Furnished home found in storm drain
2 bedrooms, kitchen and a concrete dam built near El Cajon
By Greg Gross
UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER
February 4, 2006
EL CAJON – It wasn't the TV, VCR and DVD player hooked up to batteries in the drainage tunnel that had sheriff's Cpl. Troy DuGal shaking his head yesterday.
And it wasn't the homemade methamphetamine pipe or the improvised kitchen, complete with a pantry. It wasn't even the mirror over the bed.
It was what the homeless residents had built behind all that: a dam.
“It's really quite amazing to see what human ingenuity can come up with,” said county flood engineer Cid Tesoro.
Deputies found the encampment Wednesday in an unincorporated area between Greenfield and Hart drives, near a Graves Avenue apartment complex, after spotting a woman trying to get through a fence down into the culvert, where deputies had found her living last fall.
She and a man living with her were arrested on suspicion of felony vandalism, as well as a number of misdemeanor charges.
The culvert was divided into three sections by the two long concrete walls that held up the walkway above it. On the other side was another “apartment.”
“Just really nasty,” said Deputy C.E. May.
County public works crews face the chore of cleaning out the entire culvert, which may have to be treated as a hazardous materials site because of the presence of toxic chemicals and human waste. The tunnel will have to be ventilated to ensure that no dangerous gases remain.
The job is expected to take at least two days. The costs are expected to run into the thousands of dollars.
“We find these in places around the county, but not this elaborate,” Tesoro said.
About 900 feet to the west, work crews were already dismantling and cleaning out an even more elaborate encampment that was previously occupied by the same people. That cleanup work is expected to cost about $80,000.
Having an encampment crop up so soon after shutting down an earlier one is frustrating to law enforcement officers like DuGal.
He knows the two transients on sight. He chased them out of other encampments in the same culvert last year.
“There are four outstanding warrants on each of them, from me,” DuGal said.
“The homeless are in a sad situation, no doubt about that, but this is a public safety hazard.”
Scattered across the encampment floor were about 30 cell phones, all believed to have been stolen.
“You ask them where they got the phones and the answer is, 'I found it in a Dumpster.' People don't throw away perfectly good cell phones,” DuGal said.
Deputies also found syringes – some of them used – and realistic-looking toy guns amid the bicycles, mattresses, camp stoves and bedroom furniture.
“They'll tell you they're not criminals, but we find them with meth pipes, marijuana pipes, weapons, stolen property,” said Deputy Angela Pearl.
For those who set up housekeeping in the drains, it's often a matter of convenience, DuGal said. They complain to deputies that getting into homeless shelters like St. Vincent de Paul is just too hard.
But if they get caught in the culverts when storm runoff is flowing through, their home could quickly become a deathtrap, Tesoro said.
“These culverts are designed to channel floodwaters. On big storms, that flow is turbulent and fast,” he said. “Something like that can be drastic, even deadly, for the folks in there.”
