Results tagged “glenn bell” from Ron Kaye L.A.

At a meeting of the Oakridge Mobile Home Park fire victims last month at Mission College, Councilman Richard Alarcon proposed using the $100,000 from the Lopez Canyon fund to aid the victims of the Sylmar tragedy but not victims of Sky Terrace who should also have benefited from that assistance.

Glenn Bell, President of Neighborhood Friends- an advocacy group that champions the rights for mobile home park owners, said all victims deserve help and the two parks should be given equal funding.. "The Governor brought FEMA into the Oak Ridge Fire, where at least 85% of the victims were insured, leaving those in Sky Terrace to fend for themselves." 

Editor"s Note: Glenn Bell, a resident of Blue Star Mobile Home Lodge and organizer of Neighborhood Friends which has served an advocacy group for manufactured home owners, wrote this article in response to promises being made to those who lost their homes in the recent brush fires.


By Glenn Bell
Correspondent

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger joined Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa in promising to rebuild Oakridge Mobile Home Park in Sylmar and went a step beyond that and said he was going to look into the manufacturing standards of manufactured homes, to make them more fire retardant.  

This is peculiar to me considering his office has been asked for years to "LOOK INTO" the manufactured housing industry.

He has been asked to look at the park owners business practices, he has refused.

He has been asked to look into the health and safety of Manufactured Housing Communities throughout the state, he has refused.  

Now all of a sudden when four mobile home parks have damaged by brush fires or demolished, he is going to "LOOK INTO" the manufacturing of these homes?  

Arnie, how about looking into the fact that in two of these parks, Sky View Terrace and Oakridge, the water pressure was so bad that the firefighters had to drop their hoses and run for their lives??   

Or how about looking into the failure of the park ownerships to clear away combustibles, again Sky Terrace, Blue Star and now Oakridge?   

Or how about looking into the safety procedures of county evacuations in emergency situations? Blue Star homeowners sat in the middle of a firestorm in their cars, waiting to be cooked with fires raging on both sides of them for over a hour and a half. All while the manager of the park refused to open an emergency?

Arnie, do you remember just two years ago, when a bill that had made it's way through the Legislature that required park management to be trained in emergency procedures?

What happened to that bill, Oh that's right, You VETOED it, just like the overwhelming amount of bills that mobile homeowners have fought to get to your desk.

For years you have been in the pocket of park owners, you know like the more than generous fund-raiser that Sam Zell, owner of Equity Lifestyle Properties, the largest mobile home park owner in the world, gave for you in Chicago?

Or how about the political contributions made to you by WMA, CMPA and MHET all lobbies of MHP Owners, something like $50,000.  Are you going to look into these things as well?   

Well how about the misuse of affordable housing funds being used to dislocate 70 affordable manufactured homes (Cal-Re-Use Monies) so a wealthy developer can put up a small industrial facility, and then build 116 luxury homes, according to the report made to the state assembly in 2006?? Are you going to look into that too??  

Or maybe you will look into state Housing and Community Development agency which has identified that over 85% of the states 5,500 mobile home parks have illegal electrical systems. Every one of those parks has a severe fire risk every day. When the park owners are cited and instructed to repair or replace the electrical systems the park owners just basically tell the state to bugger off and you do!! Are you going to look into that to?  

Or maybe you will look into the "Unconstitutional" aspects of California's Statutes, which actually discriminate against manufactured homeowners.  Like, allowing park owners to include a paragraph in their leases to remove rights from homeowners.

Editor's Note: Two North Valley mobile home parks were engulfed by this week's brush fires. At Sky Terrace Mobile Lodge, where residents already were under siege from a developer, dozens of homes were destroyed.

Down the raod at Blue Star Mobile Home Park, residents were luckier with several homes damaged but only one destroy. Residents had the scare of their lives, here's account of what it was like:

By Glenn Bell

Correstpondent

My wife, Jean, and I woke up at our normal time at 5 a.m. Monday morning. We enjoy our early mornings together, as we have for the 25 years of our marriage.

It was not a normal morning. We were experiencing a fire in the hills above us. Fire above Lopez and Kagel canyons is a pretty regular occurrence. Living on the edge of Los Angeles, everyone in our situation has grown used to this. But this time it was different. The smoke was much more rancid. The glow of the fire seemed nearer than in times past. 

Over the past couple of years things have changed in our neighborhood. Los Angeles County has allowed hundreds of diesel rigs to take up residence, without permits, directly up the hill from us. Because of that we have all of that truck-traffic and the pollutants that they cause driving 20 feet outside our bedroom window at all hours of the day and night. We have called the county, the city and the police many times and they will do nothing to remedy the situation. The only reason I bring this up is that this Monday morning, those trucks caused a severe and significant risk to the lives and safety of the thousands of people living below them.   

I started hearing explosions, I don't remember how many, but there were more than a dozen. So I went out to an area in front of my house to have a clear view of the hill above us. My neighbor and I watched as the truck diesel tanks exploded. As they exploded, the winds, blowing roughly 65 miles an hour, would blow the burning fuel down the hill towards our community. With every explosion I shuddered, fearing for our lives. It was the most surreal thing I have ever seen. This set into motion a series of events that will be seared into my memory forever. 

At that same time a police vehicle was traveling at a fast pace through our mobile home park, an officer was screaming into his PA system, GET OUT, GET OUT NOW, THIS IS AN IMMEDIATE AND MANDATORY EVACUATION!

Just like that, he was gone. The evacuation notice was simply a "drive-by" shout into a loudspeaker. There was no assistance offered for an orderly evacuation.

The fire has passed the Sylmar area where the Blue Star Mobile Home Park is located and Glenn and Jean Bell were able to return and find their manufactured home suffered serious damage but was not destroyed.

One home was destroyed and several others damaged but the toll at Sky Terrace Mobile Lodge to the east was serious: About 40 of the 57 homes were destroyed.

Bell said it was a nightmare getting out of Blue Star as the fire roared around the park where there's 186 homes. More than 300 vehicles jammed up trying to get out the single exit onto Gladstone Avenue until residents finally broke the lock on an emergency gate and left onto Paxton Street.

He described how the wind from the fire blew his cap off and it was completely in flames by the time it hit the ground.

"We were lucky," he said. "We thought it would be a lot worse."