![]() "We are the ones who need the most help," Grant says.Ī large piece of twisted aluminum siding, apparently blown in from across the street, lies in a crumpled heap on Grant's front yard. Whenever a disaster happens, for some reason the city is slow to respond to people in ethnic communities, in low-income communities." "But this is a common thing that I'm seeing in cities around America. "I understand that the city is trying its best to restore everybody's power," he says. Authorities accused of slow response in Black communitiesĬherry's uncle, Ta'Wan Grant, detects a pattern in their plight. When people here call the power and water authorities, they get only vague assurances. A faint smell of sewage wafts up from the street. Water comes out of the faucet, but it's little more than a thin brownish stream, unsafe to drink. "They're saying the islands got destroyed," observes 24-year-old Lexxus Cherry. Unlike the affluent seaside communities of Sanibel Island and Fort Myers Beach, where the media has descended to chronicle every detail of the aftermath of Hurricane Ian, the people who live in the squat homes in Dunbar have faced the crisis mostly on their own.Īnd for many in the historically African American neighborhood, there's a sense of anger and frustration. I promised the Lord, I said, "Lord if you get me out of here, you ain't going to have no trouble with me going to church and doing what I'm supposed to do!" And I kept my promise.Ta'Wan Grant and Lexxus Cherry in the front yard of their home in the Dunbar neighborhood of Fort Myers, Fla., on Sunday.įORT MYERS, Fla. Well, after we washed the house out, we stayed away for about a month to let everything just dry out. ![]() We lost everything because everything was water soaked. like about two weeks before we could come in the area to see what we could do. When the water settled, it settled halfway up the walls. Like I said, we left out of here, the water was up to here. We got out there with white handkerchiefs and started waving, telling them, "We need help! We need help!" So the guys from the yacht club came in. But what happened was the helicopters started passing. We stayed in that water until one o'clock the next day. How am I going to get out of here?" My husband said, "Look, just be calm." He said, "We're going to get out of here." I said, "Okay." I said "Lord, I cannot drink all this water. I had four old people, my momma and my three cousins over there. The kids, we put them on a mattress and they were floating around. So the water got up and started coming up and up so we went next door. So about twelve o'clock one of the kids yelled, "Momma! Water's coming up in the house! Water's coming in the house!" I said, "Oh Lord!" So we just started running around like somebody crazy. I said "Y'all," I said, "don't look like we're going anywhere." I said, "Look like it's coming up." I said, "Well it might just be a little bit of a flooding. At about eleven o'clock I looked outside that water was at the first step. I said, "That's water out there." I said, "Well, oh, that water's going to go down." So then the start getting worse, you know? So I called my husband at work, I said, "Look you better come on home," I said, "because I don't know what's going to happen." So he came home. I said, "Well, I'm going to go to work and we'll see what's going to happen from then." About nine o'clock I went to the door and I looked out, I said, "The street is mighty glassy." And my momma, she came and she looked. I'd say the day before, we had went and got some canned goods and stuff and got. ![]() And we would say, okay, we're going to get ready in case we had to get out, you know. They were saying about the storm was coming. Your browser does not support the audio element.ĭolores Parker: We were looking at the TV. ![]()
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