Medfly Quarantine Area Seeks Aid From State, U.S.

Declaring a local state of emergency in the wake of the discovery of 43 Medflies in Ventura County, Sheriff Larry Carpenter on Tuesday appealed on behalf of the county for state and federal disaster relief money for potential crop and sales losses.

Gov. Pete Wilson was expected to declare a state of emergency in the county as early as today, county disaster officials said. Wilson was also asked to forward a request to President Clinton for a federal state of emergency, which would clear the way for federal disaster assistance.

Officials estimated the damage to crops, the loss of sales and the “ripple effect” on associated industries such as packinghouses at up to $439 million. However, county agriculture Commissioner Earl McPhail said that figure is an outside estimate, based on early forecasts of damage, loss of sales, unpaid salaries and other potential problems.

An official quarantine that may be in effect for up to six months was also expected to be imposed today, encompassing about 81 square miles within a 4.5-mile radius around the site where the flies were found, the grounds of St. John’s Seminary in eastern Camarillo.

Proposed boundaries, which would take into account roads, growers’ fields and mountain ranges, were drawn up Tuesday by McPhail and other officials and sent to Sacramento for review.

The discovery of 10 more male Mediterranean fruit flies Monday brought the total to 41 fertile males and two mated females. All were found within 200 meters of the seminary site.

Although Japan, the county’s most lucrative market for its citrus products, will not accept fruit from a quarantine area, agriculture officials in other Southern California counties with Medfly quarantines said that only quarantine areas were banned from shipments and not entire counties.

Officials at Sunkist, the largest citrus cooperative in the country and the marketer of most of the county’s fruit, said they did not expect a Japanese ban to extend beyond the quarantine area.

It is still questionable whether other citrus-growing states, such as Florida, Arizona and Texas, will accept the county’s produce.