The COVID-19 pandemic and a devastating fire at a fertilizer plant in North Carolina exposed an extremely dangerous problem: authorities are not doing enough to get vital information in Spanish to hundreds of thousands of Latino families in the state. Are Spanish speakers being left behind when an emergency occurs?
Pandemic without resources in Spanish
When the COVID-19 health emergency broke out in March 2020, vital information was not available to people in North Carolina with limited English proficiency, not from the state and even less so from counties and cities.
Despite the fact that many immigrants were so-called “essential workers,” critical information in Spanish was not available at the beginning of the pandemic. This included information regarding stay-at-home orders, assistance programs, access to food banks, and even information about the disease and their rights as workers.
The result? Anxiety, illness, and death. Some cities used online translators to disseminate vital information during the health emergency. However, these automatic translation services do not take into account the complexities of language and cultural considerations, and this can lead to the spread of confusing information.
Over the last three years of the pandemic, Latinos were overrepresented in the number of COVID-19 cases, and more than 1,320 Latinos in the state died from the coronavirus, according to the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services (NCDHHS).
Faced with pressure, state authorities began to produce information in Spanish, especially with the arrival of vaccines. What happens when you invest in this community? Proportionally, the Latino community had the state’s highest COVID vaccination rates.
Weaver fire exposed language barriers in emergencies; city officials hope to change that
Hundreds of families in danger because Spanish speakers were ignored
In late January 2022, a fire engulfed the Weaver Fertilizer Plant in Winston-Salem. At that time, the authorities ordered the evacuation of nearby homes due to the threat of an explosion. But the information did not reach the area’s Spanish-speaking families, who remained in their homes without knowing that they were in danger.
Thank God an explosion did not occur, since Latinos account for one-fourth (25.6%) of the people living around the area of the incident, according to the 2020 Census.
One year after this incident, the first steps are now being taken to improve communication between authorities and Spanish-speaking families in the city.
No emergency plans with information vital in Spanish
Generally, when disasters are addressed by federal agencies, information is available in Spanish; but at the county and city level, things are different.
Winston-Salem does not yet have an emergency plan for people with limited English proficiency in case of another calamity like the fertilizer plant fire. Sadly, this is not the exception, but the rule.
Nationally, less than half (44%) of counties have Emergency Operations Plans (EOPs) available in languages other than English, according to research from the Center for Emergency Management and Homeland Security at Arizona State University.
The lack of accessibility to vital information in languages such as Spanish is a ticking time bomb. We still have time to prevent a tragedy, but this primarily depends on local authorities’ capacity and their commitment to the communities they serve.