SAN DIEGO (Border Report) — Arturo Ramos refuses to go.
His home of 44 years is on a hillside that is collapsing on the east side of Tijuana. It began sliding off its foundation a few months ago and now has massive cracks inside and out.
The two-story house is one of 90 along Montes Escandinavos Street that civil protection officials have red-tagged and declared “uninhabitable.”
But despite efforts to clear out the entire neighborhood, Ramos is staying put.
“I’m not leaving, I’m staying till the end,” he said in Spanish. “It’s sinking, the roof could fall on us at any moment.”
Some of his neighbors’ homes have already wobbled off their foundations, and others have been pushed against one another.
And to make matters worse, there are also several sinkholes on the street that are 9 feet deep, according to the city.
Ramos knows his house is breaking apart.
Everywhere he turns, he can see cracks, split walls, crooked door frames, and floors that have become uneven and concave.
He shares his house with his wife, two other adults and two children.
“It hurts, it hurts to see it like this,” he said.
Ramos and some of his neighbors have heard — and ignored — the warnings to evacuate.
“My family has begun packing, but it’s horrible losing your patrimony, your legacy,” he said. “I can’t leave it behind.”
Ramos told Border Report it’s bad enough knowing they’re losing their home, but he’s afraid they’ll also lose all their possessions.
“Thieves have already burglarized homes down the street,” he said. “I’m not letting that happen to me.”
Tijuana’s civil protection agency says it can’t force residents to leave their homes, but will continue to “try and convince people that it’s in their best interests to leave for their safety.”
The city has offered to relocate residents, but Ramos says he doesn’t have money for rent.
Plus, he says he doesn’t believe the city sincerely wants to help people move to safer locations.
“All they do is say they have to conduct more studies and more studies, that’s not going to help us,” he said. “All they do is talk.”
Ramos and his neighbors blame the water department and a leak that took months to repair under the street.
“We kept telling them and telling them, but all they would say is they couldn’t find the source of the leak,” he said. “One of my neighbors finally dug far enough and found it.”
Ramos believes that was the beginning of the end for his neighborhood.
“It hurts, almost everyone in the neighborhood is retired, we’re all old, no one has money to start over.”
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