Gloria Castillo Luna, a single mother of four living in Faison, North Carolina, evacuated her family from the home she rents to a shelter just before Hurricane Florence hit a little over a week ago. Luna and her kids had a terrible experience during a storm two years ago, so she knew the shelter was worth the trip. “After my experience with my children during Hurricane Matthew, which felt very dangerous, I knew that we should go,” she said on the phone through a translator. “I did not want to put my children at risk.”
But when the family returned to Faison last Saturday and began to assess the damage, their troubles were just beginning. Luna, a farmworker who usually works the sweet potato harvest, is most likely out of a job. “Now that all of the fields are flooded, I won’t be able to find work easily,” she told me.
Though the storm has passed and the skies are clear, the floodwaters in North and South Carolina continue to ravage towns and farmland: In some areas, the water has yet to recede. While the storm has been devastating for millions in the region, for farmworkers like Luna whose livelihood is dependent on crops to pick and whose legal status often creates fear around contact with government, the storm has proven especially crippling.
[For more on this story by ARIEL RAMCHANDANI, go to https://www.theatlantic.com/fa...s-new-normal/571159/]
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