Off-Roaders Swamp Dunes; 2 Die

Two people were killed in separate crashes and more than 200 mostly minor injuries were reported during the Thanksgiving weekend as nearly 200,000 off-road enthusiasts flocked to the vast sand dunes of Imperial County, a popular site for back-country recreation.

Authorities reported more than 50 arrests for a variety of offenses. Five men were suspects in a shooting Saturday in which an Arizona man was wounded during a dispute between two groups of campers. At least one stabbing was reported and, separately, a driver was arrested after he allegedly ran over a U.S. Bureau of Land Management ranger who had stopped him for speeding. The ranger was treated for minor injuries.

The incidents took place in the Imperial Sand Dunes Recreation Area, a scenic 150,000-acre expanse of federally managed desert lands east of El Centro. Nearly half the area is open to motor vehicles and draws off-roaders from throughout the Southwest who enjoy zooming about on dune buggies, all-terrain vehicles and motorcycles.

Crowds are especially large during long holiday weekends.

“It gets pretty busy,” said Imperial County Sheriff’s Sgt. Pompeyo Tabarez. “We always have the fatalities. We always have the fights, the assaults.”

Coroner’s officials said two people died a day apart on the same dirt road near Glamis. Kenneth Lee Bishop, 43, of Bellflower suffered fatal head injuries Friday when he was thrown from a dune buggy. On Saturday, Timothy James Lindekugel, 20, of Moreno Valley died after being struck by a pickup truck while on an all-terrain vehicle.

The emergency room at Pioneers Memorial Hospital in Brawley registered its busiest single day ever Friday, with 165 cases, most of them related to the dunes recreation, said nurse manager Robyn Atadero.

“Every year we think we hit our record . . . and then we break it,” she said.

Some environmentalists said the crowds have overwhelmed the ability of federal authorities to manage the ecologically sensitive desert region.

“The deaths and the amount of violence that continually happen out there on these long holiday weekends, year after year, are really symbolic of the fact that it’s largely an out-of-control situation,” said Daniel Patterson, desert ecologist at the Center for Biological Diversity, which is based in Tucson. “Right now, there is no limit to the number of people who can go out there.”

Patterson said environmentalists who monitored the dunes detected more than 100 instances in which off-roaders ventured onto ecologically sensitive land barred to vehicles. But he said there were fewer transgressions than last year.

Ira Long, a BLM outdoor recreation planner, said the agency had a reduced holiday patrol because federal rangers typically borrowed temporarily from posts elsewhere have been unavailable since the Sept. 11 terror attacks. As a result, authorities in Imperial County made do with about 35 rangers rather than 70, Long said.

Off-road enthusiasts said most visitors had a peaceful time. Jerry Seaver, president of the La Verne-based American Sand Assn., said future problems can be averted by better educating off-roaders and reopening a 49,300-acre tract closed by the BLM to vehicles.

The move, which is being appealed by the association, was to protect a desert plant called the Peirson’s milk vetch, but off-roaders said it has increased the potential for accidents by squeezing them into a smaller area.

Seaver said more funding for BLM patrols during holiday weekends would help too.