West Nile Fouls a Town’s Summer

The lazy days of summer in the working-class suburb of Fontana have been rudely interrupted this year by the arrival of West Nile virus.

As health experts warn that the virus will spread across Southern California in coming months, no locality has been hit as hard as this onetime steel town 50 miles east of Los Angeles. The city’s experience, officials said, offers a preview of what other communities can expect.

The fabric of June and July days -- softball games at the park, evening barbecues, the summer fair -- is now marred by scores of birds falling dead onto ball fields and backyards and by roving inspectors in aircraft checking for dirty swimming pools where virus-carrying mosquitoes breed.

Twice in the last two weeks, trucks have rolled past the mini-malls and modest ranch homes of central Fontana spraying a fine mist of pesticide intended to kill the mosquitoes.

Health officials are urging residents to douse themselves with insect repellent and wear long pants and long-sleeve shirts if they go outside in the San Bernardino County town, where the summer mercury regularly hovers in the humid high 90s.

Fontana’s dealings with West Nile virus follow a national pattern. Common in Africa and Asia, West Nile was first spotted in the United States in 1999 in New York and has moved across the country, literally as the crow flies, killing 400 people nationwide.

The birds have overlapping ranges of about 20 miles, and infected mosquitoes wait at every turn. After birds are bitten and infected, they migrate to other areas, spreading the disease with them.

West Nile infects mainly birds the first year it reaches an area. Humans are harder hit the second year, when the virus is easily spread because few people have developed immunity, said Dr. Carol Glaser, acting chief of the viral disease laboratory for the California Department of Health Services.

In year three, the number of human cases typically falls dramatically.

Less than 1% of the human population experiences major complications from the virus, which affects the nervous system. Most who contract it will never know they have it. But elderly people, the very young and people with compromised immune systems are at serious risk. Early symptoms include headaches, fever, rashes, body aches and weakness.

West Nile virus was first detected in California last year, mostly in remote areas. But in this second year of exposure, the virus has moved into urban Southern California.

First, people began noticing dead birds, which had been bitten by infected mosquitoes.

In late May, five members of the Rigby family returned to Fontana from a weekend camping trip in Riverside County and began feeling feverish and weak -- all early signs of the virus.

Jackie Rigby, 40, said she didn’t think her family could have West Nile virus until a co-worker mentioned the possibility. All family members are now doing fine, but news of their illness has shaken some of their neighbors.

Now, of the 16 human cases of West Nile virus so far this year in California, eight have been in Fontana, including that of a 50-year-old man who officials announced Wednesday was hospitalized with neurological symptoms. All the patients are recovering, including two Los Angeles County residents.

“This is Mother Nature, and I guess we’ll just have to deal with it,” said Fontana Mayor Mark Nuaimi, who has fielded numerous calls and e-mails from residents concerned about the virus-spreading mosquitoes.

Half a block from the Rigbys, the Munoz family sits inside on a sunny afternoon. Junior Munoz, 17, has picked up five dead crows from their backyard in two weeks.

“It’s better not to go outside right now,” says his 11-year-old brother Emmanuel, who still feels queasy about the big pile of black feathers he saw in the alley on the way to his friend’s house.

Next door, Sheree Pope prepares to drive her daughter Wendy, 17, to another doctor’s appointment. The day before, Wendy, who just graduated from Fontana High School, was tested for West Nile virus after she woke up feeling nauseated and dizzy. She’d been complaining about a rash, but her mother thought the chances that it was the virus were slim.

“I was writing off the rash for a week; I thought maybe it was from a new lotion,” her mother said. “She’s been outside a lot in the evening, lots of graduation parties.”

Pope worries about a brackish puddle along a low point in the gutter out front that could be a mosquito breeding ground. She and a neighbor have complained about the wet spot to city officials for years. With a long list of public works projects, city officials couldn’t say when they would be able to rip up the small section of street and grade it properly, she said.

Health officials say they’ve received hundreds of phone calls about standing water in the last month and are responding within 48 hours if possible to treat them with larvicide.

Not far from the Rigbys’ neighborhood at Washington Memorial Park, a birthday party picnic is in full swing, and kids line up at the water fountain to drink and splash one another. At a picnic table, three friends discuss the dead birds they’ve seen.

“They were laying right there under the power line three or four days ago, four of them,” says Ernie Gomez, 66, who at first thought what had killed them was an exposed electrical line or kids with BB guns. “Then I heard about West Nile.”

Across the street from Memorial Park, Robert Shaffer, 41, sees little choice but to spray insecticide and hope for the best.

“I go in in the evening now, instead of sitting outside and catching the breeze,” he says. “It’s a drag.”

But some are sticking to their usual summer routines. Walter Flask, 81, has lived in the same house since 1968. He sits on his immaculate porch every afternoon until the sun hits a point just beyond his shoes, meaning the rays will soon dip below the roofline.

His grandson has seen three dead birds in the park right across the street, Flask says.

Across the park, Little League coach Ariel Garcia hurriedly scoops two dead crows off the ball field before the kids arrived on a late June afternoon, like scooping dead fish off a favorite beach.

Like many, he is resigned and relieved that county crews are spraying heavy-duty insecticide throughout the neighborhood to combat mosquitoes.

Officials say the spray, commercially known as Scourge, is safe when used in low levels and applied properly. At higher levels, insecticides of this type can cause dizziness, headaches, nausea, muscle twitching, convulsions and loss of consciousness, according to the federal Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry.

Scientists had predicted that California would be hard hit this year, but health officials say it’s too early to say how many human cases there will be. They are concerned that West Nile is spreading earlier in the summer than expected but are relieved that there have been few human cases.

“We are not even near peak season yet,” Glaser said. “Generally, all those tend to peak in late summer, early fall.”