Storm-Battered Lives

Keeping an eye on the darkening sky, 75-year-old farm worker Reynaldo Martinez slogged through calf-high mud oozing between rows of strawberries that have seen better days.

Actually, so has he.

Before a series of winter storms began battering Ventura County two weeks ago, Martinez was working eight to 10 hours a day, six days a week, harvesting the delicate fruit on a ranch outside Oxnard.

He had hoped to keep up that pace the entire season, which stretches from mid-December to July.

Since the deluge, however, his hours have been cut by more than half. Because so many strawberries have rotted or been damaged by heavy rains, work will stop altogether in a few days until the plants can dry out and bear new fruit.

And should the rains keep pounding, it’s possible the entire season will be cut short, shoving Martinez out of work and onto a financial tightrope where unemployment benefits and welfare serve as the only safety net.

“If the rains continue, the work will be finished and so will we,” said Martinez, who has seen his weekly paycheck shrivel from more than $200 to about $80. “We’re to the point now where we are eating nothing but beans, because that’s all we can afford. It’s a scary time when you don’t know whether you’ll have enough to feed your family.”

Thousands of Ventura County laborers have been thrown out of work, or seen their hours drastically scaled back, as a result of the wicked weather systems that have barreled across the region.

Ordinarily, 13,000 to 14,000 workers would be laboring in the fields now, but agriculture officials say the storms have slashed that number to 3,000 to 4,000.

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With crop damage at $19 million and the long-range forecast calling for above-average rainfall through March, officials fear it could be a long year for the county’s farm workers.

“So far, the rains have had a tremendous impact,” said Earl McPhail, the county’s agricultural commissioner. “Hopefully, workers won’t be hurt too bad. But it may take up to a month to work our way back to normal employment levels, and they say more rain is on the way.”

So far, Ventura County’s waterlogged farm fields have taken a beating.

The strawberry crop sustained the most damage--$7 million of the fruit was destroyed or covered by mud, silt and water for so long that the plants are expected to rot.

Every row crop on the Oxnard Plain was damaged to some degree, including $2.5 million in celery losses, $2 million in lettuce and $2 million in broccoli and cauliflower.

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The heavy rains have turned valuable farm land into muddy swamps. Even after several days without rain, many fields remain impassable to equipment or workers.

“We cannot go back into the fields until the land dries,” said 47-year-old tractor driver Bernabe Sanchez, who has been out of work for about two weeks. He figures it will take five to eight days of good weather for his job to resume.

After his wife died two years ago, Sanchez became the sole provider for his children, five of whom are still of school age. Facing the prospect of only $200 a month in unemployment benefits, he said it will be impossible to survive unless the weather improves and he can get back to work.

“The rain has caused much suffering for a lot of people,” Sanchez said. “It’s going to be a hard year for those of us who work the fields. Even as we sit here out of work, our bills are mounting and there’s still rent to pay.”

Racing against that reality, farm worker advocates are scrambling to connect laborers with emergency relief programs that have become available since last week, when President Clinton declared Ventura County a federal disaster area.

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The federal declaration allows storm victims to apply for a range of programs offered through the Federal Emergency Management Agency, including grants for temporary housing and unemployment benefits for workers who lost jobs because of the rains.

Those provisions could be especially significant for farm workers, who are expected to feel the effects of the storms for months to come.

“I think the full picture is entirely unknown at this point, and that’s why it’s so important to ensure that the farm worker community has access to the various types of aid coming from the federal and state government,” said Eileen McCarthy, an attorney in Oxnard with California Rural Legal Assistance.

“We’re talking about a segment of society that lives on the absolute edge,” McCarthy added. “There is no economic safety net, there are no savings they can tap into. For them, even a day without work could mean going without groceries or coming up short on the rent.”

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In Sacramento, FEMA spokeswoman Cory LaBianca said the agency is prepared to send inspectors to each county hard hit by the storms.

While FEMA has decided against setting up outreach centers in those counties, she said people can apply for disaster assistance by calling the agency’s toll-free number.

Applications can be made in a variety of languages.

“A wide range of programs are available,” LaBianca said. “What we suggest is for people who have suffered losses, even those who have insurance, to call our 800 number and let us determine whether they are eligible for further assistance.”

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But advocates don’t hold out a lot of hope that FEMA will ride to the rescue quickly, if at all.

Ilene Jacobs, a CRLA attorney in Marysville, said she had a terrible time getting assistance from the federal agency last year when floods ravaged the Central Valley.

“I can tell you that in this area, we are still reeling from the effects of the January 1997 floods,” Jacobs said. “I think there’s a tendency to ignore the needs of migrant and seasonal farm workers, and it seems that tendency is worsened in emergencies like this.”

Just how much worse it might get is anyone’s guess.

At an old Oxnard labor camp, the storms have idled some workers for days, forcing them to run up long tabs for food and rent. Laborers pass their time leafing through Spanish-language newspapers, or by simply staring out the window and wondering whether the rain clouds will ever go away.

“I’d be working right now if it wasn’t for the rain,” said 29-year-old Jesus Martinez, who harvests barley used to make vitamin pills. “It’s very hard just to sit here and wait. And everyone says it will keep on raining.”

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In north Oxnard, Antonio and Juana Rios are figuring out how to get by now that work has slowed to a crawl. She has more than 20 years’ experience picking strawberries for a ranch outside Oxnard, and she has never gone through anything like this.

Before the storms hit, she said, she was working nine hours a day at her minimum-wage job. Now she is lucky if she gets called in at all.

“We were working very good, we were taking out a lot of fruit, but when the water came everything changed,” said Rios, a mother of two. “There are many families like ours. We are scared of what will happen, of how we’re going to make the house payment or buy food or pay the bills.”

The job slowdown has forced Antonio Rios to find other work to help make ends meet. He prunes citrus trees for a living. But this is also low tide in that industry, a time when he normally would be temporarily out of work.

“It’s going to be very sad and very hard,” said Rios, who has found temporary work weather-proofing buildings. “All because of El Nino, un malo nino.”

Strawberry grower Henry Ito knows his field hands are in for tough times.

To help make up for their lost wages, he has been funneling extra hours to his harvesters by allowing them to do weeding and other chores at the 150-acre strawberry ranch.

It doesn’t give them much more money, but it’s the best he can do. And even that will soon come to a halt.

“I want to give them extra hours, but I’m coming up short too,” Ito said. “Everybody is suffering. What hurts us, hurts them. I feel so sorry for them, I just wish there was more I could do.”

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With the sky growing darker as rain clouds move in, Reynaldo Martinez takes advantage of Ito’s kindness. Wearing a pair of big rubber boots, he marches through deep mud, each step threatening to pull the shoes off his feet.

There is nothing left to do in this field. By noon, all of the fruit ripe for the picking has been sorted and boxed, and being loaded on trucks. Most of what is coming out of Ito’s fields is headed for the cannery, not the market.

It used to be the other way around. But that was before the rains, before Martinez had to worry whether he would earn enough money for his family.

“The sad thing is that there are thousands of people in this same situation,” he said. “We are all just waiting for the rains to leave so we can get back to work.”

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

County Rainfall

Here are rainfall figures from the Ventura County Flood Control Department for the 24-hour period ending at 8 p.m. Saturday. Oct. 1 is the beginning of the official rain year.

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Rainfall Rainfall Normal rainfall Location last 24 hours since Oct. 1 to date Camarillo 1.69 22.88 8.35 Casitas Dam 1.97 34.60 14.62 Casitas Rec. 1.93 33.96 14.62 Center Fillmore 1.30 26.29 11.83 Matilija Dam 1.85 35.13 18.58 Moorpark 1.57 22.63 9.07 Ojai 1.69 26.93 13.13 Upper Ojai 1.50 30.41 14.17 Oxnard 2.20 25.68 9.00 Piru 1.46 22.06 10.60 Port Hueneme 1.73 24.96 8.84 Santa Paula 1.54 24.89 11.01 Simi Valley 1.77 23.41 8.74 Thousand Oaks 1.93 22.14 8.74 Ventura Govt. 2.01 28.84 9.95 Center

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FYI

The number to call for emergency federal assistance is (800) 462-9029.