Oakland city crews have pulled 75 truckloads — about 250 tons — of debris out of the sprawling homeless encampment that surrounds the Fruitvale Home Depot in the past two weeks.

“And we still have 50 more tons to go,” said Oakland City Councilman Noel Gallo, whose district includes the Home Depot camp.

By comparison, San Francisco Public Works reports that even its biggest cleanups rarely top 10 tons.

“It shows you just how big this thing is,” Gallo said.

Even with the record cleanup, the camp will stay put at least until the end of the year. The city estimates 60 to 80 people live there.

“It’s not a full closure — it’s a clean-and-clear,” said Joe DeVries, Oakland’s point man on the homeless.

Oakland first announced plans to clean up the area several months ago, after Home Depot expressed serious concerns about worker and customer safety. The store even hired a private police squad car to patrol the parking lot, and Gallo began leading media tours, calling the situation “out of control.”

Removing homeless camps, however, is tricky — both legally and politically. Homeless advocates routinely challenge such cleanups in federal court as civil rights violations. The city has won four out of four challenges so far, but each takes time and money.

“I have another deposition tomorrow,” DeVries said.

Plus, in the past, city leaders have been reluctant to appear unsympathetic to the plight of the homeless, but that has changed in recent months as fires at camps have become more frequent.

Between Jan. 1 and Oct. 1, there were 158 confirmed fires related to homeless camps reported in Oakland.

The fire problem has become so acute that fire marshals have been assigned to homeless outreach teams.

“And this site is a perfect example of how impossible the situation has become for the public and for the people living there,” DeVries said.

“We had a utility pole get burned in one the of the structure fires last month that knocked out power to the nearby traffic signals,” DeVries said.

Fire marshals did a walk-through of the site and found “extremely hazardous fire conditions” amid the broken-down cars, RVs, tents and make-do cabins.

“The risk to human life at the site due to fire danger is unacceptable,” Fire Marshal Orlando Arriola said.

“We just had a fire Sunday,” Gallo said. “This guy set fire to his RV right in the middle of one of the lots” adjacent to the Home Depot.

Things could have been worse, but “because we had cleaned the area up, the fire did not spread,” DeVries said.

Once the cleanup is completed and fire lanes established on the city-owned lot, the tent dwellers will be allowed to return.

“They all moved to the nearby private lot while we clean out the public lot, DeVries said. “Then we clean the private lot, and they all move back to the public lot. It’s like vacuuming your living room: If you want to do it right, you have to move stuff to one side while you vacuum the other and vice versa.” And the pattern likely will continue until at least the end of the year, when the city hopes to set up a lot for 36 RVs on a nearby city lot.

If and when the lots are finally cleared, one lot owner has told the city he has plans for a Carl’s Jr. restaurant to go onto the site of the biggest camps.

Until then it’s the ongoing homeless shuffle — by the ton.

Home Depot didn’t immediately respond to a call for comment.

Wake-up call: A group of concerned local business leaders has come together to call on Oakland City Council to drop its lawsuit aimed at blocking the A’s purchase of Alameda County’s half share of the Coliseum site. It’s a deal the team says is essential if it is to build a privately financed waterfront ballpark across town.

“The lawsuit was really a wake-up call,” said Joel Flory, co-founder and CEO of VSCO, which makes a mobile photography app. “It showed that this is not going to be an easy project and we needed to come together and show support for the team’s efforts to build the ballpark.”

The group calling itself “Town Business” was put together with the help of the A’s and represents about 25 businesses, ranging from big ones like Clorox to small ones like the Golden Squirrel Pub in Rockridge.

“We thought it was important for the City Council to know that keeping the A’s in Oakland is not something we should risk losing,” Golden Squirrel owner Andrew Snow said.

And Town Business members say that while they plan to support a number of art and community projects down the line, the immediate goal is to influence the City Council debate over whether to drop its suit.

“This could be a tipping point for the city,” said Peerless Coffee CEO George Vukasin, who’s part of the Town Business effort.

The City Council has been sending mixed messages over the deal to build a new stadium at the Port of Oakland’s Howard Terminal. They’re especially concerned about the sale of the 122-acre Colisium site to the A’s, which some council members feel has nothing to do with the waterfront ballpark deal.

The A’s, however, say they need the profits from developing the Coliseum site to build the privately financed waterfront ballpark.

In an effort to settle the dispute, the A’s have offered to buy the city’s portion of the Coliseum as well.

“After losing the Raiders and the Warriors, it’s very important that we keep the A’s,” Oakland African American Chamber of Commerce CEO Cathy Adams said. “We are not going to get there if everyone is fighting. We need unity at this point.”

Whether the city accepts the A’s offer to buy its half of the Coliseum site is still up in the air. Plus, there is organized opposition to the waterfront ballpark and related development from port businesses, who say a 35,000-seat ballpark would disrupt their operations.

So, bleacher boosters, keep your voices in shape, because shouting has just begun.

San Francisco Chronicle columnist Phillip Matier appears Sundays and Wednesdays. Matier can be seen on the KGO-TV morning and evening news and can also be heard on KCBS radio Monday through Friday at 7:50 a.m. and 5:50 p.m. Got a tip? Call 415-777-8815, or email pmatier@sfchronicle.com. Twitter: @philmatier