Rocio Sanchez, a single mother of two, has been selling fresh watermelon, mango and pineapple from her street carts in Los Angeles for the last decade.
Sanchez said she is one of a group of six fruit cart vendors affected by the recent 10 Freeway fire in downtown L.A.
Officials said the massive Nov. 11 fire that led to a mile-long stretch of the 10 Freeway shutdown was caused by arson. Authorities released photos and a description of a man they say is connected with the fire that started in a downtown pallet yard.
After emergency federal funding was granted for round-the-clock repair work, the lanes were fully reopened last Monday, Nov. 20, in time for the Thanksgiving holiday rush.
Many local businesses affected by the fire and resulting repair work expressed concerns about the loss of income for employees, construction-related traffic, and an overall lack of customers not wanting to visit the congested, burned and damaged area.
The fruit cart vendors, all immigrant workers from Guatemala and Mexico, conducted business across from where the pallet yard first caught fire. Sanchez said their carts were stored in an airspace lease space on Lawrence Street and East Olympic Boulevard, underneath the blackened overpass in downtown L.A.
As immigrant workers from Guatemala and Mexico, Sanchez said she and the other vendors were “heartbroken” to see their carts “up in flames.” On that morning of the fire, they searched through the ash and rubble to find anything that could be salvaged.
“It really shocked me to see everything that had been burned. When they called me I didn’t believe it — I thought that it was a prank from my colleagues, but once I got there, I was shocked it was true,” Sanchez said in Spanish. “All of us were walking around the site, not knowing what to do. Some were trying to see if any of the carts had been spared or worked. We were all walking around trying to see what we could salvage. We didn’t talk to one another, we…
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