Floridians line up for
food assistance in the aftermath of Hurricane Irma
By Matthew Taylor
17 October 2017
Hurricane Irma had a devastating impact throughout the Southeast
United States, but hit particularly hard in Florida, where it first made
landfall. Wind speeds in the state reached up to 142 miles per hour and
rainfall levels ranged from 6 to 16 inches. Storm surges reached up to eight
feet in the northern part of the state, a record level.
Fifteen million residents lost electricity, many for a week or
more. Flooding damaged or destroyed thousands of residences and businesses.
Millions of residents were unable to earn money in the aftermath of the storm
because their workplaces were destroyed, or because they had to provide
childcare when many of the state’s schools were closed due to damage.
Throughout the state, hundreds of thousands of residents affected
by Hurricane Irma have lined up at parks, convention centers and parking lots
across the state over the course of the last week to receive vouchers for
emergency food assistance.
The events are all-day affairs, beginning in the morning and
lasting into the night, with residents standing in line for eight hours or more
to receive two months’ worth of Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program
(SNAP) benefits, commonly known as food stamps.
In Broward county, on Sunday a planned
giveaway had to be canceled after fights broke out and multiple residents
fainted from standing in line in the sweltering heat. In Miami-Dade County on
Saturday, police shut down the event after chaos broke out among the desperate
applicants. “They went in trampling over old ladies, people with kids. It was
horrible,” a local resident told the Miami Herald.
Many other applicants also spoke to the
media about their experiences trying to apply for benefits. Beverly Moore of
North Lauderdale told the Sun Sentinel, “I feel like I’m in a
third world country right now, not in America trying to get assistance. I mean,
there are old people here who haven’t had water in hours.”
In Hialeah, according to another resident, “everybody went crazy
and ran in all directions, I even saw a lady in a wheelchair get trampled, but
today everybody is polite and friendly.”
Another Miami resident, Enrique, told
the Herald, “How am I? Hungry. Tired. Sleepy, and thirsty, oh my
god thirsty. That’s so many hours in the sun, so many hard hours, but my wife
and I have an autistic son and two other children, but for a family with five
people, I might get $1,500. It all adds up.”
Olivia Aviles of Coral Springs told CBS, “We basically lost power,
lost the food in our fridge, and then, you know, we’re just here now trying to
recoup some of it. We lost like a week of work, so we are now trying to recoup
some of it.”
Another resident, Nella Levy-Fogah, told CBS, “Some can’t even go
back to work—the jobs are not there. They lost so much during the hurricane and
they need help and there’s nowhere else to get it.”
In Jacksonville, residents started
lining up at 3 a.m. at a mall parking lot to apply for benefits, though the
event did not start until 7 a.m., according to the Florida
Times-Union. There was widespread confusion in the crowd, with many
believing that actual food was being distributed. Many residents were also
unaware that applications for the five days of the event were divided up
according to the first letter of their last name, with only people with the
last name beginning with A through D eligible to apply on the first day.
Officials in many counties have been compelled to schedule an additional day to
accommodate the overwhelming number of applicants.
In comments made to News4Jax.com, Tihanie Mcvroom, a local
resident who had lost power for six days after hurricane Irma, said, “I lost
everything that I had, but I had to stay strong for my family to do what I had
to do.”
The Department of Children and Families has reported that as of
Sunday more than 1.1 million residents have applied for assistance under the
program.
The program, known as Disaster SNAP, is only available to those
who are not already receiving regular SNAP benefits. Potential recipients can
only qualify for the program if they can prove that they suffered a loss of
income or property due to the hurricane. If approved, recipients receive an EBT
card worth up to $300 per person to spend on food. This sum is supposed to
represent two months’ worth of food costs and expires after 90 days.
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