October 29, 2007
Mexico Responds to California
Fires
Frontera NorteSur
Straddling the US border, sections of Mexico's Baja California state were
singed by the raging fires that erupted across the border in Southern California in recent days. Blanketing the border with
bad air conditions, smoke and haze from the fires prompted Mexican authorities to close schools in Tijuana, Tecate, Ensenada
and Playas de Rosarito early this week. Hundreds of thousands of Mexican students were left without classes until further
notice.
According to Juan Elvira Quesada, chief of the federal Ministry of the Environment and Natural Resources (Semarnat)
several dozen acres of Mexican land were burned by border-jumping blazes. Some of the flames threatened areas well-known as
crossing corridors for undocumented workers. Four cabins at Rancho La Puerta, a popular tourist destination near Tecate,
were burned in a fire. The emergency conditions forced the evacuation of at least 100 families in Ensenada, 60 households
in Tecate and several dozen more people in Tijuana. Except for one report of a child suffering burns in Tijuana, the
casualty list from fires in Mexico was initially blank.
Reminiscent of their deployment during the 2003 San Diego area
fires, Mexican firefighters and fire control experts were dispatched to the United States to help bring the flames under control.
Sixty firefighters from Tijuana and Tecate crossed the border October 21 to assist in fire suppression work on the US side,
but were withdrawn the next day after they were suddenly needed to combat fires beginning to spread into Mexico. Semarnat
head Elvira said that a separate group of 32 Mexican fire control experts were sent to California, with another 100 on stand-by
in Mexican territory.
As the fires picked up in strength, concern was expressed by both Mexican and US authorities
that immigrant smugglers, or "coyotes," would see the disaster as a distraction to aid them in crossing undocumented migrants
across the border. California National Guard units which had been assigned to border patrol duty were ordered north for fire
control duty.
Alberto Lozano Merino, spokesman for the Mexican Consulate in San Diego, said that two groups of migrants
were detained October 22 attempting to cross the border in the midst of the fires. According to Lozano, one migrant suffered
second degree burns and several others registered light burns. A group of 50 migrants reportedly surrendered to US Border
Patrol agents October 21, but agency spokesperson Wendy Lee said she could not confirm the incident.
"The detentions
are constant. Yes, there are groups of between five and ten people that try to cross," Lee said. "It's important to publicize
the alerts about the big dangers that they expose themselves to, which are normally significant but much greater now because
of the fires."
Sources: Frontera, October 22 and 23, 2007. Articles by German Ramos, Laura Duran, Luis Adolfo
San, Junuen Lugo, and the Associated Press news agency. El Universal/EFE/AP, October 23, 2007. La Jornada/ Notimex/AFP, October 22 and 23, 2007. El Diario de Juarez, October 23, 2007.
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Frontera
NorteSur (FNS)
Center for Latin American and Border Studies
New Mexico State University
Las Cruces, New Mexico
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(Reprinted with authorization from Frontera NorteSur, a free,
on-line, U.S.-Mexico border news source. FNS can be found at http://frontera.nmsu.edu/)
Translation FNS
