Hilary leaves Southern California farmworkers in dire straits without work

Martina Zacarias, a farmworker in the Eastern Coachella Valley, called for help evacuating late Sunday when the wind turned fierce, the streets began flooding and the trees outside her mobile home bent deeply under the power of Tropical Storm Hilary as it moved through Southern California.

“It seemed like a tornado, because the air went everywhere. There’s a giant tree on the corner, and it bent it, it bent it horribly,” she said. She lost power Friday for about five hours and feared losing it again, which would have made the heat in the mobile home intolerable, she said.