Spray-Weary Residents Hail Medfly Truce

Carwash manager Eriberto Arellano expects two dozen vehicles outside his Westminster business this morning, double the normal number. He’ll have an extra five or six workers on hand to keep up with the demand.

So goes “the morning after” in Malathion Country.

As helicopters swooped down Wednesday night over Garden Grove in the final Mediterranean fruit fly spraying scheduled for Orange and Los Angeles counties, Arellano, other car washers and tarpaulin salespeople were about the only ones willing to admit that they may miss the Medfly war.

Claudia Klein won’t.

An anti-malathion activist, Klein pictures an end to “a really bad episode of ‘The Twilight Zone,’ with all of us in it.” Fellow activist Adelaide Nimitz of Burbank called this “Armistice Day.”

Mindful of several recent false finales, however, malathion critics are wary of any assurances from state agriculture officials. Spraying will continue in Riverside and San Bernardino counties through the summer. And an application in Compton next month will target the Mexican fruit fly. But officials promise that, barring any fly trappings, Wednesday night’s spraying over a 36-square-mile area with Garden Grove at its center will be the last aerial Medfly assault for the Los Angeles Basin after 11 months of spraying.

“I hope this is the end,” Klein said, “but it seems like we’ve heard all the lines before.”

On the evening news and in city halls, the emotional debate over the spraying has been largely over still-unresolved issues: long-term health effects and agricultural vitality, constitutional liberties and governmental emergency powers.

But for many of the 4 million Southland spray-zone survivors, it was the smaller, week-to-week miseries that will make the Medfly campaign an unpleasant memory.

Babies cry, awakened by helicopters. Headaches, sniffles and other health problems are blamed on malathion. Car coverings and tarps are dragged out on spray nights. Restaurants and bars sit empty during applications. Teachers report high absentee rates on the mornings after.

Even some state officials are glad it’s over.

Said Department of Food and Agriculture spokeswoman Gera Curry, who has spent months fielding skeptical and sometimes angry questions: “It’s a nuisance, and we’re aware of that and we regret it and we apologize for it.

“But the truth is, we are just as tired of this as everyone else. You think I won’t love it when this ends and I can go home and get back to a normal life? I’m a mother, I’m a grandmother--do you think I enjoy being called a baby killer?”

The spray-day routine in Mollie Haines’ middle-class Garden Grove home begins in late afternoon. By Wednesday night, it had become as regular as clockwork.

Cover the back-yard pool, play equipment and cars with plastic. Get two young sons in bed by 8:30 before the helicopters come--although they will no doubt wake up anyway from the noise, scared that the choppers may “fall on us.” Bring the dog in. Take a few dozen calls during the night from fellow activists, residents and reporters, several hundred of whom have turned out in past months for anti-malathion protests that she helped organize. Try to get some sleep.

“People are just so tired, so exasperated with this spraying,” she said. “You’ve got to plan your activities based on when the next spraying is--stay inside and cover your things and all that. You’re under house arrest, like a prisoner or a bad child being punished.”

Horror stories about the sprayings have been the stuff of regular chatter at coffee shops and grocery stores in Medfly zones, but the stir has not translated into many financial claims against the state.

The 1981 spray campaign in Northern California brought 26,171 claims for financial damages to the state, prompting payouts of about $400,000 to 710 successful litigants. By contrast, state officials report 32 Southern California claims at last count. Two have already been rejected, and the rest are pending.

Richard Donegan, All-State Insurance’s area underwriting manager, said insurers aren’t seeing many claims either.

“Our people think that’s because the spraying has been so well advertised that people here are just taking precautions with their cars and things,” he said.

A few area residents who left the area during spraying for fear of malathion exposure have tried billing the state for hotel, food and travel expenses.

One San Marino couple restoring the historic Blacker House have already gotten nearly $400 from the state to cover half the cost of wrapping plastic around their 1907-era copper gutters--which they say were discolored by the pesticide-bait mix.

Then there is Michael Rust of Redondo Beach, who got stuck in a spraying while visiting a friend in Fullerton. Rust wrote in his state claim: “My entire paint job has white or gray specks or chips in it--would not wash out and has pitted my car! This is terrible!”

Rust isn’t alone--as in 1981, virtually all of the claims center on that decades-old Southern California obsession: the car.

As manager at a Midwest car dealership years ago, George Lucas had to deal with the occasional storm that whipped its way through his lot and threatened havoc on his automobiles. Now, as general manager of a Downey dealership in the midst of a spray zone, he wishes he were that lucky.

“I’d take a two-foot snowstorm, a blizzard, in a second over this stuff,” he says. For more than four months, he had to put 15 of his employees on overtime for 2 a.m. post-spray washings of 800 cars at his Penske Cadillac and Honda lots.

A few cars got blemished anyway, he says. Recently, he even had to buy back a damaged Cadillac from a disgruntled customer. Lucas figures he spent $40,000 on overtime pay and car refinishing because of the spraying.

“I normally don’t get this impassioned about an issue, but this whole thing has just been so frustrating,” he said. “And it’s easy to see why people are worried about their health; it’s hard for me to believe that a product so harmless can do this to an automobile.”

Most spray-zone residents seem preoccupied with covering their automobiles and keeping themselves and their children inside--even several days after sprayings--but some veterinarians fear that it is the animals that have been most vulnerable.

Paula Kislak, a Sherman Oaks veterinarian, says she has noticed recent reports of lethargy and illness in pets whose owners suspect malathion as the cause. And Kislak said she saw four recent cases of birth defects involving three birds and a squirrel in spray areas.

Despite her suspicions, the veterinarian admits that she has no medical evidence linking the health problems to spraying. State officials say that’s because no evidence exists. But don’t try telling that to Skip Chernov.

The 6-year-old thoroughbred had always been a healthy horse--until malathion got her. At least that’s the way owner Skip Chernov of Los Angeles figures it. How else to explain I’m Early’s fever, cough, and red, watery eyes after a stall window was left open during a December spraying over the Santa Anita race track, the owner asks.

Chernov doesn’t have tests to pinpoint the cause of the illness, but he has no doubt that malathion is the culprit. “It was so immediate. She never had a sick day in her life, and bang--she gets ill,” he recalled.

Chernov, 52, hopes that the horse will bounce back. In the meantime, he has taken no chances with his four other horses at Santa Anita. After each spraying, he worried about getting new bedding for them, changing their water and hosing down their stalls.

“It’s a hassle,” he says. “But you’re powerless.”

If the Medfly campaign has marked a horrific nuisance for local residents and animals, homeless advocates charge it has been nothing short of life-threatening for those people without a roof to protect them.

Compounding their frustration is the state’s position, upheld in court, that it has no obligation to provide shelters for thousands of homeless people in spray zones. That has left the job to municipalities, such as the city of Los Angeles, and private groups, such as the Crystal Cathedral in Garden Grove, to open shelters during sprayings.

“What has happened to these people,” said homeless advocate Linda Dunlap of Garden Grove, “is one of the biggest degradations of human life I’ve ever seen. We’re told to bring our pets and furniture inside, and the state lets people-- human beings-- stay outside, just ignoring them.”

It was the thumping of choppers overhead in Anaheim that first roused the young man with the scraggly beard from his light sleep. More military operations, John Anderson figured as he buried himself in a blanket that was his only protection from the crisp January air. Then came the mist--a thick, sticky mist that was tougher to ignore than the choppers.

“I had no idea what the heck it was,” recalls Anderson, a 32-year-old San Pedro native who has lived on the streets for the last six years and in an Anaheim field next to the Santa Ana Freeway for the last two. He had barely heard of a Medfly--then.

Anderson thinks the first spraying made him sick for a few weeks; he would have been bedridden--if he owned a bed. Now, he has made it a point to track spray dates in the newspaper. Still, the part-Cherokee, who declares “I’m not leaving my land,” stayed outside for the next application. “I wanted to test it, see if it made me sick again.”

It didn’t. But he was still unswayed. “I’m really against this spraying and what it’s doing to us,” he said, “but what can I say that’s gonna make any difference--they’re gonna do what they’re gonna do.”

Times staff writers Stephanie Chavez and Ashley Dunn contributed to this report.