Clinic, county bring free care to hundreds of blue-collar residents in smoke-steeped Boyle Heights

They lined the sidewalks around Our Lady of Victory Catholic Church in Commerce: Parents with red-cheeked children free from school, women pushing strollers, one pregnant mother with two toddlers fretting under the afternoon sun, and so many abuelas and abuelos, all waiting in the smoke-darkened air for help.

At least 800 people lined the perimeter of the church for hours on Tuesday. For a second day, at the invitation of Supervisor Hilda Solis, the nonprofit Via Care Community Health Center deployed its mobile health team to provide free first aid, medical care, breathing treatments, blood pressure screenings, prescription refills, mental health support and protective masks for residents affected by the Boyle Heights warehouse fire.

Working with the staff from Solis’ office, the medical check-up event also featured air filter and boxed food distributions.

In the predominantly Latino, working-class neighborhood, fear of health hazards is battling with people’s continuing suspicion of immigration enforcement. And for many residents in the low-income area, they have no choice but to go out and work, selling fresh fruit from carts on the corner or working outdoors in car repair shops, dangerous air quality and ICE raids notwithstanding.

“This Union Pacific neighborhood, which borders Boyle Heights, Vernon, a little bit of Commerce and it neighbors an industrial community, is bearing the brunt of all this, and has borne the brunt of the Exide facility and other environmental injustices. So the Supervisor’s priority is to make sure we’re getting to them,’ said Solis spokesperson Kimberly Ortega. “We know this predominantly low-income, Latino community, many of them immigrants, are already scared because of federal immigration actions directed at this community so we want to help them.”

Yolanda Olivares, chief operating officer for the federally recognized health center, estimate they saw at least 1,000 residents on the first day of the clinic, with more than 320 getting medical consults. Solis staff said they would have distributed 2,300 air filters, a vital lifeline for households that have been sequestered in non-airconditioned homes whose walls bring scant defense against the smoke that sat in the homes with them.

“There is no level of exposure that is too small,” Olivares said. “This is long-term.”

Maria Alvarez, 50, brought her 69-year-old mother Asuncion Palacios to the clinic for a dose of a breathing treatment. She showed photos she took of the night the fire erupted, a billow of black smoke rising behind their home.

“We’re very careful, we close everything,” Alvarez said. “My mother is better now after the treatment but we saw everything (last Wednesday). All the black smoke came into the house.”

Rodrigo Flores, 20, an asthmatic, thought someone nearby was cooking last week when the fire sparked blocks away from his home in Fourth Street.

“I looked outside the window and all I saw was black,” he said. “We keep all our doors and windows closed but the smoke still gets inside.”

Flores, a student at Cal State Los Angeles, said his summer plans didn’t include managing his worsening asthma symptoms while hunkered down in the Union Pacific home he shares with his mother, siblings, and grandmother, Maria De Los Santos, 65.

De Los Santos has lived in Boyle Heights for more than 40 years, proud of the home where she raised a daughter and where she now cooks hamon con juevos for her grandsons.

“It’s bad, how much this is affecting us,” she said, through her grandson.

The family was eager to pick up an air filter; they haven’t used anything to purify the air in their home. The smoke wafts in and stays, Flores said.

“But my grandma, she still takes care of all us,” he added.

Physician assistant Demetrio Cardenas, chief medical officer for Via Care, said the overwhelming complaints he’s seen in two days are headaches, eyes, ears and throat irritation, nasal congestion and high blood pressure among all patients, regardless of age.

“Almost 90% of the patients I’ve seen today had high blood pressure,” Cardenas said. “I think the stress of the situation is driving that, they have no other place to go and I’ve had to remind them to wear N95 and P100 masks,” because the smoke is carrying microscopic particles that can get deep into the lungs.

“This is community medicine, I love what I do, serving an underserved community,” Cardenas said. “They are the best patients. You treat one patient and then they bring grandma, their brother, the whole family. There is a big sense of community in East Los Angeles.”

Olivares, of Via Care, said her team will be around as long as they’re needed. Via Care serves 26,000 residents in the Los Angeles area and operates seven local sites.

“We are the safety net for anyone in the community for primary care, no one is turned away for inability to pay,” she said.

Her staff members are already bracing for Phase 2 of the disaster. She fears that the tons of food stored in the cold storage warehouse are already rotting and a wholly different aroma will rise amid the smoke they’ve been breathing for days.

“As long as they have space for us, we will make ourselves available,” she said. “And I want to tell people not to be afraid, not of ICE, not of ability to pay.”

She added: “Come out, we will be here.”