March 3, 1998
Imagine losing your home and your possessions and most of your neighborhood
to to a tornado, then imagine that simply because of your skin color or
ethnicity your loss was being overlooked by the media and charities while
your lighter-skinned neighbors got the help they needed to put their lives
back in order.
This scenario is turning out to be all too real for the African-American
and Hispanic communities in Winter Garden, a Central Florida town just west
of Orlando that was pounded by the recent storm. Local media, relief
workers, government agencies and utility companies are blatantly ignoring
people of color devastated by the storm, charges the Farmworkers
Association of Florida (FAF).
"They are being by-passed. The day after the storm numerous utility repair
trucks were seen in the white communities of Winter Garden but only one was
seen in the African-American and Hispanic community," said Jeannie
Economos, FAF assistant administrator.
The worst tornado disaster in state history killed 39 people and damaged or
destroyed nearly 2,400 manufactured houses, apartments, businesses and
single-family homes in Orange, Seminole, Osceola and Volusia counties.
Damage estimates as of Wednesday, Feb. 25 approached $56 million.
According to FAF, the Red Cross relief efforts in the Winter Garden area
are concentrating on the Country Garden Apartments , a predominately white
neighborhood which has received much of the media's attention, while
ignoring nearby areas that have large populations of people of color.
"The Red Cross actually told one African-American woman that they could not
help her because they were set up to help the Garden Apartments," said
Economos.
The African-American woman said she walked from her house to Country Garden
Apartments where the Red Cross station was set up to ask for assistance.
She asked a Red Cross worker if some food and supplies could be taken back
to her neighborhood.
The worker's response? "Indeed not, we've set up to help the people of the
apartment complex."
"It's really nasty out there. The farmworker families are feeling neglected
very badly, " said Sister Gail Grimes, FAF administrator.
--Lance Turner
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