Officials Try to Coax Victims Out of Parks

Amid rising concerns over public health, the potential for crime and violence and even forecasts of rain, Los Angeles officials mobilized on numerous fronts Thursday to cope with one of the earthquake’s most intractable problems--coaxing nearly 14,000 people to leave makeshift camps in public parks.

The effort became a top priority as the city began assembling teams of psychologists, social workers and priests to help evacuate the parks before inadequate living conditions and frayed nerves could trigger serious social problems.

Officials said their goal was to return the campers to their homes, if they are declared safe, or to move them to indoor shelters before the onset of rain, which is expected this weekend.

Although crowds remained generally peaceful at 70 public parks throughout Los Angeles, ominous logistic difficulties heightened the cause for worry. Portable toilets were filling nearly as fast as work crews could empty them--sometimes faster. Most families were grooming themselves from buckets or by taking sponge baths.

Drinking water was plentiful at most locations, but only because the Red Cross and other relief organizations were providing it in bottles; public fountains were considered a health risk because of possible contamination.

At many parks, trucks delivering care packages of food and supplies were being engulfed by eager throngs. There were reports of unexpected cooperation, but also of pushing and animosity as a few campers tried to take more than their allotted share of bread, meat, diapers and other necessities.

For the most part, the camps were shrinking--overall populations had dropped by more than 4,000 since Wednesday, according to city estimates. But those who remain pose an especially difficult problem. A vast majority are Latinos, Asians or other ethnic groups who associate earthquakes with the terrifying collapse of homes and buildings in nations with far less stringent building codes. Many campers are also illegal immigrants, reluctant to register at shelters for fear of being deported.

In numbers large and small, the evacuees are scattered in parks and empty lots in nearly every corner of town. Like so many mushrooms after a cloudburst, tents and tarpaulins have sprung up in the Valley, South-Central, Hollywood and the Westside.

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One of those camps, at Valley Plaza Park in North Hollywood, contained 4,000 people Thursday morning, although that total dropped to about 1,000 by nightfall, officials estimated. Woodley Park in Van Nuys was a temporary home to 2,000 people. The Sepulveda Recreation Center in Panorama City contained 1,700 to 2,000 inhabitants.

Each outpost is a bustling, eclectic potpourri of cars, camp tents, boxes, baby carriages, blankets, litter, children, family dogs, parakeets, soft drink cans and sheets tethered to chain-link fences. Weary residents exhibit all the fears and frustrations that come with upheaval. News and rumors circulate through the encampments on an informal grapevine.

Sometimes, that is a cause for concern.

On Monday night, according to relief workers, a Red Cross truck showed up at the Sepulveda Recreation Center loaded with blankets and cots for those who would spend the chilly night outdoors.

But the scene nearly grew ugly as word spread that the truck was filled with food.

“Everybody rushed it,” one observer said.

Red Cross officials were forced to call in National Guard troops, who were already on duty throughout the region to quash looting and violence. “It was calmed down very quickly once the National Guard came,” Red Cross spokesman Howard Cutter said.

But two squads totaling 10 National Guard troops have remained on duty there, toting rifles and wearing helmets and camouflage combat fatigues. Their presence underscores the continuing concern of public officials as families try to make do under conditions of diminishing food, money and patience.

“There’s a lot of people here,” National Guardsman Paul Tapia, 25, said. “You could have a fight. Someone might have a weapon. . . .”

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Mindful of the potential problems, 25 high-ranking officials from many city departments convened Thursday to devise ways of sending the campers on their way. Shortly after sundown, the five- and six-member “reassurance teams” began fanning out at the most crowded sites, offering counseling and information about available shelters while collecting the addresses of park dwellers.

Using those address lists, city building inspectors were planning to give top priority to those homes and apartment houses, enabling those with safe buildings to return, officials said.

At the Sepulveda Recreation Center, the team strategy fizzled Thursday night. Only three of the six team members showed up. Without the two city building inspectors, other team members decided to abandon that park and go instead to Valley Plaza to assist another team.

The effort there seemed to provide needed reassurance to many. Sergio Acajabon, who lives with his wife and two young daughters in an apartment house near Valley Plaza, believes the structure is safe. But his daughters--ages 11 and 13--are afraid to return home. During a visit to clean up the place, one daughter wore a bicycle helmet, and both spent much of the time hiding under tables.

“My kids don’t want to stay there,” Acajabon said, happy that city inspectors might vouch for its safety. “We’re here only because of the kids.”

Yet others were not ready to be persuaded. A young man who identified himself only as Roberto said there is no way he is returning home--not yet, with aftershocks still rumbling. “If we go back, we don’t know if, in an hour, there will be another earthquake,” he said. “I don’t feel it is safe to go back . . . . I prefer to be outside.”

Even as those teams resume their work today, other city and county crews will be struggling with the burden of keeping the camps operating. Not only are portable toilets filling or overflowing, but so are trash cans. Los Angeles County health officials, scrambling to provide medical services, concede that health problems were mounting.

A federal team of nurses and a doctor who showed up Wednesday night at crowded Lanark Park in the West Valley spent several hours there, but was able to give only limited comfort.

Several campers said that when they asked for medications, they were turned away. Some evacuees complained of headaches, dysentery, fevers, cold and nausea.

Emilia Diaz, a mother of five, was doubled over Thursday afternoon with stomach pain, sick after drinking a small container of milk that had been sitting in the sun. Her daughter Emily was also ill. The 10-year-old, a student at Canoga Park Elementary School, said she has had dysentery since Monday.

Neither had medicine, and both were obviously ill as they tried to find a shady spot near their camper.

Under the cloak of tents and tarpaulins, some worries festered with urgency. Claudia Luciano, a 15-year-old mother, feared for her 5-month-old daughter, Amy. The infant was vomiting and suffering from diarrhea. Claudia had been given some medicine for the girl, but it had run out and she didn’t know where to find more.

“Can you give me some medicine?” she asked a stranger.

Coughs and fevers were becoming commonplace, especially among children sleeping in the chill night air. At the Sepulveda Recreation Center, Maria Francisca Vasquez seemed helpless in trying to assist her five children, two of whom had come down with colds since Monday.

Vasquez, widowed two years ago, did not have any food for any of her children Thursday, except for a banana that someone had given her to share with the children. Although her sister was camping with her, Vasquez appeared forlorn and anxious, rubbing her hands together while she complained, “There’s no one to talk to . . . no one to get help from.”

Although many campers complained, Dr. Caswell Evans, assistant department director for county public health programs, denied that the county has responded too slowly to their problems.

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“Our first concerns were for the immediate needs of the badly injured,” he said. “We have a massive problem, and it seems to me gearing up in the few days that we have is a substantial accomplishment.”

By nightfall Thursday, the county had lined up two federal medical disaster response vans--the same ones used to aid victims of Hurricane Andrew--and at least one van from a private health agency, the Watts Health Foundation. Those vans will be staffed by doctors and nurses and will help deal more effectively with the overall demand for medical services, Evans said.

But he and other public health officials said they had not detected a serious public health problem yet. Problems such as colds and dysentery were to be expected when large numbers of people accustomed to indoor living are suddenly forced to live outdoors, cooking on makeshift stoves, without refrigeration.

In some cases, campers were getting assistance from the Red Cross or from those in neighboring tents. Arturo Vasquez, who moved his family into Sepulveda Recreation Center on Monday, was caring for his 10-year-old son, Ruben, who suffers from cerebral palsy. Ruben is in a wheelchair and must be fed baby food.

The elder Vasquez was handling his son’s feeding and care himself inside the Red Cross center established in one of the park’s buildings. Meanwhile, other campers were assisting by collecting wood so that all five members of the Vasquez family--including Arturo’s wife and two other sons--could cook and keep warm.

“At least we are here together, and we are safe,” said Arturo, an unemployed painter.

The plight of such campers became an escalating concern as forecasters began predicting rain by Sunday. If that rain does come--and especially if it is heavy--health problems could dramatically worsen and it could become even more difficult to care for the displaced thousands, officials feared.

On the other hand, rain might prompt some stubborn campers to finally seek indoor shelter, one park official noted.

“If they don’t have covering, they’re going to get drenched, and (we might have) mud problems,” said spokesman Al Goldfarb of the city’s Recreation and Parks Department. “We don’t want people in the parks if it should become a heavy rain.”

Recalling past disasters, he said, “We get floods so quickly in the Sepulveda basin.”

Many campers seemed acutely aware of the foreboding weather reports. With a tiny black and white television propped on a log, a worried Pablo Martinez was looking for the latest forecast at the Sepulveda Recreation Center.

“If the rains come, and the soil gets soaked, then another earthquake will really bring problems,” he said.

In the early afternoon, a Los Angeles Police Department squad car moved among the campers, broadcasting the news that housing vouchers were being given away by an agency in Sylmar. Buses were being lined up to transport about 50 campers at a time to a center where they could fill out the necessary applications.

Qualifying families could receive up to a year of rent-free housing, a policewoman repeated to the throngs.

But many were skeptical. “We’re going to end up in the street, and then we’re going to be at the mercy of the gangs,” Augustine Estevez, 42, said after the announcement. “So why bother?”

Many were staying put in camp--or going far from the trembling metropolis. That was what Estevez planned to do. He would avoid the streets, the gangs and the earthquakes by packing up and leaving for Puebla, Mexico.

He and his wife, Maria, had been in the United States five years, living in Panorama City. But they were loading boxes, about a dozen of them, into their white Ford van. Along with another family, they were heading for the airport and their homelands.

Rumors circulated that campers would be forcibly removed from the parks. Mario Godoy, 30, a Guatemalan who had been camping out since Monday night, was troubled for the future, saying his house was wrecked and he had nowhere to go.

“I don’t think they’re going to let us stay here long,” he said, as if determined to resist until there was no other choice. “They have to get rid of us sooner or later.”

Los Angeles officials acknowledged that such camps are not easily removed. After the 1987 Whittier Narrows quake, similar encampments lasted three weeks or longer, said Raymond Allen, assistant general manager of the city’s personnel department.

“A whole lot of people in the parks aren’t aware of nearby shelters,” Allen said, conceding that fear of building collapses and other worries contribute to the camp problem. In many cases, displaced residents want to remain near their homes and belongings rather than go to faraway shelters.

To some extent, officials were pleasantly surprised by the civilized behavior at most of the parks.

“It’s amazing how well everybody is getting along,” said Jackie Tatum, Los Angeles’ director of Recreation and Parks. “This has been very hard on all these people, but they’re pulling together.”

Times staff writer David Ferrell contributed to this report.

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