STORIES FROM THE PAST
50 years ago
Mrs. Russell Friedley was watching television in the living room of her residence, in El Centro, at 6 p.m. Friday when suddenly there was a flash and smoke started pouring out of the set.
She immediately summoned police, who in turn, called the fire department. When the firemen arrived there was a violent explosion which blew out the front window of the living room.
Within minutes, the fire department report stated, the fire raced through the front of the house. It “was a hot, fast fire,” the report stated.
Damage to the living room, a dinette and hallway of the one-story frame house was extensive. Two bedrooms, in the rear, except for smoke damage, suffered little.
Flames were so intense a light bulb hanging from the hall ceiling was melted. The interior of the living room and dinette was completely destroyed.
40 years ago
The wounding of a Brawley youth by a ricocheting shot fired in the Safeway parking lot early Friday morning appears to be one more incident in a continuing problem that has existed in Brawley for some time.
That was the opinion of police Lt. Bernard Homme this morning after two more, and a possible third, indiscriminate shootings were reported.
“We have arrested numerous people for shooting in the city over the last two years,” Homme explained. “There is no indication that a major flare-up is about to erupt,” he said.
30 years ago
Young Central American boys.
You almost never see their faces on the evening news. Their stories are seldom told. Yet they are the ones who are doing the fighting in their war-ravaged countries.
While most of them would rather carry a soccer ball than a hand grenade, Central American teenagers seeking political asylum in this country say it’s impossible to keep from being recruited into government armies or guerrilla resistance movements.
“They force you into it. You don’t have a choice,” said Guillermo Cruz Garcia, 18, of El Salvador.
Like other Central American refugees his age, Cruz began his journey to the United States with less than $10 in his pocket.
He traveled on foot and caught rides on trains whenever he could get away with it.
“I have a godmother in Guatemala who gave me some clothing. But I had to sleep in train stations and beg for food,” he said, adding, “The people in Mexico were really nice. They didn’t let me starve.”
But the young Salvadoran now has other things to worry about.
Cruz was picked up by Border Patrol agents near Tijuana in September. He is now one of several young Central American boys now being held at Eclectic Communications Inc. in Imperial, a privately-run detention center contracted by the Immigration and Naturalization Service.
There he will spend the next several weeks awaiting the day when an immigration judge decides whether he can stay in this country.
20 years ago
WESTMORLAND — “Relieved” is how Brawley grower Mark Hamby felt as he watched water flow across his dead-level irrigation pilot project here Saturday with his son Brooks.
“It’s a 25 (cubic) foot (per second) order,” he said. “Hopefully, we’re getting it all.”
Hamby’s is the first dead-level irrigation pilot project associated with the Imperial Irrigation District-San Diego County Water Authority transfer of conserved water agreement. It took little more than 24 hours to flood the field, and from the looks of the Trifolium 9 irrigation canal, which was only a couple of inches from the top, he was getting all he was going to get.
Hamby’s 78-acre plot has the last gate before the Louise Willey Reservoir, making it easy for Hamby to divert any excess water directly into the reservoir without affecting any other farmers or spilling any water.