13 in Farm Van Die as It Slams Into Trailer Rig

FIVE POINTS, Calif. —  Thirteen farm workers were killed in the predawn darkness Monday when their crowded van, operated by an unlicensed driver with a record of traffic violations, slammed into a tractor-trailer on a remote road in southwestern Fresno County, authorities said.

Only two of the van’s 15 occupants survived after the beige 1983 Dodge crashed into two empty sugar beet trailers being pulled by a big-rig tractor a few miles from this tiny Central Valley farming town. A man, 41, and a woman, 21, were severely injured and were flown by helicopter to University Medical Center in Fresno. The man was listed in serious condition, the woman in critical condition.

Thirteen of the victims were seated on carpeted wooden benches without seat belts. Though it is legal in California for certified farm vehicles to carry workers without seat belts, the van had not been certified since 1997.

The combination of packed vans and long, grueling workdays makes fatal car crashes involving farm laborers a sadly common feature of life in the rural San Joaquin Valley.

California Highway Patrol Officer Eric Erickson said a preliminary investigation found that the crash occurred when the eastbound van struck the second trailer as the big rig was making a U-turn in its path on Oakland Avenue.

“The van took evasive action, locked up its brakes and moved into the westbound lane and struck the big rig at the right front wheels of the second trailer,” Erickson said.

CHP officers estimated that the van was traveling between 50 and 55 mph, the legal limit in the area. “But at that speed, I’m sure the van didn’t get slowed down much [by jamming on the brakes]. It left 50 to 80 feet of skid marks,” Erickson said.

The truck driver, Adrian Erazo, 44, of Olivehurst, was not injured. He had pulled off the side of the road to sleep and was turning the rig around when the 5:10 a.m. crash occurred.

Authorities said it is too early to determine whether he would be charged with a crime. “We are not positive as to a violation,” Erickson said. “If he violated the right of way [of the van], he will be charged with that and with manslaughter.”

Erazo told authorities the van’s headlights were not on, although it was still dark, the CHP said.

The van driver, a Fresno man, was among the dead. His name was not released, but Erickson said he was not licensed in California and had several traffic violations on his record, including driving without a seat belt and driving without a license.

His license had been automatically suspended five years ago when he was arrested on suspicion of drunken driving, the CHP said, but records do not show if he was convicted of the charge.

The farm van, which had been classified as a bus, had been last certified to transport farm laborers in 1997, but its permit had not been renewed since, the CHP said.

Authorities identified the owner of the van as Jose Rosas of Fresno, who they said may have been using it to ferry workers for a farm labor contractor.

The 13 victims were killed instantly. The bodies of the driver and a front seat passenger remained wedged in the mangled wreckage hours after the collision.

The farm laborers, 10 men and five women from Fresno, boarded after working the graveyard shift on mechanical tomato harvesters for Terra Linda Diversified Farming. They left the fields at 4:30 a.m. and the crash occurred 40 minutes later. Jesus Cuevas, a supervisor at the farm, said they worked for GV Agriculture, which supplies laborers to area farms.

Co-workers said the shift began at 6 p.m. and stretched through the night, six laborers sorting tomatoes bound for processing plants.

Jose Luis Ayala knew some of the dead. “These are good people who come here to work,” he said. “They come to send money home to their family. They are no different than other people who work in the field.”

Jesus Martinez, another laborer at the farm, moaned and leaned his head against a car when asked about the tragedy. “Oh God. How terrible,” he repeated over and over.

The large number of farm worker fatalities has prompted the CHP to create a special program designed to reduce the death toll.

Six officers, dubbed “los centinelas”--or “the sentinels”--have spent the past three summers patrolling before dawn, stopping trucks and vans of farm workers to check whether the vehicles are complying with state codes.

“We stop those vehicles that are obviously overloaded . . . the back end is sagged down because of the weight of the people,” said Sgt. Jorge Chaidez, who runs the unit out of the highway patrol’s office in Fresno. “I’ve seen up to 22 people in a small van.”

Farm worker advocates complain that the ride to the fields is a dangerous, expensive one for laborers, who can be charged $5 to $10 per round trip.

“This is such a major problem,” said Dolores Huerta, secretary-treasurer of the United Farm Workers of America.

“For the farm workers, this is often the only way to get to their jobs and then they charge them these high fees, and often charge them for food and water as well,” she continued. “The workers are really captive to this whole system and it’s just so unfair.”

The region is also heavily traveled by trucks hauling a huge produce harvest. According to a Times computer analysis of state statistics, the number of people killed in Fresno County truck accidents rose from 13 in 1994 to 28 in 1998. The number of people killed in truck accidents statewide during the same period declined from 451 to 395.

Based on the number of miles driven by trucks, Fresno County’s death toll is twice as high as the rate in Los Angeles County, the statistics show.

The farm worker traffic accidents tend to cluster in the months of July and August, when the heat and long hours of the harvest make driving from the fields to home a special challenge, and again in the winter months, when the tule fog turns every intersection of rural roads into a blind corner.

Standing as a kind of mute testimony to these dangers are the makeshift memorials--handmade wooden crosses draped with plastic Virgin Marys and plastic roses--that dot the dusty landscape. Spanish-language radio stations try to remind the campesinos of all the usual measures to keep awake after a long day in the fields, including drinking coffee, employing a backup driver and avoiding alcohol.

Times staff writers Mark Arax, Ray Herndon and George Ramos and the Associated Press contributed to this story.