Local group joins relief for earthquake victims
Central Florida organizers are joining state and national efforts to collect tents and cots for Puerto Ricans left homeless by Tuesday’s earthquake.
“It makes me cry to see families like mine with children sleeping in the streets,” said Marucci Guzmán, executive director of Latino Leadership, one of the groups involved in the effort. “They went to bed with a home [and a] roof over their head, and woke up to shattered lives.”
The nonprofit organization is working with the Florida State Hispanic Chamber of Commerce and the National Puerto Rican Leadership Council Education Fund to collect the tents and cots
through the Orlando-based Puerto Rico Family Response Center.
Tuesday’s magnitude 6.4 quake — the most powerful to strike the Caribbean island in 102 years — prompted at least 750 people to spend the night in shelters, the government reported, though the full extent of the damage and death toll are not yet known.
On Tuesday night, President Donald Trump signed an emer
gency declaration for the island, a move that allows the Federal Emergency Management Agency to provide a wide range of aid, including search and rescue efforts, medical care, safety inspections, removal of dead animals and temporary generators for public facilities that have lost electricity.
“The municipalities of Puerto Rico have been affected with [power] blackouts, debris and infrastructure and business damages,” said Puerto Rican Gov. Wanda Vázquez Garced. “The magnitude of this event is so serious that the state government and the municipal governments of Puerto Rico do not have the capacity to respond effectively.”
Residents in the southern part of the island were reported to be sleeping outdoors, either because their homes were uninhabitable or because they feared further destruction from aftershocks. In Central Florida, the coalition of Latino groups is asking private donors, corporations, worker’s unions and other nonprofit organizations to buy new weatherized tents and cots for distribution.
Drop-off locations sites:
Latino Leadership: 8617 E. Colonial Drive, No. 1600, Orlando, 32817 Resource Employment Solutions: 11681 S. Orange Blossom Trail, Orlando, 32837 Florida Rep. Rene Plasencia’s district office: 400 South St., Unit 1C, Titusville, 32780
To help, contact Guzmán at marucci@latino-leadership.org or 407-895-0801.