Timing of Camp Cleanup Ultimatum Questioned : Migrants: Minister says officials are capitalizing on a fire that left scores of workers homeless in an attempt to close down a major North County encampment.

A North County minister charged Wednesday that San Diego officials are capitalizing on last week’s brush fire in the Black Mountain area by trying to close down a major migrant encampment there.

In a meeting Tuesday at the city attorney’s office, a landowner was told he must clean up the camp on his property or the city will do it for him--and present him with a bill, according to the Rev. Rafael Martinez, executive director of North County Chaplaincy, a migrant advocacy group.

Martinez said the city is taking advantage of the misfortunes of at least 150 workers who lost everything in the fire by choosing this moment for a drive to remove them.

From 400 to 600 people are believed to be living in the sprawling camp known as Los Diablos, in makeshift hootches made of cardboard, wood and plastic. During the fire, they were forced to flee but most were able to take their possessions with them. Officials estimate that the canyons and arroyos, situated south of Black Mountain Road near North City West, held more than 200 crude shelters.

“It’s a tragedy,” Martinez said of the meeting, which was attended by representatives of the San Diego Police and Fire departments, the county health department and the city attorney’s office.

“These people are bureaucrats, sitting at a table, saying the laws aren’t of their making but that they have to enforce them. They say they’re real sorry that many of these people lost everything in this fire, but that they have to put them out anyway.

“I just think it’s cruel to capitalize on people’s misery and misfortune in their attempts to rid themselves of what they consider to be an eyesore in the back yard of their constituents. We’re talking about people here.”

Members of the city attorney’s office, which sponsored the meeting, did not return phone calls Wednesday. The landlord involved also could not be reached for comment.

However, a county health official in attendance said the gathering of about a dozen city and county officials and local landowners was scheduled even before last week’s fire.

Janet Waltz, an assistant chief for environmental health services for the health department, said the meeting was in no way designed to capitalize on the misfortune of the homeless living in Los Diablos.

“It was sort of a resource meeting for the landowner, who was concerned that he was in violation of several city code sections concerning the migrants who lived on his property,” she said.

“He said the migrants were living there without his permission despite posted ‘No Trespassing’ signs. Still, it was explained to him that the city had done inspections on the property and would hold him responsible if they were forced to take action there because of the code violations.”

Martinez also criticized the Red Cross for failing to offer aid to the hundreds of migrants flushed from the hillsides during the fire, which burned 4,500 acres in the Black Mountain area of San Diego.

When Red Cross workers realized there were no nearby homeowners in need of emergency services, he said, they packed up and went home--leaving more than 100 workers to huddle overnight on a rural roadside, afraid to return to their homes.

“No offer of help came from anyone for these people--not even the Red Cross--which I think is disgusting,” Martinez said.

When two church groups, including North County Chaplaincy in Encinitas, arrived to help the next day, they asked the Red Cross for a bus to help carry the workers, he said, but were turned down.

“What this says to me is that the Red Cross is only here for the benefit of white people,” Martinez said. “If you are brown, you have no rights as far as the Red Cross is concerned.”

Greg Smith, director of the disaster services department for the Red Cross in San Diego, said the Red Cross is above reproach in helping people of all races.

However, during last week’s fire, there was no way to tell whether migrant workers on the scene actually lived in the burned-out canyons and therefore deserved emergency help, he said.

“It wasn’t an issue of a person’s legal status or their ability to speak English,” he said. “But, in an area where people are living in dwellings that are not normal, at addresses that are not legitimate, it’s difficult to validate who indeed is a disaster clientele.

“What assurances did I have that these people actually lived in the canyons?”

Smith said the Red Cross set up an emergency overnight center at a nearby elementary school, but workers went home about midnight after no one showed up.

The following day, he said, he was contacted by two churches who had begun efforts to assist scores of homeless migrants, and he offered to pay for food for an entire week. But his efforts were turned down, he said.

Smith said the two churches were seeking money and assistance from the Red Cross to help rebuild migrant hootches burned in the fire.

“But we had to turn that down, because we had no way of knowing whether these people had any legal right to be there in the first place.”

Smith said he also turned down a request to open local schools to migrants as a temporary shelter because he had no idea how many people were living in the canyons, a number he said has never been accurately calculated.

“To give them the benefit of the doubt, we’d have to open shelters for everyone who said they lived in that campsite. We weren’t prepared to do that.”

At Tuesday’s meeting, Martinez said, he suggested building temporary plastic shelters for workers that could be purchased for about $150 apiece.

“I told them that we have a problem here, and that people have to live somewhere,” he said. “We’ve offered our services to restore the camp and add temporary housing, portable toilets so we could be approved as a temporary shelter by the health department.

“But all the health department keeps saying is that the land there is fragile. Nobody cares about how fragile the homeless are. They care about brush and burned-out trees.”

Mike Devine, chief of environmental health services for the health department, said the city is battling what officials consider dangerous living conditions at the camps.

“It’s a health hazard, not only to the community but to the people who live in the camp,” Devine said. “There’s garbage and problems of raw sewage disposal. And the food obviously isn’t prepared at a level of standard to prevent food contamination.”

He said the camps pose a potential for the outbreak of many diseases for many migrants from countries with poor immunization policies.