Van Crash Leaves Families Grieving and Wondering

The Arellanos did things by the book. They came from the state of Durango, in central Mexico, with documentation. They worked hard in the fields and wouldn’t take handouts. When they finally got ahead a little, they bought a home, and later, a big-screen TV.

All around their simple, two-bedroom home at the south end of this Central Valley farming capital are the trappings of a secure life: family photos; a Ricky Martin poster proudly displayed by 13-year-old Nora in the bedroom she shares with a younger sister and brother; a manicured lawn surrounded by a wrought-iron fence.

But Monday, the Arellanos’ decade-long odyssey in America went tragically wrong when Angelina Arellano, a 35-year-old mother of three, died amid the same fields where she spent long days and nights sorting tomatoes. She and 12 others lost their lives after another 10-hour graveyard shift, when their van, crammed with campesinos, collided with a big rig in predawn darkness on a remote country road. Two survivors were hospitalized with serious injuries.

Thirteen of the van’s 15 occupants rode in the back, seated on carpeted benches without seat belts, which are not required for certified farm vehicles.

Even this disaster could not sour Angelina’s husband, Francisco, and his three suddenly motherless children on their American dream. The Mexican Consulate had said it might pay to bury Angelina Arellano in her native country, but her husband would have none of it.

“We have put down roots in the United States. We have family here in Fresno,” said Arellano, who had scarcely stopped crying since he received word of his wife’s death a day earlier. “She will be buried here. It is the only thing to do.”

Arellano gathered Tuesday with his children and nearly 20 relatives and friends in their south Fresno home. They ate chile con carne and chicken, drank sodas and spoke quietly beneath a photo of Angelina atop the TV set, surrounded by votive candles.

The two youngest children--Lydia, 10, and Francisco, 7--played around the house, refusing to believe anything had changed. “We told the kids this morning, but they just don’t believe it,” said Arellano’s friend Dolores Garcia. “They think their mom is still at work.”

Similar scenes of grief dotted this city and surrounding hamlets Tuesday, as laborers who had been working nearly round the clock at Terra Linda Diversified Farming to bring in a huge tomato harvest came to grips with the magnitude of their loss.

The anxiety and grief surrounding the tragedy were heightened by the inability ofthe Fresno County coroner’s office to identify many of the dead, some of whom carried conflicting identification papers. The office fielded scores of panicked phone calls from people trying to determine the names of the dead.

Besides Angelina Arellano, only the names of Gregorio Ramirez, 48, of Fresno and 18-year-old Juan Ramirez, his son, were released by the end of the day Tuesday. Both bodies were expected to be returned to the Mexican state of Oaxaca for burial. Ramirez had been in this country for five years and his oldest son had been here for three. They routinely sent home much of their pay to support Ramirez’s wife and five other children in Oaxaca, relatives said.

“We are working on sorting all this out,” said a medical examiner’s office official. “But it is a mess.”

California Highway Patrol investigators Tuesday were examining the wreckage of the van that had carried 14 workers and a driver. Because of the large number of fatalities, a team from the National Transportation Safety Board joined in the review.

CHP investigators said the basic circumstances of the accident appeared clear: The long brown van left the farm near Five Points, carrying its unlicensed driver and passengers, before dawn Monday. Within view of the field where the workers had sorted tomatoes on a harvester, truck driver Adrian Medjivar Erazo was just waking inside his rig. When Erazo made a U-turn to head west, he blocked both lanes of Oakland Avenue. The 13 workers were believed to have died instantly in the violent impact that followed.

Erazo told Highway Patrol investigators that he looked before making his sweeping turn to the left and that the van did not have its headlights on. If tests of the lights confirm that assertion in the coming weeks, Erazo probably will not be charged in the accident, said CHP spokesman Eric Erickson.

Erickson said the CHP will try to determine the speed of the van and to interview the two survivors, once their conditions have improved.

Lucila Gonzalez, 21, remained in critical condition and Gilberto Navarrete was in serious condition, both at University Medical Center in Fresno. “They are our only hope of getting some other statement about what happened out there,” Erickson said.

The CHP review will attempt to determine whether the van had any mechanical shortcomings that might be the responsibility of its owner, Jose L. Rosas. Rosas told investigators that he owns several farm labor vehicles. He said he had instructed the driver of the ill-fated van not to carry more than five passengers, according to Erickson.

Most of those at the Arellanos’ impromptu gathering had worked in the fields at one time or another. Despite the long hours and the sometimes unsavory conditions--including drivers and labor contractors who absorbed much of their salaries--they said they welcomed the work and a chance to do better.

“We came here because we would be better off,” said Arellano, 35, who now works in a sheet metal factory. “There were more opportunities to raise our families properly. This is a good country. We have a stake in this country.”

Overnight shifts are not unusual during peak harvest seasons in the Central Valley, especially when the weather conspires to ripen an entire crop at once, as was the case with tomatoes this year.

“We had two to three weeks of cool weather this year that held back the early plants,” said Jimmie Ross, superintendent of the University of California’s Westside Research and Extension Center. “Now everything’s ready to go, and the tomatoes won’t wait. If you drive across the valley at night, you can see lights all over the fields.”

Adding to the crunch is this year’s record crop, expected to produce 11 million tons of tomatoes statewide. “It’s a matter of so many tomatoes, so little time,” said Bob Krauter, a spokesman for the California Farm Bureau Federation.

The harvesting machines--which pick tomatoes destined for canneries--are huge, brightly lit beasts that carry as many as 10 workers each. They pull up entire plants and shake off the fruit, which rolls down conveyor belts on each side. Workers pick out green or overripe tomatoes and dirt clods as they pass along the belt. It’s noisy, monotonous and exhausting work, for which the going wage is about $5.75 an hour.

As he recalled his wife’s years in the fields, Arellano could barely speak. A sprightly woman known as “Coca” for her love of Coca-Cola, Angelina had toiled in the fields for several years, her family moving from place to place as they followed the harvest. Four years ago, the family finally settled in Fresno. “She never complained,” he recalled.

An old friend of the family, Manuel Lozano, said the workers would ask just one thing of their adopted country--more safeguards for those who toil in the fields.

“They should have more laws to protect the workers like us,” Lozano said. The dead woman’s sister-in-law, Consuelo Arellano, was quietly furious about the unsafe conditions that appeared to contribute to Angelina’s death. “They ought to change the law to put seat belts in the vans,” she said. “We are all human beings and we all have rights.”

An array of local, state and national political figures said that, indeed, they would propose new seat belt laws, other safety precautions and perhaps laws to tighten the regulation of labor contractors like the one who hired the workers for Terra Linda farms. A Terra Linda supervisor said that G.V. Ag of Fresno supplied the workers who died in Monday’s accident. The California Department of Industrial Relations confirmed that G.V. Ag Labor Services of Fresno has a valid license and carries workers’ compensation insurance. The firm, owned by Guillermina Velasquez, was issued a citation five years ago for employing an underaged worker, but has not had any violations since then, said the agency’s spokesman, Dean Fryer.

The contractor could not be reached for comment, and officials with Terra Linda did not return several phone calls.

According to UC Davis researchers, the likelihood of dying on the roads in the Central Valley is more than three times greater than in other parts of California. They attribute much of the problem to large numbers of migrant farm workers who may be unfamiliar with U.S. traffic laws and unable to read signs in English.

The poor condition of vehicles used to transport workers to and from the fields also contributes, said James Grieshop of the school’s community education department.

Fatality rates for Latinos in the valley are far higher than their share of the population, and fatalities increase sharply during peak harvest seasons, he said.

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Times staff writer Nancy Cleeland contributed to this story.

* SACRAMENTO RESPONDS

Legislative reforms were proposed Tuesday to improve the safety of farm labor vans. A3