardino where stucco homes with small yards could still be had for a reasonable price.

It seemed like an ideal setting for her growing family, Vickie Milligan recalled. But that was before the tragic events of recent weeks, when a high-speed train derailment and an underground gasoline explosion sent the Milligans fleeing once again--this time for their lives.

“You buy a home to give your family a safe place to live,” Vickie Milligan said recently in tearful testimony before the San Bernardino City Council. “But it’s not safe there no more.”

On May 12, the runaway train leveled seven homes and killed four residents. Thirteen days later, the gasoline explosion destroyed or damaged 15 more homes right across the street, killing two and injuring 31--after the neighborhood had been assured that the gasoline pipe posed no danger.

The future of the pipeline has been tied up in court since then, with the city on Thursday losing a second round in its battle to block reopening of the line. The U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals refused to stay an order by the U. S. Department of Transportation’s Office of Pipeline Safety that will allow pumping to resume if certain measures are taken, such as addition of a safety valve, to ensure against another explosion.

But city officials remain adamant that the pipeline is unsafe at its present location and should be relocated to the opposite side of a 20-foot-high flood levee.

For the Milligans and other property owners in the racially mixed Muscoy area, the idea of ever returning to their old neighborhood, even for a brief visit, is terrifying. Some, wearing days-old clothing, confess to being too frightened to retrieve their belongings. Others have signed up themselves and their children for free psychotherapy because of recurring nightmares.

Douglas Green, a Caltrans spokesman who has lived in the neighborhood for 16 years, said his wife and daughter are incapable of going back. While neither was injured, Green said the psychological blow was crippling. “They are already seeing a psychiatrist,” Green said. “There’s no way I can take them back. How can we take anyone’s word that it’s safe there?”

The Milligans are telling anyone who will listen that they will never return to the place they called home for five years, not with the echoes of explosions and the screams of frightened children still ringing in their ears. Nor do they expect to sell their home on the open market, since the area is now well known as a magnet for mayhem.

If the city and the companies responsible for the accidents refuse to buy their three-bedroom home, they say they will walk away from it and force a foreclosure.

That sentiment appears to be commonplace among dozens of residents whose homes have held up better than their psyches. The emotional wallop of the train derailment and the gasoline explosion is compounded by the fact that their houses, the most sacred of security blankets under normal circumstances, have suddenly become their most burdensome liabilities.

Randolph Riley, a longtime resident, said the physical ruin that he witnessed in his own neighborhood is worse than anything he observed during tours of duty in Vietnam and Korea. The retired military man said property owners are clearly deserving of relocation payments.

“We built our home from scratch and it’s all we have,” said Riley, a cable television systems repairman. “And all we’re asking is that we be paid enough to buy a new house.” City officials say they sympathize with the property owners. But they also say that they cannot afford to purchase the entire neighborhood, and that the damage is not extensive enough to warrant governmental disaster assistance.

The two companies that are being held responsible for the accidents, Southern Pacific Transportation Co. and Calnev Pipe Line Co., are offering to buy only the homes that were destroyed or severely damaged. The owners of about 120 homes remaining in the quarter-square-mile area appear to be on their own.

“We’re putting people up in motels, and we’ll continue to put them up until . . . the Fire Department says their homes are safe to return to,” said Jim Loveland of Southern Pacific. “But if they don’t want to move back in, that’s something they’ll have to deal with.”

With that in mind, many owners have already contacted private attorneys. James H. Davis, a Los Angeles lawyer who set up shop in the Inland Empire Hilton Hotel after the two incidents, said he has heard from about 100 families. Davis said he hopes to resolve their disputes through arbitration proceedings, since a lengthy lawsuit would be impractical.

“You’ve got a group of people who are legitimately afraid to go back into that area,” Davis said. “So to order these people back into their homes is unrealistic. . . . In addition, it’s clear that the value of those properties has been greatly diminished.”

Even now, the Muscoy area remains closed to the public, and the area that is visible from police barricades looks like a ghost town. Officials report that no more than a dozen or so residents have taken officials up on the offer to move back into the area at their own risk.

Councilwoman Valerie Pope-Ludlam, who represents the area, was cheered when she recently told a packed City Council chamber that most of the houses there “are worthless” because of depreciation. Several real estate experts privately agreed that the homes are probably unsalable in a neighborhood with a reputation for calamity.

They also say the Muscoy area, where the small, boxy tract homes used to sell for around $60,000, was never that hot to begin with. But they contend that residents can still recoup their money if they are patient.

“After any tragedy such as this there’s a certain stigma attached to an area,” said Monte M. Snyder, president of the San Bernardino Board of Realtors. “But as time moves on that should not be a problem. . . . It would be foolish for them to abandon their properties.”

Bob Copeland, a Century 21 agent, agreed that any thoughts of selling or abandoning the homes now are misguided, since the value is bound to increase with time.

But that is little consolation to Paul B. Allen, an investment consultant who purchased 15 homes in the area, including his own, two years ago with the idea of retiring on the rental income. Now, instead of counting rental checks, Allen finds himself counting the days until the mortgage company forecloses on him. All 15 of his tenants have already moved out.

“I have no idea what I’m going to do,” said Allen, 57, as he paced the floor at San Bernardino City Hall this week. “Right now I’m about to contact my mortgage holder and ask them to give me some assistance. But it looks like my investment is a total loss.”

Jesus Ocegueda is also losing patience. When authorities said it was all right for his family to return to their San Anselmo Street home, Ocegueda’s wife and children were too frightened to accompany him. They are living at a local motel now, while Ocegueda tries to determine what to do next.

Ironically, Ocegueda asked a real estate agent about the chances of selling his small, tan stucco home after the train derailment but before the gasoline explosion. Even then, Ocegueda said he was told that the area was poison and that no company would be foolhardy enough to accept the listing.

“I’ve just stopped making payments,” Ocegueda said. “I hope they foreclose. I can’t sleep at night anyway.”