Living With Refineries : Environment: The explosion Oct. 8 at Texaco spurred many Wilmington residents to action on health and safety issues. Others are resigned to the facts of life in an industrial town.

Some thought an earthquake had hit Wilmington, so loud was the rumbling and shaking on the night of Oct. 8. Others thought a plane had crashed on their street, so sudden and bright were the flames that raged when a processing unit at the Texaco refinery exploded.

In home after home, chandeliers crashed to floors and window panes shattered in their frames. A few people living virtually alongside the refinery were knocked off their feet in the blast, which caused no serious injuries but damaged the refinery to the tune of $20 million to $50 million.

That night, about 600 people living within a two-mile radius of the plant were evacuated from their homes. And in the ensuing days, nearly 2,000 people called the toll-free telephone number set up by Texaco to report injuries or property damage caused by the blast.

It would seem logical that such a massive accident would have caused widespread community organizing in Wilmington. And for a time it did.

Hundreds of frightened residents of the gritty harbor community flocked to meetings--meetings with liberal groups and conservative ones, homeowners and tenants, school and fire officials--to sort through their fears and seek answers to their questions.

But within a week or two, the commotion was over and people stayed home, preoccupied with the immediate problems of day-to-day living. For many, complaining about refinery safety seemed a lost cause.

“As far as the refineries are concerned, you can complain all you want, call all you want, and the bottom line is that nothing is really going to change,” said Lino Urrea of East G Street. “I’m 75 years old; I should be enjoying myself, not dealing with this stuff.”

Four refineries are in Wilmington and three others have pipelines running through the community, which is 17 blocks wide and 32 blocks long. The October blast was not the area’s first major refinery accident; longtime residents have been through at least two evacuations in Wilmington. They expect there will be others.

But what if such an explosion were to occur on the Palos Verdes Peninsula or in the beach communities? If 600 people were rushed from their Rolling Hills or Redondo Beach homes as their windows shattered and their children became ill from fumes? Would the topic have died down so quickly?

A key reason the issue languished in Wilmington is that many of the community’s mainly blue-collar residents have mixed feelings toward the refineries. Although they mar the skyline and pollute the air, the refineries also provide hundreds of residents with jobs and contribute thousands of dollars to community projects.

“A lot of people work at Texaco,” community activist John Mendez said. “If it was someplace other than that, I’d say people would really be talking about it . . . It’s almost a way of life for us here.

“As long as we live in an industrial area, surrounded by refineries, sooner or later something’s going to happen,” he said. “This is not the first explosion, and it’s probably not the last one.”

Life can be hard in Wilmington. For many people, the daily struggles to find employment, safe housing, health care and food dominate life, leaving them little time and energy to take on an oil company.

It’s not that people in Wilmington do not work to solve their problems. Sometimes it seems everyone over the age of 18 is on some committee to wipe out graffiti, to work with gangs, to build neighborhood watches against crime.

But with so many problems, neither the refineries nor the explosion at the Texaco plant pose the most immediate concern. So people make do.

In Maria Elena Hernandez’s home on M Street, there is always a hissing sound, so close does she live to the Texaco refinery. The ceiling of her neat, small home is cracked and a chandelier is unhinged as a result of the blast.

“If I could afford it, I would move. We’re all scared here. But what can you do?” she said. The house belonged to her father, and she lived there as a girl. She didn’t like the refinery then, either.

“It’s just too close,” Hernandez said. “I’ve called and called, but what else can you really do?”

Cleo Brokaw, whose G Street house is also yards away from a refinery, waves toward a window: “I get tired of complaining,” Brokaw said. “Right now things are fine, but late in the afternoon you’d swear somebody dropped a bunch of rotten eggs out there. If you call, you get a recording. We get headaches all the time here.

“What’re you going to do? . . . They have the power and you don’t. They can spend $10 million fighting you.”

For the most part, it is the new people in town who remain fighting angry about the blast.

Labor Community/Watchdog, an office of the Los Angeles-based Labor Community Strategy Center, opened its doors in Wilmington almost two years ago. Since that time, organizers have gone door to door, giving residents the direst of warnings--that the refineries ringing the community will one day kill them.

The explosion was just what Watchdog needed to emphasize a point that had received short shrift for months.

After the Texaco explosion, Watchdog membership grew by about 200%. Where before a turnout of 10 people at a Watchdog meeting was considered good, now a week’s notice will draw up to 50 people and 400 have signed the mailing list.

“Every long-term movement is ignited by a worst-case scenario,” said Eric Mann, executive director of the Labor/Community Strategy Center. “It does take the beating of a Rodney King on videotape or a Texaco explosion for a lot of people to say ‘This is beyond what I’ve come to find acceptable and I won’t look the other way.’ ”

The group has made some converts to its cause.

Ruth Valencia, articulate and vehement in Spanish, said she feels empowered by Watchdog. She is determined to find out what was spewed into the air the night she and her husband Victor ran from their Flint Avenue home, carrying their vomiting son to shelter at Banning High School.

“What do they think we are--animals? Don’t they realize that little by little they are poisoning us,” she said. “Yes, many people are beginning to forget, but I think that health must come first.”

Still, the group has not made much headway in the community at large. Describing Watchdog’s agenda, Mann said: “We are most interested in challenging the corporate practices of multinational organizations. Our strategy is rooted in building democratic movements to change industrial policy and to make a radical assault on the public health threats which we think are really plaguing low-income communities and particularly communities of color.”

Many in Wilmington find that rhetoric too radical.

“A lot of people know that they have a hidden agenda that is not in line with what people here in Wilmington want,” said Joanne Wysocki, a conservative Republican who is president of the Wilmington Homeowners Organization.

Wilmington residents are concerned about their health and their environment, Wysocki said, but not in tackling corporate capitalism.

With broad grass-roots organizing on refinery safety unlikely in Wilmington, the issue now rests largely in the hands of Texaco and the state.

Texaco, which blames the October explosion on a corroded pipe, says it will step up its inspections of such pipes from once a year to once every six months. Also, the company and the state fire marshal will be completing emergency preparedness and evacuation plans required by state law.

And the pipeline explosion will be discussed in April, at the next quarterly meeting of the technical advisory committee of the California Pipelines Safety Program, created by the Legislature last year.

Those familiar with the state safety requirements say the safeguards will provide adequate protection to Wilmington. Former Assemblyman Dave Elder of San Pedro, who has sponsored much of the California legislation dealing with chemical and oil companies, says the approach of groups like Watchdog is counterproductive.

The best approach for Wilmington activists, he says, is to work with the established state committees.

“What I want to know is where were these people when we needed help to pass oil refinery and chemical plant legislation?” he asked.

“It would be much more productive if they participated in the advisory committee meetings of the state fire marshal’s office,” Elder said. “That’s where they can make a difference.

“Honestly, is there an advocate anywhere for refineries blowing up? I haven’t met this person. Is this Lucifer’s assistant? There is nobody that is for refinery explosions.”