These
Migrant Workers Called 911 During Hurricane Florence. But No One Came To
Their Rescue.
The owner of the farm they worked on reportedly told
county officials the workers "had everything they needed."
BuzzFeed News
Reporter
Reporting From
Kinston, North Carolina
Posted on October 1,
2018, at 9:35 p.m. ET
Provided to BuzzFeed
News
Farmworkers in
Kinston, North Carolina, woke up to find their camp flooded on Sept. 15,
2018.
KINSTON, North Carolina — Hours after
Hurricane Florence made landfall in North Carolina last month, battering the
state with heavy rains and flooding, a group of migrant farmworkers woke up
to find themselves in waist-deep water.
Isolated in a migrant labor camp in rural
Jones County, far from the view of paved roads, the workers called 911 and
told emergency officials they needed to be rescued. Then they waited for
hours, watching as their mattresses, refrigerators, and other belongings
floated by in the rising floodwaters.
But unbeknownst to the workers at the time,
a county emergency management team had canceled an effort to extract them,
after the owner of the farm where the men were working called county
officials to say the laborers at the camp were “fine.”
“We were there in the rain and didn’t know
what to do,” a worker who was among those stranded at the camp, and who asked
to remain anonymous for fear of repercussions, told BuzzFeed News.
“The water started coming in, but we hoped
that it would keep flowing and go down,” he said. “Once it got higher than a
meter, we had to get out.”
Located deep in eastern North Carolina's
farming country, Jones County was among the areas hardest hit by Florence.
Bracing for the hurricane's impact, the county had declared a state of
emergency on Sept. 11, four days before Florence made landfall, and ordered
mandatory evacuations for its roughly 10,000 residents.
Men at the camp were told a hurricane was
approaching, the worker told BuzzFeed News, but many of them — including
himself — had never experienced one before. He said he was not aware of any
evacuation order.
Eric Merritt, Jones County’s emergency
management director, confirmed to BuzzFeed News that the county received the
workers' 911 calls on the morning of Sept. 15, and said that first
responders, including a swift-water rescue team, were initially dispatched to
the camp in response.
The rescue crews had trouble reaching the
location because of a road that had been blocked off by rising water, Merritt
said. In the meantime, he said, the owner of the farm where the workers were
located contacted the county to say that the group of roughly 35 to 40 men
were fine.
“We contacted a swift-water team, and by
that time the farm owner stated he made contact with [the workers] and they
were fine, that they were just in an isolated area,” Merritt said. “That they
had everything they needed as far as food and water.”
It was not clear why the farm owner, Randy
Riggs, of Riggs Brothers Farm, called off the county's rescue efforts, or why
workers at the camp stayed behind four days after the mandatory evacuation
had been issued. Riggs did not respond to multiple messages from BuzzFeed
News.
Asked why an emergency rescue would be
called off on the word of the property owner, despite firsthand requests from
the stranded workers, Merritt said he was not sure.
“He’s the actual owner and representative of
the property,” Merritt said. “In that situation we’ll use the information
from the most reliable case.”
Pressed on whether those asking to be
rescued should be considered the most reliable source, Merritt conceded, “I
guess in this case, yes."
The farmworkers weren't the only ones who
tried to arrange rescues at the camp. As they waited for help to arrive,
workers had reached out to advocates who work with the migrant community in
eastern North Carolina, and asked them to relay the situation at the camp to
officials.
Two migrant worker advocates told BuzzFeed
News they were contacted by people at the camp on the morning of Sept. 15,
and began to reach out to emergency services and other agencies, including
the North Carolina Growers Association and the US Department of Labor, in the
hopes of finding someone who could intervene to rescue the workers from the
floods.
Melissa Bailey, an outreach director for the
Kinston Community Health Center, which provides medical services to migrant
workers in the region, told BuzzFeed News she received a call from one of the
farmworkers sometime after 7 a.m. that morning. She said she then made
multiple calls to 911 between 8 a.m. and 3 p.m., telling officials the
workers at Riggs Brothers Farm needed to be rescued.
Caitlin Ryland, supervising attorney at
Legal Aid of North Carolina, said her organization was also contacted about
the situation at the flooded camp and asked to help reach county officials
who could get rescue teams to the workers.
With emergency services in Jones County
apparently unresponsive to the situation, Ryland said, she contacted the
Labor Department to see if federal authorities might be able to intervene.
In the end, it was an employee with the
North Carolina Growers Association — a trade group that contracts with farms
to provide migrant labor to North Carolina farms — who eventually picked up
the workers from the site late Saturday afternoon, and took them to a shelter
set up at a community college in a neighboring county.
Both the worker BuzzFeed News spoke to and
the NCGA said that the workers appeared to be unharmed at the time of the
rescue.
Composed of about 700 farm owners in the
state — including Riggs Brothers Farms — the NCGA coordinates the hiring of
more than 9,000 seasonal migrant workers in the state annually, and
is the biggest labor contractor in the country for the H-2A temporary agricultural
visa program, according to the Department of
Labor's Employment and Training Administration.
Before the hurricane hit, NCGA Deputy
Director Lee Wicker said, the association had reached out to farm owners to
remind them to take steps to protect their employees. “Our message to our
growers was they needed to take the necessary steps to take care of these
workers like they’re your own family,” he said.
Upon hearing about the stranded workers in
Jones County, Wicker said, the group “immediately dispatched our field reps”
to pick up the men.
“I think the grower should have done better
than he did, but thankfully we were able to get them out of there,” Wicker
told BuzzFeed News. “We’re really sorry it happened how it happened, and we
wish the grower would have taken additional steps.”
The incident underscores the perilous
position that many migrant workers across North Carolina found themselves in
as Florence battered the state last month. Despite playing a vital role in
the state's large agricultural sector, migrant workers have been largely
ignored in the aftermath of the disaster.
Many of the workers BuzzFeed News spoke to
last month said they have now found
themselves out of work and running low on money. As seasonal
workers, they are sometimes dismissed as only temporary guests, not residents
of the communities where they can spend up to 10 months a year. Relying on
the daily work provided by a temporary visa, many are also hesitant to ask
for assistance, out of fear that doing so could affect their employment or
immigration status.
Despite being encouraged to evacuate if they
were in danger, Ryland said, many laborers feared they could be retaliated
against if they left on their own, without the direction or help of a farm
owner or labor contractor. As a result, many failed to evacuate before the
storm hit, leaving themselves vulnerable to the rising floodwaters and other
weather hazards as Florence unleashed torrents of rain and wind on the state.
“A lot of migrant workers, their lives are
very dependent to their employer,” she said, including services like
transportation to church, stores, or medical attention. “Most of them have no
independent means of transportation and that can be very scary.”
|
Thursday, October 11, 2018
After-Actions: Migrant Workers Called 911 During Hurricane Florence. But No One Came To Their Rescue.
Wednesday, October 10, 2018
Iraqis invited to apply online for ministerial posts. October 8, 2018
Commend Iraqi Prime Minister Adel Adbul Mahdi
Changing the Paradigm. A 21st Century Giant Step Forward
in Inclusion and Diversity.
Youth, Next Generation Leaders play an important
role.
BEMA
International
In a statement on his personal Facebook account,
Mr Abdul Mahdi invited "those with expertise, specialisation and
practical experience" to come forward.
Iraq's Prime Minister-designate Adel Abdul
Mahdi has launched a website to allow Iraqis to apply for ministerial
positions in his new cabinet.
They have until Thursday to submit a CV and
evidence they meet his conditions.
Mr Abdul Mahdi was asked to form a new
government last week, ending months of deadlock after inconclusive elections.
The independent Shia Islamist politician -
who has a PhD in economics and has served as vice-president, oil minister and
finance minister - was nominated by the two Shia-led blocs that won the most
seats in parliament in May.
He will have to oversee the reconstruction
of Iraq following the four-year battle against the jihadist group Islamic
State (IS), which left tens of thousands of homes and business destroyed and
displaced more than three million people.
Mr Abdul Mahdi has until 1 November to form
a government.
In the Facebook post, the prime
minister-designate said he had decided to open up the ministerial recruitment
process following a "number of requests for direct personal meetings
either to offer congratulations, present programmes and ideas or to apply for
ministerial posts".
The
website Iraqcabinet2018.com says men and women who
"meet all the conditions stipulated in the constitution and enforced
laws" have until 16:00 (13:00 GMT) on Thursday to submit applications.
Hopefuls must provide their personal details, state whether
they belong to any political party, and then say which ministry they would
like to lead.
They are
also required to describe the most important projects they have overseen,
outline their thoughts on what makes a successful leader, and then detail the
practical solutions they would propose to tackle the problems their chosen
ministry is facing.
Previous
Iraqi governments have been plagued by corruption, mismanagement,
politicisation and sectarianism.
Outgoing
Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi sought to replace ministers who were political
appointees with unaffiliated technocrats, but faced stiff resistance from
parties in his ruling coalition.
Parliament's
failure to approve a non-political cabinet helped trigger protests in 2016
and prompted Mr Abdul Mahdi to step down as oil minister, a decision he said
was aimed at "confronting an atmosphere of anxiety of chaos".
|
CARICOM, U.S. Gov't Plan High Level Meeting on Disaster Management. October 2018
Could CARICOM (CDEMA) provide initial response and assessment to Puerto Rico and USVI when disasters strike before additional resources and assistance from mainland U.S. arrives?
BEMA International
BEMA International
CARICOM, US gov’t plan high-level meeting on disaster management
CARICOM and the United States government have agreed to hold a high level meeting to discuss solely, matters of disaster management and disaster recovery due to increased intensity of hurricanes and storms as a consequence of climate change, according to Assistant Secretary General Colin Granderson.
In an interview with the CARICOM’s Secretariat communications department website, today@caricom.org, Granderson said the high level meeting was one of the outcomes of meetings held between CARICOM regional heads of government, heads of states and foreign affairs ministers on the fringes of the just-concluded United Nations General Assembly (UNGA), held in New York, USA.
Granderson said the meeting will look at some of the support that can be provided for recovery whether it is technical or it is assisting with experts in disaster management and recovery, and financial and material assistance as has been provided in the past by US and international development partners.
At the meetings, he explained, they also discussed the need to put in place a regional insurance facility which would facilitate the ordinary man to rebuild from disasters. That and strengthening the coordination modalities with the US, in terms of sharing their expertise in meteorology, such as warnings of hurricanes and approaching storms, will be further discussed when the representatives of the US and CARICOM meet.
Asked about tangible outcomes of the meetings, Granderson noted that tangible outcomes of meetings on the sidelines of the UNGA with the international community are not always immediate.
However, they are “very important” platforms when it comes to international relations, he said, as there is always the possibility of engagement with third states with which CARICOM does not normally meet or have the opportunity to meet.
CARICOM representatives, he said, also had meetings with the representatives of the US, the United Kingdom and Japan at the request of those countries. They also met with the group of Nordic countries.
“These meetings were important for us to put forward our concerns and to get support for some of our interests,” Granderson said.
At the UNGA, he said, the most important thing was to make sure that all the Member States were on the same page.
Blacklisting
Following the meeting of the Prime Ministers regarding the CARICOM Single Market and Economy in Barbados in September, he said, a decision was taken to use the General Assembly to highlight the issue of the blacklisting of financial services in the region.
In their presentations, he said CARICOM Member States “highlighted and called on the UN to pay far more attention to the blacklisting of our financial services sector which has had quite a disastrous effect, not only on financial services, but on our economies.”
Member States are relying heavily on revenue coming from financial services, he said.
On the issue of non-communicable diseases (NCDs), which CARICOM was able to place as a priority on the UN agenda in 2011, he said, “it means that far more attention is now being placed on NCDs, far more resources are being made available and at this General Assembly there was a Third High Level meeting on NCDs.” “Resources are required to deal more effectively with the fight against NCDs. We have to strengthen our policy responses. By placing it on the international agenda, we are able to sensitize not only the international community but a number of our international development partners,” Granderson added.
CARICOM also organized a side event at which a number of development partners were present. Also present were the Director General of the World Health Organization, President the UNGA, and Secretary General of the Commonwealth.
Presentations were made by the Prime Minister of St Kitts and Nevis, who holds the health portfolio in the CARICOM prime ministerial quasi-Cabinet; Prime Minister of Jamaica Andrew Holness and Prime Minister of Barbados Mia Mottley. The event commemorated the 10th anniversary of the Port-of-Spain Declaration, which is the policy document guiding individual Member States in the fight against NCDs.
During the UNGA, Granderson said, they were also able to meet with representatives of other small island states and their groupings, like the Pacific Islands Forum.
“We also had a meeting with representatives of the OAS (Organisation of American States), informal meeting with SICA (Central American Integration Systems), and informal meetings with the Secretary General of the Commonwealth Secretariat,” he said.
The Power of the Diaspora. THE PARADIGM SHIFT. Cameroon Launches Emergency Fund for Victims of Separatist Conflict. June 2018
https://reliefweb.int/report/cameroon/cameroon-launches-emergency-fund-victims-separatist-conflict
"All Cameroonians have been called upon to contribute to the fund."
"All Cameroonians have been called upon to contribute to the fund."
June 21,
2018 1:56PM
Moki Edwin
Kindzeka
YAOUNDE —
Cameroon has launched a multi-million dollar emergency
humanitarian assistance plan for hundreds of thousands of its
citizens who the government says live in precarious and life-threatening
conditions in Cameroon and Nigeria due to the ongoing conflict with armed
separatists of Cameroon’s Anglophone regions seeking to break away from the
predominantly French-speaking country. All Cameroonians
have been called upon to contribute to the fund.
Cameroon
Prime Minister Philemon Yang says the $23
million fund was ordered by President Paul Biya after more than a hundred
Cameroonians, 84 soldiers and police have been killed, and hundreds of
thousands of the country’s citizens now live in precarious and life-threatening
conditions.
Yang says the
fighting has internally displaced 74,000 people who are facing famine along
with disastrous health conditions, and that 21,000 others have fled to
Nigeria and should be brought back home.
"Our
emergency humanitarian assistance plan aims at providing emergency
humanitarian assistance to affected people; ensuring the socio-economic
reintegration of the affected populations; reconstructing destroyed
infrastructure, housing, food and basic needs, health care, education. This action will include assistance and
visits to show compassion to Cameroonian refugees in Nigeria," Yang
said.
The prime
minister said people living outside of Cameroon instigate armed youths under
the influence of drugs to kill, kidnap and rape, adding that many teenagers
have been recruited as child soldiers. He said famine was looming in
English-speaking areas since most farms and cattle ranches had been
abandoned, and most businesses closed.
Yang said he
was counting on government resources and contributions from Cameroonians and
the international community to fund the emergency humanitarian assistance
plan.
Reactions
have been varied. Many people say it
is a good initiative to bring back thousands who have fled and reconstruct
their destroyed towns and villages.
But Father
Appolinarius Nkeng of the Catholic Church, who has been providing food aid to
displaced populations and is calling for an end to the violence, says the
government should first of all call for a cease-fire and initiate dialogue
with the armed separatists.
"The
option and the way out is proper and organized dialogue. But I think it cannot be done in the manner
politicians are talking about. You cannot have unity and peace without
justice."
Schools have
been closed in the English-speaking northwest and southwest areas of Cameroon
since November 2016 when lawyers and teachers called for a strike to stop
what they see as an overuse of the French language.
Separatists
took over, calling for the independence of the English-speaking from the
French speaking regions. Cameroon’s
government reacted with a crackdown and several dozen leaders of the strike
were arrested.
Last week,
human rights group Amnesty International criticized Cameroon’s government for
using what it said was unnecessary and excessive force that frequently placed
civilians in the web of violence and desperate conditions.
|
Tuesday, October 9, 2018
Situation Awareness. ARC. Disaster Operations Update. October 9, 2018
|