Fences Structure

Several recent incidents of violence on and near high schools in the Southland have prompted Valencia High School officials to begin erecting a chain-link and wrought-iron fence around open portions of the school.

A Canoga Park woman who refused to tear down an illegal fence in her front yard and who, in protest, gathered evidence of similar zoning violations at the houses of city officials, has won a nine-year dispute with Los Angeles inspectors. The city attorney's office said Monday that it dropped a complaint against Barbara Fabricant for having a six-foot fence around her front yard because such walls have become common in the city.

Humans and deer long have coexisted peaceably in Sierra Madre Canyon, nestled at the base of the San Gabriel Mountains about 15 miles from downtown Los Angeles. Deer trails there meander through backyards of bohemian cottages and hillside houses. But in the past few months, that relationship has been shattered by the deaths of at least five deer and subsequent protests against a fence that critics say caused those deaths.

Doors leading to new outdoor swimming pools would have to be equipped with alarms under proposed regulations unveiled by city officials Tuesday. The new rules would also require changes in fences surrounding pools, making them more difficult for children to climb. "I'm certain that this is going to be opposed," Councilwoman Joy Picus said at a poolside press conference held at her son's North Hollywood house. "But it's modest in price and it's a precaution that needs to be there."

The Glendale City Council on Tuesday postponed making a decision on whether to uphold its almost 80-year-old ban on frontyard fences. Two council members who have fences said they would abstain Tuesday because of a possible perception of conflict, and the council decided to wait until all five members could vote on the matter. Mayor Guz Gomez and Councilman Bob Yousefian recused themselves, citing the potential appearance of a conflict of interest.

The new eight-foot-high, seven-mile fence looks like any other freeway median barrier. But this fence, installed near the U.S. Border Patrol's San Onofre checkpoint, is meant to control people, not vehicles. This bloody stretch of Interstate 5 south of San Clemente is a focal point in the war to protect the United States' border with Mexico.

Totuava Bay, a breathtaking sliver of sand and sea flanked by towering bluffs, boasts one of the more pristine and secluded beaches in South Laguna. But for some local residents, the beauty is marred by a 10-foot-high chain-link fence, topped with as many as six strands of barbed wire to keep outsiders from climbing over.

The Laguna Beach City Council voted unanimously Tuesday night to press for the removal of a chain-link fence topped with barbed wire that restricts access to Totuava Bay beach to residents of a condominium complex on the north side of the beach. The resolution directs the city manager to work with the Laguna Lido Homeowners Assn. to knock down what some nearby residents call a dangerous eyesore.

An ambitious, multibillion-dollar project to hot-wire the new Southwest border fence with high-tech radar, cameras and satellite signals has been plagued with serious system failures and repeated delays and will probably not be completed for another seven years -- if it is finished at all. The system, originally intended to be completed next year, languishes in the testing phase in two remote spots of the border in Arizona. There, the supposedly state-of-the-art system combining sensor towers, communication relay systems and unattended ground sensors has been bogged down with radar clutter, blurred imagery on computer screens and satellite time lapses that often permit drug smugglers and undocumented workers to slip past U.S. law enforcement agents, government officials candidly admit.

A 95-year-old, hearing-impaired man walking with the aid of a cane is hit by a train and killed as he crosses the tracks in the city of Industry. Two joggers--one of them wearing headphones--are struck by a train and fatally injured as they run alongside the tracks in Corona. And now, two preschoolers are killed by a train in Upland. The toddlers' deaths last week served as a grim reminder of the dangers railroad tracks pose in a metropolitan region more accustomed to freeways.