Unlike the former first lady, I am appalled and ashamed at the federal government’s lack of response to the devastation and human suffering that Katrina brought.
But, given the socio-economic and racial makeup of the left behind, I’m not surprised.
Last year, a Presidential election year, FEMA swooped into Florida and bestowed gifts upon stunned residents in record time. Actual storm damage did not seem to be a factor, but demographics definitely were.
South Florida residents were showered with federal funds despite the fact that the various storms passed them by, for the most part. The National Guard hurried into middle class and wealthy neighborhoods, neatly affixing tarps to slightly damaged roofs. The President made multiple trips and gained untold good will by simply encouraging the much maligned bureaucracy to do its job.
FEMA provided food and water, trailers for temporary housing, and cash for rebuilding along with lots of other aid. Red tape was nowhere to be found – wheelbarrows full of money were there for the taking, and many people who were only peripherally affected by our various storms benefited for the governments largess. Even the cynics agreed that state and federal governments were doing a fine job.
Even so, a certain type of victim was less likely to receive attention than other, wealthier, more likely to vote folks.
In a small, stuffy trailer Tuesday, on the northern tip of a decimated island, an international showdown was brewing.
Moments earlier, Mexican Consul General Jorge Lomonaco from Miami walked among uprooted trees, peeled aluminum and shells of homes in the Pink Citrus Trailer Park on north Pine Island, at the mouth of Charlotte Harbor.
A fraction of the park’s 500 Mexican residents have remained, finding shade from a scorching sun under broken trees and awnings. Of those, about a dozen swarmed around him.
“The manager said we have to clean,” 39-year-old Leticia Blanquel told him. If they don’t clean the debris from the park on their own and pay the rent, they’ll be out, residents said they were told.
Lomonaco had planned to visit areas populated by Mexican residents after Hurricane Charley passed. His first stop was Tuesday in Pink Citrus, located in a small unincorporated area of Lee County with a population of about 2,000. He was alerted to the park residents’ woes through Spanish-language media.
As residents told him their concerns, Lomonaco listened, worried that the lives of these laborers were about to get even harder. Many of the immigrants’ homes were ravaged. For some, their jobs were gone, too. But retirees and mariners on the island had something they don’t: a Social Security number.
Lomonaco feared that their illegal immigration status would leave the Mexican workers the most vulnerable of all hurricane victims.
“We’re concerned about their welfare,” Lomonaco told a park caretaker in the cramped trailer after walking through the park in jeans and work boots.
“Yes, as are we,” said caretaker Ellie Carrier, sitting behind a desk, legs crossed, an unlit cigarette between two fingers. “Unfortunately, we don’t run on thin air.”
“Excuse me?” Lomonaco asked, as a large fan labored in another room.
“We need money,” she said.
The two quickly began talking over each other.
“It’s unfair,” he said.
“In this part of Florida, there are thousands of homeless people” from the hurricane, she said. “We need the lot rent in order to keep operating.”
The residents, who work jobs in landscaping, construction and in citrus on mainland farms, own the trailers, but pay $190 in monthly rent for the lots, plus utilities.
“We’re hoping that FEMA comes through for these people,” she said. “But, unfortunately, we’re not a charity operation.”
If residents don’t pay the rent, they risk losing their lot, she said.
“That’s a threat,” Lomonaco said.
The two were pointing fingers, alternately yelling, “Let me finish my sentence!”
“We’re not threatening anyone,” Carrier barked.
“But I don’t think it’s fair to be charging rent in a trailer park that isn’t running at all,” Lomonaco said.
If it’s not running, why were there still so many people remaining in the park, she asked.
“They don’t have anywhere else to go!” he yelled.
There was no running water, no septic service, no electricity, no security, he said.
“Security for what?” she shot back.
The workers need to feel safe about leaving their belongings in the trailers cracked open by trees so they can go to work or find food and water, he said.
The lack of water and electricity were not the park’s fault, Carrier said.
They’ve been asked to clean, he said, echoing the residents’ concern that if they didn’t clear the fallen trees and rubble, they would lose their lots. If they stayed back to clean up the park, they couldn’t work.
“They’ve been asked to clean around their trailer,” Carrier responded.
Lomonaco told her the park managers should stop thinking about money and give the residents a break until they could get back on their feet.
His office would be asking for copies of leases, he added.
Carrier paused.
“No one who owns a trailer here has a lease,” she said.
“I’m going to ask a lawyer to look into this,” he said.
Lomonaco walked back outside to visit with residents.
“Don’t sign anything,” he told them in Spanish.
The owners of the park, registered with the state as Palm Harbor Development Group Inc. of Tampa, could not be reached for comment Tuesday.
Lomonaco left the residents with another strong message: They would be eligible for federal disaster aid regardless of their immigration status. His news echoed comments made Monday by Florida Agriculture Commissioner Charles Bronson as he toured devastated crops and citrus plants.
Empty promises from a well meaning but powerless official. The story unfolds in a predictable fashion.
Angered by reports of poor treatment of migrants at a mobile home park devastated by Hurricane Charley, Gov. Jeb Bush promised Wednesday to hold the owners responsible.
Mexican farm families who live at a Pine Island mobile home park said they were ordered to clean up debris – including uprooted trees – fix their homes and continue paying rent.
“I think it’s horrific that people would do that,” Bush told reporters Wednesday after reading a St. Petersburg Times story about the Pink Citrus Trailer Park in Bokeelia. “I was sickened to see it.”
By midday, Thaddeus Cohen, secretary at the Department of Community Affairs, had called for law enforcement agencies, the Salvation Army, a Spanish translator and others willing to help residents of the park on north Pine Island at the mouth of Charlotte Harbor. Although 500 Mexicans lived at the park before the hurricane, only a handful remain. “We’re trying to solve the problems,” Cohen said late Wednesday.
Meaningless lip service for the cameras, and scenes of action only until the reporters go away.
In the five months since Hurricane Charley spread misery across Florida, little has changed at Pink Citrus, a run-down trailer park on the northern edge of Pine Island.
Dozens of residents, most of whom are undocumented Mexican farm and construction workers, are living in damaged homes with blue plastic sheets for roofs, and broken windows and walls patched with plywood. Only a few families at the park — those with U.S.-born children — received federal aid, despite pledges from the public and private sector to help them rebuild.
Because many of the park’s residents have no legal immigration status, the Federal Emergency Management Agency refuses to provide them with temporary trailers, citing federal laws.
This is just an one example of how the poor and powerless are mostly forgotten in the aftermath of tragedy – a pattern that is becoming more and more evident to residents of poor rural counties.
When it rains outside, it also rains inside at Virginia’s house in Desoto County. She needed an $8,000 grant from the Federal Emergency Management Agency to repair her roof, but FEMA denied her request and they won’t say why.
“It’s not that I am asking for, you know, hundreds of thousands of dollars. I just want my house livable,” she continued.
Lorena Delgado is a disabled single mother of four who lost her home to Hurricane Charley.
“They told me that the trailer, it was not in good condition no more and that I had to get a new one,” she said.
FEMA gave Lorena about $8,000, but it was not enough to replace her trailer, furniture, or clothes for a family of five. Now FEMA says she was overpaid and wants about $600 back.
It doesn’t end there: the Zolfo Springs Police Department looks the same as it did right after Charley. FEMA promised money to fix the department, but never sent a check.
“They’ve acknowledged that it’s a total loss,” Chief David Scheid explained, standing amidst the ruins of his office. “I have to send these officers out with no vests, improper radios, just equipment that we can’t afford to replace.”
At midday, the evacuation was interrupted briefly when school buses rolled up so some 700 guests and employees from the Hyatt Hotel could move to the head of the evacuation line – much to the amazement of those who had been crammed in the stinking Superdome since Sunday.
“How does this work? They (are) clean, they are dry, they get out ahead of us?” exclaimed Howard Blue, 22, who tried to get in their line. The National Guard blocked him as other guardsmen helped the well-dressed guests with their luggage.
Out of the rubbles of Trent Lott’s house — he’s lost his entire house — there’s going to be a fantastic house. And I’m looking forward to sitting on the porch. (Laughter.)
