Transcript:
Language barriers can make recovering from climate disasters especially challenging for some immigrant communities.
Tuyet Duong of the National Asian Pacific American Women’s Forum says that after Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans, some people in the local Vietnamese community struggled to access relief money and other aid.
Duong: “So everyone was trying to engage with FEMA on all of the stages of recovery … but they did not have any kind of language assistance to help people explain how to access these services.”
She says volunteers stepped in to help people fill out relief applications.
Duong: “In the days following, we had like 20 Vietnamese volunteers coming in every day, and they set up their laptops in a hub.”
Since then, Congress has passed a law requiring that federal relief efforts take steps to reach people with limited English skills.
But gaps remain. So Duong and other advocates say more training and resources are needed to ensure relief workers communicate effectively with disaster survivors who speak little English.
So as climate change causes more extreme weather disasters, everyone can access information about relief aid.
Reporting credit: Ethan Freedman / ChavoBart Digital Media
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