Malathion Refugees: They Head for the Hills

Lugging sleeping bags, bottles of California wine and baby formula, they are the malathion refugees.

No one is certain just how many there are. But each night when the helicopters take to the skies and apply pesticide on the arbors of North Hollywood or the bungalows of Glendora, there are people who bundle their kids and pets into the family car and head for the hills. Or the beach. Or anywhere else, so long as it is far away from the pesticide they fear will make them sick.

“We are refugees,” said Carol Rosin Cypher, 45, who was preparing to load her dog Gorby into the car Tuesday night and to flee with her husband from her home in Mt. Washington, which was scheduled to be sprayed. “We feel like we’re on the run.”

For most, the refugee life is not too desperate. When the helicopters come to attack Southern California’s worst-ever Mediterranean fruit fly infestation, these people pack bottles of expensive wine, some cheese, a good book and some candles for what can seem almost like a holiday.

Candy Lee, an actress and daughter of the late comedian Phil Silvers, moved in with her mother in Beverly Hills when North Hollywood was sprayed.

And Eilat Levitan fled to the family beach house in Oxnard. “I am more fortunate,” said Levitan, whose husband, David, is a physician.

But the Tellez family is not as well off. When Mt. Washington was sprayed several weeks ago, they took adjoining rooms with neighbors at a Motel 6. But the $50 bill for the night is more than the iron worker and his wife can afford to pay every three weeks, when the spraying occurs.

So this last Tuesday they drove to La Crescenta, where a friend with a wife and child opened his small two-bedroom house to the Tellezes and their four children.

“We have sleeping bags. We will sleep in the living room,” Tellez said. The children, 8 years old and younger, already were looking sleepy when their mother bundled them into the car and drove off at about 7:15 p.m.

One man said he knew of a woman friend who was so desperate to get out of the spraying zone that she planned to drive into the desert and sleep in her car.

State and county officials say malathion is one of the safest pesticides on the market and that, at the low dosage being used, it poses no real threat to human health.

But the malathion refugees distrust the authorities. They don’t believe they are being told the whole truth about the dangers of the chemical. Some are susceptible to the more extreme accusations made by protesters, some of whom contend that malathion is a deadly nerve gas, a view denounced by state authorities as hysterical.

Although it is uncertain just how many people leave their homes on spray nights, the number appears to be growing as more neighborhoods are included in the spray zone, which now covers 300 square miles.

As one indicator, absenteeism was 50% among pre-schoolers on the day after spraying this week at the Country School in North Hollywood, a private elementary school drawing children from upper-middle-class neighborhoods, said school director Paul Singer. Singer said this was a result of parental fear and flight.

Some people say they decided to leave only after they noticed repeated symptoms of illness after nights when their areas were sprayed with the pesticide.

“I felt like I was doped,” said Adelaide Nimitz, a singer who lives in Burbank. Now, she says, when she sees the helicopters coming, “I get crazy.”

The last time her neighborhood was sprayed, she spent the night at a motel with her Welsh corgi Oscar.

The hasty departures have put a strain on some relationships. “My husband screamed at me for leaving,” said Candy Lee, the actress. She said her husband, Larry, argued that their home in the Valley was several miles outside the spray zone. And while those conducting the eradication effort against the Medfly contend that wind does not carry the droplets of spray outside the treatment area, Lee is not convinced.

“I’m scared,” she said. “Nobody has shown me proof” that it’s nothing to be worried about. She even canceled a meeting the next day in North Hollywood with her manager and agents to avoid having to go back into the spray area so soon.