Eugene Johnson purchased two loaves of bread and batteries for his flashlight. Those are his supplies in preparation for Hurricane Irma.
“I’m on fixed income,” said Johnson. “This hit me out of the blue. I had to pay my rent, my electricity bill and stuff like that.”
Kailey Coventry walks past empty shelves of water at Target in Gainesville, Fla., on Wednesday, Sept. 5, 2017. “Hurricanes are always super last minute but I just want to make sure I’m prepared,” said Coventry. Irma roared into the Caribbean with record force early Wednesday, its 185-mph winds shaking homes and flooding buildings on a chain of small islands along a path toward Puerto Rico, Cuba and Hispaniola and a possible direct hit on densely populated South Florida. (Andrea Cornejo/The Gainesville Sun via AP)
In his kitchen cabinet he already had a few cans of tuna and he plans to boil some eggs.
While local news broadcasts have been dominated by images of people flocking to stores all week to stock up on water, nonperishable food and supplies to ride out Hurricane Irma, many families can’t afford to do that. In Miami-Dade, about 530,000 of the estimated 3 million residents live below the poverty line. More….