Fence Cuts Fatalities Near Checkpoint : Border: Seven-mile barrier on I-5 median is among steps taken to deter illegal immigrants from running across the freeway. None have died since last March.

The warnings first appear just south of the checkpoint here and continue almost as far north as the San Onofre nuclear power plant. Well-known by now, they depict the silhouette of a man, woman and child dashing across a yellow background.

The drawing symbolizes the real people who make the grim run for their lives across Interstate 5 as they try to elude the U.S. Border Patrol.

Until August, when a seven-mile-long, eight-foot-high fence was erected in the median strip from Las Pulgas Road in Camp Pendleton to the edge of the checkpoint, the warnings went largely unheeded--both by fleeing illegal immigrants and streams of speeding motorists.

But the $458,000 fence seems to have had an impact, according to the Border Patrol and California Highway Patrol--and one key statistic backs them up. For more than a year--since March 14, 1993--no pedestrian fatalities or injuries have occurred along the 18-mile stretch between Las Pulgas Road and the checkpoint three miles south of San Clemente.

However, the fence is hardly viewed as a panacea. Good luck and several random factors have also been a factor in the lack of deaths, said Karl Hansen, spokesman for the Highway Patrol, which documents pedestrian fatalities near the checkpoint.

The CHP and Border Patrol “tend to celebrate anything that’s had a positive impact,” he said, “which the fence certainly has. But it’s not the foolproof answer. Next week, we could have five or six people hit. We hope and pray it continues to work. But the problem remains.

“What was so different in 1991, when we only had two fatalities, as compared to 1990, when we had 15--our worst year ever?” Hansen asked. “Luck does have a certain amount to do with it.”

Statistics bear out the random nature of the problem--four fatalities in 1993, before the fence was completed in August; seven fatalities in 1992; two in 1991; 15 in 1990; 14 in 1989; six in 1988, and five in 1987, according to the CHP.

At the same time, Hansen and others credit an aggressive public relations campaign carried out by the CHP’s Mexican liaison office for having spread the word about the dangers of Southland freeways to the migrant labor camps of San Diego and Orange counties and the rural communities of northern Baja California.

In an effort to control the problem, the CHP in 1992 received a federal grant to station three more officers along the 18-mile stretch, but in that year, seven immigrants were struck and killed.

By the end of the year, the funding was cut. And before the fence could be completed, four fatalities occurred, along with one serious injury.

Pedestrian fatalities near the checkpoint have long had an impact on hospitals in south Orange County, which ended up with scores of severe trauma cases.

Dr. Thomas Shaver, director of trauma services at Mission Hospital Regional Medical Center in Mission Viejo--where many of the victims were treated--has been an outspoken critic of the federal government for, in his words, helping to create the problem.

Shaver favors a blockade at the San Ysidro port of entry, similar to the one in El Paso, Tex., under which all available agents would be deployed at the international border. Under that plan, any would-be immigrants who somehow make it across would be ignored.

Such a blockade would spell the end of the San Clemente checkpoint, which Shaver sees as playing a fatal role in most of the incidents involving pedestrians.

“My whole point is why create a dangerous obstacle 66 miles (from the border),” he said.

The average cost of treating one patient admitted to a trauma center is $22,000, Shaver noted, and in the case of a severe head injury, the cost jumps to $250,000. Long-term rehabilitation sends the total higher. Because most patients are uninsured, the cost is borne by taxpayers.

In a scene eerily similar to the signs, one child, an 8-year-old Mexican boy, died in 1990 trying to cross the freeway in the southbound lanes when he was struck by a car while clutching his mother’s coat.

“When you get these patients, they are so violently injured because of the impact that you work hard, but the outcome . . . is never satisfactory,” Shaver said. “It will never make them physically or mentally whole, nor will they ever be gainfully employed.”

But the doctor praised the fence for creating at least a stopgap deterrent.

“If a fence can help stop that, it has to be viewed as a step in the right direction,” he said. “If it’s helped to stop the loss of life, I’m all for it.”

Authorities say the fence appears to have halted what extra personnel and flashing warning signs could not. The wire barrier is applauded by state and federal officials, who have no intention of closing the checkpoint.

“We see the fence as having a dramatic impact,” said G.C. Geer, the agent in charge of the San Clemente Border Patrol station. “But other factors have helped too. Warning signs went in (in 1991), and Caltrans started stripping away vegetation in the median (in 1992).”

That was the same year the CHP launched a speed reduction campaign that the agency believes has also helped cut down on fatalities.

Still, no measure has eliminated illegal immigration near the checkpoint. Geer said that more than 50,000 illegal immigrants were apprehended there in 1993.

He estimates that 90% of those trying to head north--illegal immigrants, drug smugglers or anyone else attempting to traverse the dark stretches of I-5--are now staying east of the freeway.

The U.S. government has appropriated $30 million for the first phase of a new 16-lane freeway checkpoint proposed for the Horno Canyon area, adjacent to the Camp Pendleton Marine Base. The checkpoint would have 16 electronic gates for traffic flow, and added truck scales and booths for Border Patrol agents.

But the new checkpoint is not expected to open for at least another decade.