By Onell R. Soto, STAFF WRITER
August 15, 2008

The La Jolla Indian band, one of the poorest tribes in San Diego County, has used volunteerism, timely planning, gifts from wealthy tribes and a bureaucracy-averse reservation government to jump ahead of many devastated communities in recovering from last fall’s wildfires.

“Light years” is how Fred Sanford, an American Red Cross volunteer, described the difference. He worked with La Jolla after the Poomacha fire in October and is now a liaison with local Indian tribes.Builders are just about finished replacing tribal homes on the remote reservation on the flanks of Palomar Mountain, and some of the last residents burned out in the fall will begin moving in today.

All should be home by the end of October.

Of 33 tribal homes lost, about 30 have been rebuilt or replaced; the rest are mobile homes that have been purchased and are awaiting installation.

Contrast that to Rancho Bernardo, the city of San Diego’s hardest hit neighborhood, where 365 homes burned. There, 150 owners have taken out construction permits and fewer than a half-dozen have been rebuilt.

There are lots of reasons La Jolla has jumped ahead, say those involved

Volunteers from church groups and national organizations helped with cleanup. To save on costs, workers crushed the foundations from the burned-out houses for use as gravel in new construction.

Neighboring tribes have pitched in with big gifts, including new homes, utility work and money.

Mandatory insurance covered those homes that were bought with the help of the federal government, and a depressed construction market meant contractors offered upgrades and extras.

Because the homes are on tribal land, bureaucracy was held at a minimum – no county or city building permits were needed, and the tribal government directly coordinated recovery efforts.

And a disaster plan completed long before fires destroyed more than 1,700 houses across the county provided a road map for recovery and led to more federal assistance.

In one of the hardest hit neighborhoods – the Red Gate area – piles of debris smoldered 10 months ago.

“Imagine all your family living on one block and then it all burning down,” said Adam Geisler, the tribe’s disaster recovery coordinator, as he surveyed the neighborhood where 17 homes burned.

It now looks like a new subdivision, with stucco homes dotting the hillside. Landscaping is on its way – each home will get 10 mature trees.

Marissa Weeks and her three children will soon move into one of those homes.

“It’s been rough,” she said recently as two of her kids, Max and Mariha, sold Kool-Aid outside their grandmother’s home on another part of the 10,000-acre reservation.

Like many, the family moved in with relatives and friends after the fire.

The Weeks’ home is one of 12 that burned and was managed by the All Mission Indian Housing Authority, which works with several Southern California tribes and the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development.

All were insured by Amerind, which covers property in Indian Country. The insurance payment came to about $2.5 million, said Dave Shaffer, the authority’s director.

Contractors outbid one another and agreed to replace the homes for about $120 a square foot, compared with the $185 that insurance experts told homeowners to expect.

Costs were kept down because of the work volunteers and others did in clearing homesites and setting up utilities, said LaVonne Peck, who has worked on housing issues on the reservation for years.

Shaffer expects the project to come in under budget.

Meanwhile, the Pala Indian band donated 12 modular homes to uninsured tribal members, and the Morongo band donated four.

An additional five tribal members are replacing their homes using private insurance.

The tribal government isn’t involved in replacing about 25 burned-out homes on the reservation that were occupied by nontribal renters or which were second homes and not as high a priority, Peck said.

About 10 were mobile homes in a trailer park owned by a tribal member. Most of those were insured and have been replaced, she said.

Charities have helped renters find new places to lease.

Over on Red Gate, across the street from the Weeks’ new home, is Ben Rodriguez’s place. He and his wife, Vonda, were the first to get a trailer from the Federal Emergency Management Agency in San Diego County.

Now they’re getting ready to move into a new house with granite counters and cathedral ceilings overlooking the Pauma Valley. The FEMA trailer will be carted away.

With the encouragement of FEMA, tribal leaders in 2004 compiled a thick book listing the tribe’s resources – the square footage of all the homes, where roads and bridges are, how the water system works – and what to do before, during and after a disaster.

“We were able to hand that book to FEMA and say, ‘This is what it’s going to take to rebuild La Jolla,’ ” said Peck, who helped write the book, called a pre-disaster mitigation plan.

The FEMA help came to about $4 million, she said.

The tribe is using donations and some of its own resources to come up with the 25 percent match that local governments must contribute. For instance, the gravel from the foundations is worth about $500,000.

FEMA will help any disaster area with emergency debris removal and protective measures. But communities with a mitigation plan also get help for roads and bridges, water systems, utilities, buildings and parks.

The tribe is now working on clearing debris out of streambeds before the winter rains arrive, said former treasurer Fred Nelson, who is also working on recovery efforts.

Rain and floods closed roads and led to evacuations last year, he said.

The San Diego Foundation has spent about $7.5 million on fire recovery efforts across the county, including about $500,000 on La Jolla, said Dan Beintema, director of the regional disaster fund.

He noted the tribe bought used, but good, construction equipment.

“They’ve totally leveraged every dollar they’ve received,” he said.

LA JOLLA RESERVATION RECOVERY: BY THE NUMBERS $1 million: Cost of cleanup, before volunteer labor

$2.5 million:: Amount of insurance settlement for 12 HUD homes

$4 million: Assistance provided by FEMA

16: Modular homes donated by neighboring tribes

23,000: Tons of gravel recovered from foundations of burned out homes

3,000: Tires removed

250: Burned-out cars recycled

SOURCE: La Jolla Band of Luiseño Indians

Onell Soto: (619) 593-4958; onell.soto@uniontrib.com
© Copyright 2008 Union-Tribune Publishing Co.

Posted on August 15th, 2008 by hunwut
Filed under: Community, Reservations, Wild Fires