Hurricane Irma: Many Immokalee families left homeless following storm's wrath

Mario Valentin saw through the window of his neighbors’ concrete home as Hurricane Irma blew away part of his trailer’s roof. His family and his brother’s family were staying during the storm in a home of concrete block next to a trailer they rent off Carson Road. Their daughters were afraid.

As the winds peaked around 5:30 p.m. Sunday, the families heard a noise. The brothers looked through the window. A tree was falling. Then, their roof was flying. Part of a bedroom’s wall was also gone, they found out later. On Monday morning, trailer debris lied on top of the soaked beds, where Mario Valentin, his wife and their 5-year-old daughter, used to sleep.

Both brothers, originally from Mexico, work as farmworkers for $300 to $360 a week at this time of the season and they don’t have savings to stay for long at a hotel. There’s no work in the fields right now, they said, and they don’t know when there will be. They fear it will be difficult to find another place to rent in town after the storm damaged many of the trailers, and they think rents will go up.

“We don’t have anywhere to go,” said Mario Valentin. “One can go wherever, but not with the kids.”

Immokalee was Monday morning a town where some road sections looked like rivers and lakes, power lines had fallen on the ground and cell phone service was rare. A car was completely submerged, two gas stations had lost their canopies and many homes and businesses were flooded. Dozens of trailers had walls or roofs ripped apart. Families living in the worst damaged trailers were figuring out where they could move to in a community where many of the cheapest housing — trailers — may now be inhabitable, almost half of the population lives below the poverty line, and many residents are undocumented.

More: Hurricane Irma: Immokalee roads heavily flooded after storm; trailers severely damaged

As of Monday, county officials didn’t know yet what the plans for displaced residents were.

At least 60 structures were reported damaged in Immokalee. A third of those are destroyed, according to the Immokalee fire control district. More structures could be reported damaged as firefighters continue working the area.

It's not known how many people are homeless due to the hurricane but at least 100 people are at the Immokalee High School shelter as of 5 p.m. Monday, according to Ross Hollander, with the American Red Cross disaster services.

"It will be open until it's safe for people to go back out," he said.

Once the numbers start decreasing, he said each family will be assigned to a case worker who will help them find services.

Valentin’s brother, Jose Valentin, says they will stay at their trailer at least for a few days if their landlord lets them. The rooms where he, his wife and their 6-year-old daughter sleep still have a roof on them, even if the kitchen and the other room doesn’t. They slept in the trailer on Sunday night. His brother and his brother’s family slept at their neighbor’s home.

The families have lost all the food they had stocked to prepare for the hurricane and its aftermath. All of it was soaked after the rain poured in. Mario Valentin’s family also lost most of their belongings. But at least nothing happened to them.

“We are alive, right? That’s the good thing,” Mario Valentin said.

A few feet away, passing over power lines on the ground, sometimes in pools of water, Audelia Diaz, 30, was also trying to figure out where she would be able to move to with her three children, ages 7, 9 and 10.

More: Hurricane Irma: Q&A with Collier Sheriff Kevin Rambosk about the shelter shortage

Diaz, a farmworker from Mexico, says that with her about $350 a week paycheck, she doesn’t have any savings. She doesn’t know when she will be able to work again. The trailer she rents didn’t appear so damaged, but part of the roof came off and the landlord told her that county officials will probably deem it inhabitable. She was trying ask a relative if he could lend her some money, but the phone service was down. She hopes she can stay at least a couple of weeks in the trailer. She doesn’t know when she will find a new place to stay.

“Without money and with my three children, it’s not going to be easy,” she said.

Diaz said she stayed at her mobile home during the storm. She said she only learned she should evacuate when her landlord told her Friday morning. She went to Immokalee High School before they opened as a shelter at 1 p.m. on Friday. But the lines to get in were too long. She only had a half-hour break from her job planting tomatoes.

When she came back Friday evening, both Immokalee High School and Immokalee Middle School, also a provisional shelter, were full. She had to work on Saturday again and by the time she learned another shelter had opened up Saturday evening, it was already too late. The winds had picked up.

She had also thought that maybe the storm wouldn’t be that bad. She doesn’t have the time to watch the TV news, she said. She usually leaves for work at 5 or 6 a.m. and comes back at around 6:30 or 7:30 p.m. to tend to her children.

Stuck in the trailer she rents, the family heard the winds were strong.

“We felt that the trailer was going to overturn,” she said.

One of the windows shuttered, and they closed that room’s door. Later she saw a large section of a roof flying outside and an electric pole fell.

“It started to spark. I thought that all the cables would catch fire,” she said.

She hugged her children.

“They were terrified,” she said.

She started to pray.

They took shelter in the closet where all four sat down, awake all night.

“I hugged them and I told them, ‘Don’t be afraid, nothing is going to happen,'” she said.

In the morning, when they stopped hearing the wind, they went out. Their home was still standing, not too damaged. But in their mobile park at least five trailers had roofs or walls ripped off. On Monday, she only had food and water left for a couple of days.