Five months later, Northeast Philly is still recovering

Rupert Street in Northeast Philadelphia was uncharacteristically quiet on a recent sunny Saturday afternoon: No kids playing outside. No sizzling grills. No neighbors on stoops listening to music.

A blue tarp fluttered on the roof of a vacant rowhouse. Plywood covered its windows and those at four other homes on the short block. A parked car sat with a spiderweb crack etched in the windshield and a busted front bumper.

Surveying the damage, resident Joyce Aner gestured at the abandoned house: “I gotta be reminded every time I see that blue tarp on top of her roof that a body went through her roof.”

Nearly five months have passed since a medical jet torpedoed into Cottman Avenue near the Roosevelt Mall, blasting Rupert Street and surrounding blocks with jet fuel, thousands of plane parts, and mangled bodies.

The Jan. 31 plane crash marked a critical test for Mayor Cherelle L. Parker, then a year into her first term. At a town hall five days later, Parker assured victims: “We are here for you,” she said. “We will meet this moment together.”

For most Philadelphians, the crash is now a grim footnote, but those directly affected are still dealing with financial hardship and grief.

All six passengers on the plane died on impact, along with a Mount Airy father driving a car consumed by flames. His severely burned fiancée died of her injuries this spring; his 9-year-old son remains hospitalized with burn wounds over 90% of his body.

» READ MORE: Timeline of the Northeast Philadelphia plane crash

More than 15 local residents and business owners told The Inquirer they’re still grappling with unrepaired property damage and catching up on bills from lost income or extra expenses related to the crash. Families, especially those with children who saw flames and dead passengers, remain traumatized, they said.

The very strengths of the neighborhood — the welcoming vibe that drew a surge of new immigrants and a stock of affordable rental homes — created hurdles in helping the most vulnerable, particularly those who are not U.S. citizens and fear immigration authorities.

Language barriers proved challenging. Four non-English-speaking families living within the blast zone recently told a reporter they were unaware of available city resources, and the city’s overburdened translation services didn’t bridge those gaps.

At her Feb. 5 town hall, Parker stood at a podium before hundreds of residents and unveiled the city’s signature relief effort — dubbed the One Philly Fund. To date, the fund has raised only $35,000 to help residents who lost their homes, furniture, and clothes — thousands less than the sum officials had hoped to collect through philanthropic donations. Residents said they waited months to get what little money was available, though they were grateful for the assistance.

Chief Deputy Mayor Vanessa Garrett Harley said the pace of donations slowed as time passed.

“We did not get the kind of money that I had hoped we would have gotten,” Garrett Harley said.

“Unfortunately, sometimes, people are more altruistic the first day or two when everybody’s all hyped about it.”

There’s no cut-and-dry playbook for the government’s response to a catastrophe — much less a plane plunging out of the sky. City leaders and first responders took an all-hands-on-deck approach, earning wide praise. Parker wasted no time declaring an emergency and requesting state and federal help with the recovery effort.

Parker, Gov. Josh Shapiro, and U.S. Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy, who was sworn in as a member of President Donald Trump’s cabinet only three days prior to the crash, toured the wreckage site on Feb. 3. Shapiro’s office ultimately decided the devastation was too limited to ask the Trump administration for a federal disaster declaration.

To receive federal funds, the state would have been required to “show damages that exceed the city and state’s capabilities to respond to and recover from the disaster,” Shapiro spokesperson Jeff Jumper said in a recent email to The Inquirer.

“While the plane crash created a significant impact to the community, the Commonwealth did not exceed the damages required to request federal assistance to homeowners, renters, and businesses,” said Jumper, who works with the state’s Emergency Management Agency Office.

The city marshaled significant resources: opening sites where people could get help finding mental health services, applying for financial aid, and obtaining donated clothing and grocery gift cards; hosting free trauma sessions; sending bilingual city workers to knock on doors to check on residents; opening social work cases with more than 60 residents; steering roughly $264,000 in grants to small businesses.

The city and state also partnered to open a resource center to help residents file claims with private insurers for damage to property and cars, a time-consuming process that has frustrated residents and delayed renewal.

“We tried to do everything in our power,” Garrett Harley said.

And yet, in the aftermath of the Northeast Philly disaster, some have still fallen through the cracks.

With each passing week, residents like Aner say they’re losing hope that things will ever be the same.

Aner and her two children, ages 12 and 13, returned to the home they rent in early May. Boarded-up windows in the kids’ rooms made it too cold to live there in February, March, and April.

The house felt “gloomy and dreary, like a bear cave,” Aner said, noting her landlord’s insurance company took months to assess the damage.

Nearly half of residents near the crash are renters like her, meaning they depend on landlords who don’t necessarily live in the neighborhood to navigate homeowners’ insurance and hire contractors to make repairs.

Since returning home, Aner has discovered hazards littered around the neighborhood. When her two dogs come in from her backyard deck, she has to check their mouths, having found bits of plane wreckage between their jaws, including a metal bolt.

Outside her front door, the block “looks pretty much like the incident just happened,” Aner said, adding: “How can I look out there without seeing this and remembering what it used to be?”

Delores Brooks was one of 53 residents who filed an application with the One Philly Fund, created by the Parker administration to “provide direct support to victims.”

Brooks fell down two flights of stairs, injuring her back, while searching for her terrified dog after the crash. The 58-year-old home health aide could not work for nearly a month. Her bills, including her $1,450 rent, piled up.

In early February, Brooks applied for financial relief from the One Philly Fund, which is administered by the Philadelphia City Fund, a nonprofit that accepts philanthropic donations on the city’s behalf.

She learned March 27 that she would receive $750, which arrived in her bank account in mid-April. Though grateful, Brooks said the sum “didn’t make a dent in my bills.”

The fund has dispersed a total of $25,534 to Brooks and 20 other applicants to help with car repairs, health insurance deductibles, and replacing damaged household items. The largest single award was $3,000, officials said.

Garrett Harley said the One Philly Fund was the first disaster relief fundraiser organized by the city, and “it took some time” to get it up and running. Then, a city committee extensively reviewed each application.

“God forbid we ever had another disaster or need to use it, we would be in a much better position,” she said.

She conceded the fund was stretched thin.

“We knew it would not necessarily be enough to cover everybody’s losses,” she said. “I think most people would tell you, even if it didn’t cover everything, every little bit helps.”

A family from Central America was one of four immigrant families who told The Inquirer they knew nothing about the One Philly Fund or other assistance available through the city. Three of the four cited language as a significant obstacle.

A resident who only speaks Portuguese said she went to the mayor’s town hall but couldn’t understand what was being said. A family from Ecuador said they had a similar experience. In both cases, they left feeling isolated.

“Maybe only the people born here are the ones getting help,” the Spanish-speaking father of the Central American family recently wondered aloud, according to his wife.

Residents speaking Portuguese, Mandarin, Creole, and Spanish can be heard on a short block near the crash site. About 70% of residents in the surrounding neighborhood speak a language other than English at home, U.S. Census data show.

The Central American family fled their Northeast Philadelphia home after a plane wing crashed into their kitchen. The Inquirer is not publishing their names because they’re undocumented and fear being targeted by immigration authorities.

The father works 14-hour shifts as a butcher, earning pay that barely covers the bills. When the city’s Department of Licenses and Inspections deemed their rental home “unsafe,” the family moved in with a relative for three weeks while their landlord made repairs.

They paid the relative $600 — on top of their full $1,475 monthly rent for February. The father had to ask his coworkers for a loan. For the first time, they couldn’t afford fresh fruit for their kids, the 27-year-old mother explained in Spanish.

She heard through neighbors that the city could help, but no one seemed to know how to access it: “I would ask, `Who do I contact for help,’ but they will just say, `There, there.’ No one knew where ‘there’ was,” she said. “I also don’t really speak English. I only know how to say, ‘Thank you.’”

The family can’t afford mental health therapy for their 13-year-old daughter, who witnessed a victim engulfed in flames staggering down the street and saw body parts in front of her home.

The mother suffers from seizures, which became more frequent after the crash. Now, the family has a new expense: $200 a month for her anti-seizure medication. They don’t have health insurance.

Trying to reach families with such needs, the city sent bilingual workers to the neighborhood twice in March to knock on doors to ask if residents needed help applying to the One Philly Fund.

The city helped with translations of four of the 53 applications, in three languages — Chinese, Spanish, and Dari, one of two official languages spoken in Afghanistan. The city’s Language Line, in which city workers can request an interpreter, was used to facilitate communication between canvassers and immigrants, city officials said.

The mother, who rarely leaves the house for fear of having a seizure, said she wasn’t aware of anyone from the city knocking on their door.

From the outside, the home looked vacant in March and April, even though the family lived there with the front windows and door boarded up until the windows were replaced in May.

“I am not sure if any more help is being offered, but we are still here,” the mother said.

In the hours after the plane crash, grocery store owner Griselda Jimenez gave away beverages and food to victims and first responders. The Cottman Avenue store, located on the ground floor of a residential property, was largely undamaged. But plane parts and fire ravaged the two floors above it.

Jimenez had expected to reopen Variedades Hondumex Grocery II relatively quickly.

Then, contractors caused a water pipe to burst while trying to rebuild the residential space above the grocery. The leak damaged the store’s ceiling and five commercial refrigerators, according to Jimenez.

Her English is limited, so an American Red Cross employee helped her fill out an application for a program offering local business owners who lost revenue or sustained damage up to $20,000 in aid.

Separate from the One Philly Fund, the emergency relief grants were available through a joint effort involving the city’s Department of Commerce and The Merchants Fund, a long-standing charity that provides economic support for small Philadelphia businesses.

So far, 25 businesses have received a total of $264,205, city officials said. That would work out to an average of around $10,000 each.

Jimenez said she got $15,000 in April through the city’s partnership with The Merchants Fund. This was about $5,000 less than what she had invested a year and a half ago to open Variedades Hondumex, her second grocery offering traditional Mexican esquites, chicharrones, and mangonadas.

“I am still paying my credit card debt for the refrigerators,” Jimenez said in Spanish.

In late May, her fridges sat unplugged and mostly empty. Chunks of plaster and construction dust littered the store’s floor and cashier counter. Earlier this month, the fridges were removed from the now-barren grocery.

Jimenez said she used the $15,000 to invest in a food truck, which she opened across the street from her other grocery store on Castor Avenue.

“I can’t continue to be on pause, arms crossed, without doing anything,” she said.

Alexis Lloyd evacuated her Rupert Street home after shrapnel and body parts exploded through the windows. One body landed on her roof. Firefighters had to cut a hole in her bedroom ceiling to retrieve it, Lloyd said.

Nearly five months later, the house remained vacant and boarded. The nail salon, located on the ground floor of the house, was still closed, with plastic sheeting over its windows and door.

She was unaware the city had started a new rental-assistance program to help residents in her situation, although it was announced at the town hall. She said no one from the city reached out to her subsequently about housing.

The program, FreshStartPHL, a collaboration of the city and the nonprofit Philadelphia Housing Development Corp., covers the equivalent of three months’ rent and up to $1,000 for moving expenses. Under the program, the responsibility to find a new place falls largely on the would-be renter.

To date, FreshStartPHL has provided $19,307 in federal funds to relocate two families who were living in properties damaged by the plane crash, city officials said.

Alexis Lloyd wasn’t one of them.

After the crash, she and her 8-year-old daughter, Kennedy, lived with her mother for a month. Lloyd found a two-bedroom apartment in March, but said the rent was “a significant increase” from the $1,200 she had paid each month at Rupert Street.

Catholic Social Services, the charitable arm of the Archdiocese of Philadelphia, paid for Lloyd’s security deposit and first and last month’s rent.

“If it wasn’t for Catholic Social Services stepping in, I literally would have been homeless,” Lloyd said.

Lloyd, 30, said she got some money from the One Philly Fund, though she wouldn’t say how much. It wasn’t nearly enough to cover all that she lost. Still, she feels grateful that a manager in the city’s Office of Community Engagement helped her apply. A family friend set up a GoFundMe on her behalf that raised more than $40,000. She hopes to eventually buy a house.

She is now trying to rebuild her life in a new apartment in the city’s Fox Chase neighborhood. It’s smaller and farther from her daughter’s elementary school.

Free therapy through the American Red Cross is helping Lloyd work through the emotional trauma. She was in her kitchen cooking dinner when body parts flew through her dining and living room. A torso landed on her couch.

A few weeks ago, she heard a loud explosion at her new apartment when a power line went out. “It startled me really bad,” she said. “I was crying and my heart was racing.”

Staff writer Dylan Purcell contributed to this article.