Puerto Rican families fled Hurricane Maria’s destruction to Panama City. Months later, Michael struck – “When we got here we had nothing”
By Bianca Padró Ocasio
29 March 2019
(Orlando Sentinel) – Luis Angel Santos Baez was rummaging in his apartment complex’s dumpster in the early days of January 2018 when he found what seemed like a gift from God: a plastic storage cart that held several bags filled with unused notebooks and other arts-and-crafts supplies.
Santos Baez, 49, and his family had moved to Andrew’s Place, a complex outside Panama City Beach, after fleeing the devastation in Puerto Rico left by Hurricane María a few months before. This find came just before Three Kings’ Day, the Christian holiday that celebrates the Epiphany, and Baez and his wife couldn’t afford gifts for their eldest granddaughter.
The couple cleaned the items thoroughly before gift-wrapping them.
“When we got here we had nothing,” recalled Santos Baez’s wife, Helga Iris Llinas Agosto.
But the few possessions they managed to accumulate in their new home were quickly gone again. On 10 October 2018, Hurricane Michael struck the Florida Panhandle, displacing thousands of families — including about 15 that had fled there from Puerto Rico after Hurricanes Irma and María, according to an advocacy group working to relocate those and other families in the Panhandle. […]
“It’s sad that this is occurring,” said state Sen. Victor Torres, D-Kissimmee, who recently visited Panama City after Boricuas de Corazón met with him last week in Tallahassee. “It’s a shame our people who were subjected to [Hurricane María] landed in the path of another hurricane.”
Torres said he would advocateto allocate funding in the state’s budget to help the families still displaced, but argued the federal government should make it easier for repeat hurricane victims to get additional assistance.
“Unfortunately, they have been subject to bureaucratic nonsense from the federal government,” Torres said.
A spokesperson for the Federal Emergency Management Administration did not respond to a request for the number of repeat claims for federal emergency assistance thathave been filed by the same family. Applicants cannot receive assistance for rent or temporary lodging from two disasters at the same time, FEMA said. [more]
