Where to Turn? : Fearful Families With Nowhere to Go Stay in Their Blackened, Soaked Apartments

Three days after a riot-related fire charred one whole wing of their 54-unit apartment building west of downtown, several families were still living in the complex, wondering what to do and where to go.

One family living at the burned end of the building has jury-rigged electricity by running extensions cords to a neighbor’s unit down the hall. Another family, afraid the bedroom ceiling will collapse because of water left by firefighters, slept on soaking-wet mattresses in the living room. Their two small children coughed in air dank with mildew.

It was not only fire that left residents confused and upset at 330 S. New Hampshire Ave. There was fear as well. Thieves went through the building a day after the blaze, streaming through broken windows to steal much of what remained intact, as many tenants watched in horror.

And in the midst of the turmoil, the manager went around demanding the May rent--even at apartments left soaked by firefighters’ hoses.

“They have to pay,” Manager Bea Codon declared. “How are we going to pay for the stuff” to make repairs?

Life in the seedy, 1960s-vintage, stucco building three miles west of downtown Los Angeles was hard enough in normal times for its low-income black, white and Latino tenants. Now, tenants said, it has become a nightmare.

A riot that had nothing to do with them was enough to push residents already living on the margins over the edge. The devastation that struck so many Los Angeles communities immediately after the verdicts from the Rodney G. King beating trial had not hit their block, except for one building under construction next door.

When that was torched Thursday morning, more than 15 families in buildings on each side were left with destroyed or flooded apartments.

On Sunday, burned or soaked rugs had been removed, leaving bare, dusty concrete floors. The furniture or clothing that hadn’t been thrown out was still wet and acquiring the pungent smell of mildew.

In contrast to the many efforts that people of all races were making elsewhere to reach out and help one another, tensions here erupted into open taunts and even rejection of volunteers who wanted to help.

“People are skeptical of you, because you’re white,” one tenant, Richard Ortez, said to Robin Fejes, a county eligibility worker who had been trying to help the fire victims. She had just arrived with two church volunteers to hand out clothes and food.

“We’re here to help,” said Fejes, 26. Her employer, the Department of Public Social Services, had not assigned her there. She had been driving by, saw the burned building and decided to do what she could. She had spent most of the last 24 hours trying to help tenants get supplies, outside help or deal with the manager the tenants call Miss Bea.

“They’re afraid of white people,” Ortez said, turning his back on Fejes.

“I’m not afraid of nothin’,” said Codon, the 76-year-old manager, who is white. “I’m a former WAC, in the Army. I’m tough.”

Fejes turned to address Codon. “This is a time for the owner of this building to do something humanitarian,” she said. “Couldn’t you give them a month’s free rent?”

“Ha! They’ll want three months,” Codon said. “We can’t do that.”

Codon declined to name the owner of the 57-unit structure. Tenants said they paid rent to Jerry Goldstein, although county property records listed ownership as simply the “330 South New Hampshire Co.”

Seeing a tall, thin black man walking out the front door, Codon lowered her voice and said: “He’s a troublemaker.”

But Robert Martin, 28, heard her and wheeled around. “I heard you calling me ‘nigger’ last night, Miss Bea!” he shouted. “I have it on tape!”

“Then I bet you stole the tape!” Codon spat back.

Continuing out the door, Martin was angry and frustrated. He has lost his job this week because the plumbing and heating company he works for was burned down. He stayed up all night the last two nights as a volunteer security guard at the South New Hampshire building in case the vandals returned.

“I’m petrified for me, my wife and two kids,” he said. “But I don’t have the money to move.”

Behind him, the Arguello family, their apartment destroyed by fire, was carrying out what remained of their possessions in boxes, to move to a new place they have found in Hollywood. Their rent will climb from $535 a month to $650 a month, Norma Arguello, 39, said with a hapless shrug.

On the first floor, Lourdes Padilla said her family will probably remain. They do not have enough cash to move out but have too many belongings to simply give up and cast their fates to the streets.

“We have to stay here,” she said, “because we don’t have any money to go anywhere.”

Padilla, her husband and two children, ages 5 and 1 1/2, lived in a one-bedroom apartment heavily damaged by the fire and the firefighting. The windows are broken. Virtually everything the family owned was soaking wet.

Though a Red Cross shelter was not far away, they were afraid to leave. “There’s no security. We’re afraid we’ll lose what little we have,” said Paco Padilla, 36. “If we go to the (Red Cross) shelter, the vandals will come in.”

Asked why the building, or parts of it, had not been condemned, manager Codon responded, “It’s not a condemption (sic)--my apartment’s as good as gold.”

At the back of another building damaged by the same arson, a couple burned out of their apartment took refuge in an empty shed. They sat at the door Sunday, a few yards away from charred beams and blackened windows that once framed their living room and bedroom.

Rafael Estrada showed his shoulders, which had been burned when he and his wife, Mary Hernandez, fled down the stairs.

“We didn’t hear anything,” Hernandez said, “but our dog, Chiquita, suddenly started barking and barking.” The two looked up, saw a wall of flame outside the door and ran. They then realized that they had forgotten their little black pooch.

Estrada ran back to get her and sat Sunday hugging and petting her. “She saved us,” he said.

Now the couple do not know where they can find an apartment as cheap as the $219-per-month unit they lost. Estrada has not been able to find work as a laborer for months, and Hernandez receives just $500 a month from Social Security disability payments.

“We can’t stay here,” Hernandez said. “We don’t know what we’ll do.”