Tijuana Plans to Move 2,000 From Flooded Canyons

As heavy rains again fell on the area, Tijuana city officials said Tuesday they plan to relocate at least 2,000 residents from the canyons hit hardest by last week’s lethal flash floods to a new temporary city that will ultimately be the site of permanent housing.

The relocation will be part of the city’s effort to improve drainage in the 30 canyons that feed into the Tijuana River. The effort commenced Tuesday with large-scale earthmoving in two of the hardest-hit canyons, Laureles and Piedrera, by 50 huge Caterpillars and other heavy equipment.

Although Tijuana Planning Director Diego Moreno said there is as yet no funding or legal mandate for the move, which could cost up to $50 million, there is a precedent. In 1978, the federal government relocated about 10,000 residents virtually overnight from the low-lying Rio zone of the city after floods covered much of the area.

“It took something dramatic for the city to act in 1978. Something like that has happened here and dramatic action is called for,” said Moreno, 48, who was named Dec. 1 as Tijuana’s municipal planning director by Mayor Hector Osuna, a close friend. Moreno’s previous career was primarily as a resort architect and construction project manager.

Last week’s torrential rain and flash floods that coursed through the city’s canyons killed 14 and left 5,500 people homeless. New rains that began Tuesday afternoon and which are expected to continue through this weekend are expected to inflict additional damage. The city is blaming overpopulation and the junk clogging the canyons for the flooding.

The death and destruction left in the wake of the floods focused attention on Tijuana’s unrelenting growth.

A prosperous mecca for much of the rest of Mexico, the Tijuana metropolitan area has seen its population double to an estimated 2 million in less than a decade. Many immigrants from the interior of the country come looking for jobs in the border factories known as maquiladoras, or across the border in the United States. Last week’s devastation showed how difficult it has been for the city to assimilate the rapid influx.

Many of the newcomers have settled into flimsy housing in canyons that a decade ago would have been thought to be uninhabitable. The housing, plus the accumulated trash and junk cars, have upset the natural course of water drainage in many of the canyons, Moreno said.

A few decades ago, Piedrera Canyon, which lies along the Free Road running south from Tijuana to Rosarito, was a scenic spring-fed canyon to which Tijuanans would go on weekends for recreation. Now, it is filled with houses sheltering about 5,000 residents. Piedrera Canyon and its various colonias, or neighborhoods, were among the worst hit by last week’s storms.

On Tuesday, giant earthmoving vehicles began clearing tons of mud and several junked cars from Piedrera Canyon about two miles south of the city center. The junked cars had served as a kind of dam over which water burst down on houses below.

Plans for the resettlement of parts of some canyons were in the works even before the floods struck, according to Moreno and a spokesman for Baja California Gov. Ernesto Ruffo. But the floods have forced everyone in Tijuana city government, especially Moreno, to acknowledge that something must be done quickly.

Officials say there have always been and will be floods in Tijuana because it lies on a river delta. Serious floods struck the city in 1978, 1980, 1983 and 1988.

“Since 1978, a new cycle of flooding began,” Moreno said. “We believe this is going to be happening every three to five years instead of every 10 years as in the past,” Moreno said.

Heavy rain Tuesday afternoon caused no additional deaths but did result in further damage to houses in the Piedrera Canyon area, said a spokeswoman in the Tijuana mayor’s office. The storm also caused a temporary closure of the new highway from Tijuana to Tecate and of Agua Caliente Boulevard, one of Tijuana’s principal thoroughfares.

The rains washed out several sections of the Transpeninsular Highway in Baja California south of Ensenada, including a bridge in San Quentin, about 190 miles south of Tijuana, Mexican officials said. The washouts have stranded hundreds of motorists.

Tijuana’s municipal government is negotiating with the Baja California state government for a piece of land near Tijuana where it can relocate residents of Piedrera and Laureles canyons. The plan was confirmed by Ruffo’s office Tuesday.

The settlement might be a “tent city” at first but will be replaced with permanent structures that the displaced residents could own.

During a three-week period in 1978, the federal government moved about 10,000 people from their homes and bulldozed the area. The displaced people were ultimately given plots of land or subsidized housing later that summer in the Otay Mesa area of Tijuana east of the city center, not far from the international airport.

The resettlement was controversial among the residents and their advocates, who claimed that the area was being cleared to facilitate commercial development. The area later was redeveloped with an extension of flood-control channel and commercial projects.

The clearing-out of Tijuana’s canyons will begin with the four-mile stretch of Piedrera and Laureles but eventually will include four other canyons, Moreno said. Relocation of residents will start within two months, Moreno said. Those made homeless by the flooding are staying in 68 temporary shelters.

NEW STORM: A Pacific jet stream storm rolls in, dropping more rain on an already soaked Southland. B1