Hilly Street Blues : City’s New Wheeled Trash Cans Can Peel Out on Their Own in Steep Areas

They don’t roll out the red carpet for garbage collectors these days in Echo Park.

It’s enough of a struggle for residents of Los Angeles’ hilliest neighborhood just to roll out their trash cans.

Homeowners along Baxter, Fargo and neighboring streets north of downtown are the latest to receive the city’s new king-size, wheel-equipped trash cans. Unfortunately for them, the huge containers aren’t equipped with brakes.

That means that a loose grip can send a runaway trash can careening down one of the neighborhood’s heart-stopping hills. A container left in the street for the city’s automated garbage trucks can do the same if not “parked” properly--with its wheels aimed at the curb.

Runaway cans give a whole new meaning to the weekly ritual of taking out the trash.

“Mine got away from me and rolled down the hill and spilled out trash all the way down,” complained Vestal Avenue resident Toi Monique as a city refuse truck strained Wednesday to climb her street.

“It really isn’t that funny,” she said. “I don’t take the trash out anymore. I can’t handle the huge cans. My boyfriend does it.”

A block away, Peggy Barnett said she has seen it all during the 59 years that she has lived on Lemoyne Street. But she’s never seen anything like her new industrial-size trash cans --designed to hold up to 250 pounds of garbage.

“They’re hard for women to handle,” said Barnett, 98. “But I do it, unless some good Samaritan comes by.”

On Wednesday, one did. Joe Nahas, who has lived in the neighborhood 35 years, gave her a lift.

Sanitation officials say they are about one-third of the way to their goal of having automated trash pickup in every neighborhood in the city by 1993. The trucks are equipped with mechanical arms that grasp the special 60-gallon containers and then dump trash cans fast, without straining sanitation workers.

But hillside neighborhoods such as Echo Park are putting a strain on the new program.

“Some people in hilly areas do have problems with storage and placement of the containers,” acknowledged Sue Hayter, a Bureau of Sanitation recycling spokeswoman.

“They have special problems up there. We’re trying to work with them--we’re going to get smaller-size cans for them. People who request them are being put on a list; senior citizens will get preference.”

But up on Baxter Street, some homeowners were dismissing the automation program as--well-- rubbish.

“They still have to handle these cans by hand,” Gary Mullett said Wednesday. “They held off giving us the new cans until last month. They probably didn’t know what to do with us.”

Thirty years on Baxter Street has given neighbor Julie Galloway a different slant on things too.

With a breathtaking slope of 32%, her street is steeper than all but one of San Francisco’s famed hillside thoroughfares. The street was paved in 1928--the date is still stamped in concrete in the middle of the roadway. Since then, life on Baxter Street has had its ups and downs.

Galloway has seen trailer-trucks bottom out and become stranded on the hump-like top of the hill. She watched in horror as an unattended baby stroller carried a screaming 2-year-old on a wild ride down the street (the child survived without a scratch).

But a youngster died several years ago when he slid out the back of a pickup truck and was hit by a car transmission that also slid out as the truck struggled up the hill. One of Galloway’s neighbors was killed about a year ago when she tumbled out of her car and was run over as she turned into her driveway.

Two weeks ago, Galloway watched as a cloudburst turned the street into a river. The torrent sent most of her block’s new garbage cans rolling down the hill into the intersection of Baxter and Lake Shore Avenue.

“I was fortunate. My can stayed put,” Galloway said. “But the rest of them ended up rolling to the bottom of the hill.”

As Galloway spoke, a trash truck slowly began climbing up the hill to collect this week’s garbage. The truck was traveling backward.

Trash collector Michael Wheeler grinned when asked why.

“I have to. This street’s so steep that the arms on the back of the truck won’t hold onto the cans if they’re pointed downhill,” he said.

The trash business, as they say, is picking up .