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After Hurricane Yang devastated communities in southwest Florida, Florida residents are coming together to help them rebuild. The Category 4 storm, the fifth strongest storm on record to hit the United States, made landfall on September 28 at Fort Myers and Cayo Costa near Cape Coral. As of Tuesday, October 11, Hurricane Ian has killed at least 120 people, 55 of them in Lee County, which includes Fort Myers and Cape Coral.
Before the storm hit the coast, The Smile Trust, a non-profit organization that helps the homeless and tackles food insecurity, mobilized its Miami Emergency Operations Center (CEOC) to begin fundraising efforts for the hardest hit communities.
“We always want to be able to respond quickly and provide the services people need,” said Im’Unique Hailer, administrative assistant at The Smile Trust. “We know it will take longer for government agencies and other large national organizations to get there. So we’re working hard to meet [the community's] needs as quickly as possible.”
Under the slogan “We ourselves are the first responders,” the Smile Trust reached out to community partners in Orlando, Tampa, Jacksonville, and Naples to identify the biggest needs. As of Friday, September 30, they have delivered at least two truckloads of pallets of water, diapers, hygiene products, cleaning products, food, generators and other essentials to Naples and Immokali, Florida, where 40% of residents live. There is no electricity in Collier County.
The Smile Trust works with community organizations and has centers in cities in need. Sometimes that means serving the community by setting up tents and handing out food, and sometimes that means providing forklifts and pallets. The Smile Trust delivers its trucks to organizations that can dismantle the material and distribute it to the community with the help of small local organizations.
Most recently, Smile Trust mobilized its CEOC to help with the water crisis in Jackson, Mississippi. The first call to action came in February 2021 when a devastating winter storm left many Texans without power due to freezing temperatures.
“This pattern of systematic neglect and state-sanctioned violence against black and brown communities highlights how important it is for our communities to have a say in how resources are allocated after a storm and which communities are prioritized for hurricane preparation. How important,” is one of them. This is stated in a message on the Smile Trust website. “Ending these patterns of neglect by transferring power and resources to affected communities is a core goal of the climate justice movement.”
The Smile Trust is calling on community volunteers to help improve response times, help pack pallets, load trucks and make medical calls. Heller said the organization will continue to accept in-kind donations until “the needs of those who need us are met.” It also accepts cash donations throughout the year to ensure immediate mobilization should the need arise.
Triangle Mutual Aid partnered with Mutual Aid Disaster Relief, a national grassroots organization that supports disaster survivors, to launch a supply campaign to support communities in southwest Florida. They are currently collecting donations in the form of durable tarps, roof racks, contractor bags, other building materials, mosquito spray and more.
The Immokali Workers’ Union also raised over $11,000 in donations to help victims of Hurricane Yang. His partner, Jesus Ward Workers, was able to purchase and distribute much-needed supplies to more than 2,000 families in Fort Myers.
Collier Community Foundation CEO Eileen Connolly-Kiesler said they have mobilized the Collier Comes Together relief fund to raise money and put it directly into the hands of the community so they can start rebuilding the city. Urgent needs include food and cleaning supplies, but Connolly-Keesler said the most important need is cash.
“We have a lot of people out of work right now because restaurants are closed due to flooding,” Connolly-Kiesler said. “We need to somehow give them access to funds to support their families.”
Cleaning up immediately after a flood is especially important, Connolly-Kiesler says, because waterlogged homes can promote rapid mold growth. If not acted upon quickly, mold growth can continue to damage infrastructure long after the storm has died down and cause short and long term health risks.
To date, the Collier Community Foundation has raised $800,000. “It’s great, but unfortunately it’s a drop in the ocean,” Connolly-Kiesler said. “When we look at the five counties in the region, we probably need a billion dollars to help people recover. Some people have lost everything – everything in their homes, their clothes, their furniture. Now all of our communities need money. This is the only the way we can recover.”
In Fort Myers, recovery has been a daunting task after a storm surge reached 15 feet and flooded a coastal beach town, with Fort Myers Beach nearly destroyed. About 400 structures were severely damaged or destroyed in northern Barrier Island alone, according to an aerial photograph of Fort Myers Beach by the New York Times. In Central Florida’s Seminole County, officials counted at least 5,200 damaged homes, and in Key West, about 200 people were displaced by the storm.
“The best thing we can do is get people out of the shelters,” said Terry Mazani, chief collaborator for the Collaborative, a Fort Myers-based organization. “They need to recover. It won’t be easy because some areas have already been cleared and only basic infrastructure needs to be rebuilt first.”
Unfortunately, according to Mazani, there is no immediate solution to the problem. Florida, which is already facing an affordable housing crisis, has been named the most inaccessible state in the country. Now the migrants are stuck on another level of housing problems.
“You can see long-term mass disasters before Katrina and Harvey and see how slow the recovery process is,” Mazzani said. “We have thousands of residents who have lost their livelihood, cannot work, have lost their homes and property. There is simply no distribution system to help people refill refrigerators that are currently unavailable or have no electricity.”
Cash donations are currently the best way to help people put money in their pocket so they can buy essentials and rebuild their lives, trusting people know what they need most, Mazani said.
“It will be some time,” Mazzani said. “This is not a disaster that can be solved in a week. We’re thinking about months and months ahead.”
Alexandra Martinez is a senior journalist for Prism. She is a Cuban-American writer based in Miami, Florida with interests in immigration, economics, gender justice, and the environment. Her work… more by Alexandra Martinez
Post time: Oct-13-2022