Airport relief center calms evacuees
Puerto Ricans get aid from charitable, state organizations
Storm-weary Yara Ramos arrived Tuesday at Orlando International Airport with her four young children, her mother and a couple of suitcases from hurricane-ravaged Puerto Rico, looking for help in starting a new life in Florida.
“I’ve cried since I got off the plane,” said Ramos, 36. “Puerto Rico has been my home. But the disaster is too big. And what’s scary is that it’s going to be a long time before things return to normal. I just can’t go back.”
Moments later, she breathed a sigh of relief — the first in a long time — after she and her family found help Tuesday as the first evacuees from the U.S. territory to use a new disaster relief center set up on the first floor at the far east end of the airport’s Terminal A.
“I’m feeling more calm now,” Ramos said after learning where to apply for teaching jobs and enrolling her children in school. “I’m more relieved than when I got here because I was able to make some connections.”
Ramos and her family plan to live with her brother in Clermont.
Staffed with representatives from state agencies and charitable organizations, the center helps match Puerto Ricans coming into Florida with available resources in the community and helps them settle here either temporarily or permanently. That includes information about job-placement services, enrolling children in public schools, finding housing and medical assistance.
Agencies include the American Red Cross, Catholic Charities of Central Florida, the Salvation Army, Orange County Public Schools, FEMA and several state agencies — Department of Elder Affairs, Department of Health, Department of Children and Family and Department of Agriculture and Consumer Affairs.
As Puerto Rico passengers walk off planes, an airport or airline representative at the gate asks if they need community assistance. They are first led to the baggage areas, then down to the first floor to the reception center. A sign reading “Governor Rick Scott welcomes you to Florida” greets the evacuees leaving the island, which was slammed Sept. 20 by Hurricane Maria.
“Here, they have a one-stop shop to meet with folks and get checked in and have the ability to link up with the services that will help them get on their way,” said Tom Draper, senior director of airport operations.
Marucci Guzman, executive director of the nonprofit Latino Leadership, said most of the evacuees fled the island with few possessions.
“Many are coming literally with the shirts on their backs,” Guzman said. ““The urgency for housing is really the biggest issue that we have right now. We have people that don’t have a place to stay.”
With tens of thousands of Puerto Ricans expected to arrive in Florida in the coming weeks because of the devastation from Maria, Scott on Monday declared a state of emergency in every county to speed the process of helping evacuees find help. The state also set up similar disaster relief centers at Miami International Airport and the Port of Miami.
Ana Cruz of Orlando’s Hispanic Office for Local Assistance, which helps connect individuals and families with government and community organizations, said the airport disaster relief center will help evacuees still in shock from seeing their island destroyed settle into a new community.
“People are arriving, but they don’t know the city [of Orlando],” Cruz said. “They don’t know the area. So we’re here to tell them that they are not alone.”
Julio Camacho, 43, found information at the reception center about enrolling his children in elementary and middle school. He fled his native Puerto Rico with his wife and three daughters, ages 19, 14 and 8 years old.
He plans to live with his sister in a south Orange County apartment. His oldest daughter plans to attend Valencia College.
“We just have to get settled in,” Camacho said. “We had to leave because there is no electricity, very little water and the crime is growing. You now hear gunshots in places, in neighborhoods, that you thought were safe places.”
As he spoke, Anabel Ruiz, of Orlando, wheeled her elderly parents to the reception center after they arrived from San Juan.
“Every day, there’s less and less food,” Leticia Ruiz, 81, said of Puerto Rico while seated in a wheelchair next to her husband, Jose Antonio Ruiz, 88. “I think the situation is getting more horrible every day. … That’s why we made the decision to leave.”
Ramos said she “prays to God that Puerto Rico is able to come back.”
But for now, Ramos — a certified teacher in Puerto Rico who is working on her doctorate degree — plans to find a job as a teacher and continue her studies in Florida.
“I’m starting a new life here,” she said.