Parking lot of burnt swap meet opens for business amid community concerns
Calexico community said to re-open the Santo Tomas Swap Meet so soon after a fire is a mistake.
Former City Mayor Armando Real said, “These makeshift structures that are not up to code are putting people’s lives at risk. They’re hazards.” “people’s lives are at risk.”
Resident Ben Horton said the location the swap meet sits on used to be a feedlot. He fears chemicals are still in the ground potentially posing a fire hazard.
“During the fire, the ground was burning. You can attribute to maybe chemicals in the ground, but the way it was burning the way I understand it, it could be because of methane gas that has formed in the ground over the years.”
“The city needs to possibly do a soil samples, soil test, dig and see if there’s any environmental impacts that could cause harm,” Real said.
City officials we contacted said they know nothing about a previous feedlot in the area. They said the Fire Department considers the south parking lot area safe for temporary business.
Horton disagrees with that decision.
“We may have issued violations, but was there any follow-up on those violations that were supposed to be taken care of? There were no fire hydrants near that should’ve been there for the size and the needs of the center,” Horton said.
Vendors were seen packing away their merchandise after the first day of sales. They said they had a good day and are looking forward to more business during the rest of the holidays.
“Today there were only a few of us vendors, we had few customers, but we had sales. All of us had sales,” Gabriela Uribe Espinoza, one of the vendors, said.
Real insists that it may be too soon and too dangerous.
“Everybody needs to be up to code for the safety of our community and for everybody that comes here from Mexicali to spend their money. It needs to be brought up to code before it should open,” Real said.
We reached out to Fire Department officials but they were not available for comment.
The Santo Tomas parking lot sales will be open from 7 a.m. to 4 p.m. daily from now till further notice.
