Topanga Residents Alarmed by Laborers’ Camps : Fire: They worry that the tinder dry hillsides might accidentally be set ablaze.

Early each day, Ruben Ibarra embarks on a two-hour trip from his apartment in downtown Los Angeles to Topanga, in the Santa Monica Mountains above Malibu, hoping to find work.

He rides an RTD bus along Pacific Coast Highway and then hitchhikes four miles inland in a routine that the 29-year-old Mexican immigrant has followed since his arrival in this country seven years ago.

Drawn by upward of $5-an-hour wages for clearing brush and digging ditches, Ibarra is among a handful of day laborers who, over the years, have become a familiar sight in rural, affluent Topanga. People he has worked for often toot their horns and wave as he walks along the highway past the post office and general store.

Now, however, some residents are alarmed by what they say is a new influx of other immigrant laborers who have gone a step further than Ibarra and his fellow commuters and have set up primitive camps that pose a fire danger in the rugged hills.

Secluded beneath trees and ledges, the illegal camps vary from a single tent to clusters of tents, cardboard coverings and tarpaulins capable of accommodating a dozen or more men.

Authorities have dismantled five such camps in recent months, including three last week inside Topanga State Park, but residents and officials say there may be dozens more, providing shelter for up to 100 itinerant workers.

“It’s like sitting on a powder keg,” said Gary Poole, a battalion chief with the Los Angeles County Fire Department. “Any time you have people building fires to cook and keep warm in this kind of terrain, it’s a serious problem.”

Officials say a well-organized volunteer fire prevention program and just plain luck are responsible for the fact that there has not been a major fire in Topanga Canyon in more than 30 years.

In 1959, a blaze destroyed about 50 homes, fire officials recalled. More recently, a smaller fire gutted at least three houses in 1977.

Today, residents and fire officials worry that, with the area experiencing some of the worst drought conditions in 15 years, Topanga could be a disaster waiting to happen unless something is done about the camps.

“All it would take is one cigarette thrown down in the chaparral and the place becomes a wick,” said Jan Moore, who has lived in the area for 33 years.

She and others are upset by what they insist has been a slow response from several agencies, including the county sheriff’s, fire and health departments, and the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service.

“We want to see a coordinated effort to deal with the problem before there is a disaster up here, not after,” said Pauline Rogers, a screenwriter who moved to Topanga two years ago. “So far, we haven’t received much encouragement.”

Residents say that since last year, Topanga has seen a wave of new immigrant workers coming from Mexico and Central America to set up and inhabit the camps.

The influx has caused concern even among old hands like Ibarra, who, in an interview last week, explained in Spanish that with the new arrivals, there is no longer enough work to go around.

“There was a time when I got $6 an hour sometimes,” he said. “Now, it is a lucky thing just to be able to work at all.”

Although merchants complain that crime has increased slightly, except for occasional incidents of public drunkenness, few have had reason to point a finger at the transient workers.

Since its days as a hippie haven in the 1960s, Topanga has had its share of eccentrics and others who have chosen to live under bridges and in illegal compounds tucked away in the hills.

But Tom Byrnes, editor of the local newspaper, said that because of the sheer number of workers involved--variously estimated at between 50 and 100--the immigrant camps have been too much for even a “live and let live” community like Topanga to accept.

“In other places, you’d find opposition to the camps because the people living there happen to be poor and foreign, and I’m not saying that’s not part of it here, but mostly people are concerned about the fire safety issue,” he said. “If there was no fire danger, it wouldn’t be a big deal.”

In June, the INS arrested 31 illegal immigrants on the highway near the center of Topanga, where each day dozens of immigrants gather in the hope of being offered work by passing motorists.

“We’re aware that that continues to be an active spot and our intention is to work it (again) as quickly as possible,” said John Brechtel, assistant district director of the INS in Los Angeles.

Sheriff’s and fire officials say that, even if they had the manpower to patrol the mountains and dismantle all of the camps, they would still face an uphill battle.

Last week, 28 female inmates assigned to a county Fire Department conservation camp helped tear down and haul away the three camps in the state park, park ranger Nancy Reid said.

But state law prohibits the use of inmates for work on private property, where most of the encampments are located.

And although residents have complained that the Sheriff’s Department has refused their requests to remove squatters from known encampments, sheriff’s officials say they aren’t authorized to do so on private property without the owner’s consent. Often, they say, the camps are on property owned by absentee landlords who are difficult to find.

Meanwhile, fire officials who have the authority to cite violators of the fire code say that unless, or until, they see smoke, there is little they can do to control the illegal encampments, even if they had the manpower to search them out.

“It’s as if you know something bad is about to happen, and you know the people in authority know, but nobody is able or willing to do anything about it,” said homeowner Meredith Miskowich, who found two immigrant camps within half a mile of her house.

“I knew (the camps) were there when I went to feed the horses one morning and three coyotes sat down 30 feet from me and just stared, like they’d been used to people,” she said.

Last week, in a meadow not far from where Miskowich lives, there were two tents she hadn’t seen before next to a dry creek. Each contained a suitcase, cooking utensils and other items. In one of the tents was a map of Los Angeles County.

Up the hill half a mile away, within the park boundary, a much larger camp consisting of several lean-to shelters made of wood and cardboard looked as though it had been in use for years. It was equipped with several old mattresses, two tables and half a dozen wooden boxes that served as chairs.

The ground around both tables was littered with cigarette butts.

“You would never know this place was back here unless you came looking for it,” observed Miskowich, whose husband stumbled across the camp several weeks ago. “Then again, I guess that’s why it’s here.”