Household of 44 Thankful After Blaze : Oxnard: No one was injured in fire that leaves the Carranza clan homeless and officials frustrated with crowding law.

Before their lives exploded with the fiery pop of an electrical cord, 44 members of the Carranza family lived together in a single Oxnard house, crowded but counting their blessings for having escaped a dusty farm village in northern Mexico.

On Thursday--as family members sifted through the ashes of their charred L Street stucco for passports, diapers and mementos--they were homeless, but still thankful.

“Thank God most of the kids were in school,” said Blandina Carranza, 35, mother of six of the 30 children who lived in the 1,600-square-foot house. “Only 12 were at home.”

Thank goodness, too, she said, that several adults who would have otherwise been picking strawberries in nearby fields could not find work and were home to snatch their children from the fast-spreading fire.

No one was harmed in the Wednesday afternoon blaze, which city inspectors think was caused by a television cord overheated by an electrical system burdened by three refrigerators and five television sets.

The families of six Carranza brothers--Jose, Javier, Rogelio, Felipe, Baltazar and Roberto--remained Thursday evening in Oxnard motel rooms provided by the local chapter of the American Red Cross.

As the families began trying to pull their lives together again, city officials were also counting themselves blessed by the timing of the fire at the $1,350-a-month rental.

“I’m grateful it wasn’t (at night), or it would have been a tragedy and we would be talking to CBS or the Washington Post,” City Atty. Gary Gillig said.

The home represents the worst crowding ever encountered in Oxnard, several city officials said. The 1990 census found that 25% of all dwellings in Oxnard were crowded, the highest figure in the county.

But Gillig and other officials said there is little they can do to ensure that such a situation is not repeated.

The Carranzas and their landlords--Jorge and Mercedes Coronado of Oxnard--apparently broke no building and safety laws by crowding six large families plus two other relatives into the seven-room house, said city fire inspectors and code-enforcement officers.

A decade-old state Supreme Court decision forbids state or local governments in California from enforcing crowding laws if the occupants are all from the same family, Gillig said.

“It is appalling, I know,” he said. “We’ve had a task force studying overcrowding for two years. . . . I’d like our laws to be enforceable.”

Even if the tenants of a house are not related, it is difficult to enforce local crowding laws because it is hard to determine if residents are family members, and local jurisdictions are superseded by the state on the issue, said Gillig and Richard McIntosh, Oxnard code-enforcement chief.

Thousand Oaks, Simi Valley and Moorpark have ordinances restricting the number of adults in a house, but officials in Thousand Oaks and Simi Valley have acknowledged that the ordinances may not be legal and are rarely enforced.

McIntosh said the 1959-vintage house on L Street had no illegal partitions, add-ons or alterations.

And Capt. Haywood Merricks, a city fire inspector, said the structure’s wiring was apparently up to code, but may have been overloaded.

“But is it a violation?” he asked. “Who’s going to regulate how many appliances are plugged in?”

Although McIntosh said the city never found the L Street home to be substandard, some of the Coronados’ six other single-family houses in Oxnard had been cited repeatedly for code violations.

The landlords have been cited four times since 1988 for allowing boardinghouse conditions and illegal conversions of garages and a patio into living quarters, he said.

In 1990, for example, one inspector found “multiple families living in the residence, a trailer in the rear side yard, children sleeping in cars” at the Coronados’ Poplar Street rental.

In each case, the Coronados have promptly removed the violations, often claiming ignorance of them, McIntosh said.

One 1992 inspector’s report noted that a Coronado tenant said she paid $1,200 a month for a 1,264-square-foot house, then rented out three rooms and the garage. “She said the owner doesn’t know anything about it,” the inspector said.

McIntosh added, however: “These are some folks who obviously know how they can try to get away and insulate themselves.”

The Coronados could not be reached for comment. But their son, Joe Coronado, said: “When we drove up (after the fire), my mom said, ‘I didn’t even know these people lived here.’ ”

Laura Renteria, the Coronados’ granddaughter, said the couple’s lease agreements limited the number of people who could stay in their houses. “They took care of it once they found out,” she said.

Members of the Carranza family said the landlord was aware of how many people lived in their rental. All six families came from the Mexican state of Michoacan in 1985, and all moved into the L Street house six years ago.

As more babies were born, “he was charging us more per child,” said Bertha Carranza, 38. “When a couple came, he did charge more.”

The Carranzas wanted to move to less crowded quarters but simply couldn’t afford it, Bertha and Blandina Carranza said.

Luis Carranza, 18, said that his father and five uncles each made about $5,000 a year from farm labor and that three of the women also worked, each making about $3,000 annually.

That combined income of about $40,000 a year was hardly enough to pay for rent, food and clothing, the women said.

“Yes, it is difficult,” Bertha Carranza said. Nine of her 10 family members slept in one bedroom. She, her husband and two older children slept on the floor, she said.

“The kids are fighting and then the parents will fight,” she said. “It’s not easy, but we don’t make enough money for anyone to get their own place.”

As she sorted sooty socks Thursday afternoon, she added:

“We pray to God we can find another house.”

FYI

The Ventura County chapter of the American Red Cross is accepting donations on behalf of the 44 people displaced by Wednesday’s house fire in Oxnard. Monetary contributions can be sent to the American Red Cross, P.O. Box 25660, Ventura 93002. Checks should be made out to the Red Cross with a notation on the bottom left corner for “Oxnard Fire.” Call 643-9928 to donate clothing.