Public Safety

Geronimo Tarango and his friends had only a 20-minute lunch break from their roofing job on Thursday and so were interested in making the most of their time. That meant darting across Reseda Boulevard to Burger King by the quickest means possible: barreling right through the middle of traffic, forgoing a walk to the Vanowen Street corner and a wait for the crossing light.

They are on the news almost nightly: carjackers, sexual predators, workplace gunmen, follow-home, takeover and home invasion robbers, killers enraged on the road. By the numbers, there are fewer and fewer of them. Yet fear of them has held steady. That fear has overwhelmed reality, causing many Americans to feel more threatened by crime even as the nation has become a safer place in which to live. The reasons for that disparity are complex, and sometimes shockingly deliberate.

The issues were weighty and the politicians powerful. There was the state budget and the future of the most important public hospital on the West Coast. But the anti-street light people of Sierra Madre Villa Avenue made county government stop and listen. There were four of them: Wendy Alden, Fred Weideman, Margo Reid and Nancy Holst. They got mad, got in their cars, and told the supervisors a thing or two about street lights. They don't like them.

Many low-income Orange County homes harbor dangerous levels of carbon monoxide, and a new state study concludes that those residents are more likely to die of carbon monoxide poisoning than people in newer, better-maintained homes. Nearly 350 inspections conducted by the nonprofit Community Development Council in 1997 showed that one in seven homes had dangerously high levels of carbon monoxide--an odorless, colorless and potentially deadly gas emitted by faulty furnaces, ovens and wall heaters.

Nearly 4 million Californians live near areas where pesticides are heavily used, a new report concludes, raising concerns about human exposure to potentially dangerous airborne chemicals. They reside not only in the farming communities of the Central Valley but in fast-growing suburban enclaves such as Orange County, which ranks No.

The biggest beach rescue days aren't the ones with huge surf but sunny days with warm water and medium surf that lull beach-goers into a false sense of security. Orange County lifeguards--who rescued more than 15,000 people last year--try to anticipate trouble by evaluating beach-goers' water skills. Teens and young adults most often misjudge their swimming abilities. Lifeguards make five preventive warnings for every rescue. But when they spot danger, here's how they swing into action: 1.

The top U.S. auto-safety official said Monday that there is no clear solution to the dangers light trucks pose to cars in crashes and that any future regulations to minimize the hazard should be broadly drawn. The remarks by National Highway Traffic Safety Administrator Ricardo Martinez signal that so-called vehicle compatibility will take years to address with a variety of strategies that are likely to be employed by auto makers.

Noriko Matsuo is afraid to keep breast-feeding her baby. "To think that dioxin might be flowing out of me to her is horrible," Matsuo said as her 1-year-old squirmed on her lap. She also wonders if it's safe to let her 3-year-old play in the local sandbox while 38 incinerators within a 2 1/2-mile radius are spewing dioxin-laden smoke into the atmosphere of this leafy bedroom community.