The families of the six men killed in last week’s collapse of the Key Bridge are struggling with devastating loss while dealing with the day to day challenges that come with not living in their native country.

WYPR’s John Lee spoke with Giuliana Valencia-Banks, Baltimore County’s Immigrant Affairs Outreach Coordinator. She said when she first heard the news, she knew it was immigrants who were working on the bridge, and that her duty was to their families.

Valencia-Banks: While we had crisis response and volunteers from the Red Cross, these folks weren't bilingual, and weren't from the community. And I knew that having done previous crisis work, I knew that what we needed were bilingual mental health specialists there, and potentially faith community leaders to sit with folks.

So I started mobilizing some of my contacts and we had three bilingual social workers on site. We had a pastor and a priest that were there with the families, and then starting to think about what they were going to need.

The heroes that died on that bridge were the primary breadwinners for not just the direct families here, but also men that were sending money to their home country to help their families there.

Lee: I can't imagine losing your father, your husband like that. And you're in a country where English isn't your first language, and you're having to somehow pick up the pieces of your life. How are they doing with that kind of trauma?

Valencia-Banks: These are really resilient people, these are community, you know, community members, they're part of networks of support for friends and families and faith communities. And these folks are rallying behind them, but they're devastated.

The folks whose loved ones haven't been recovered, are dealing with that trauma of not having closure, of not having their loved ones and not knowing. And we've had the worst weather that we could possibly have in this last week, and it is not helping in their recovery.

So there's just a lot of anxiety and folks just want answers too and unfortunately, this investigation is going to take a really long time, the recovery is going to take a long time and just you know, being very mindful that as information is processed, that we're not retraumatizing families, so making sure that they have the support that they need when news comes up.

Lee: When you say retraumatizing families, what are you concerned about?

Valencia-Banks: You resee it right? If you remember 911, and we just kept seeing it. And it just triggers every single time. So for these families, it's that every time information comes up, it's you know that pressure in your chest. Did they find someone?

I think as we start thinking about who we are as a nation, who we are as a county, who we are as a state, let's remember, who are the heroes that are building our bridges? Who are the heroes who are fixing our roads? Who are the folks that are taking care of our loved ones, when they go into eldercare, who are our you know, our teachers and our doctors, and there are many immigrants in these roles and how we start thinking about that.

That helps me. I hope that in the future offices like mine don't have to exist. I hope that we don't have to think about how we're working with immigrants and how we're supporting immigrants, because we've built the systems that support them, and I'm not needed. But for now I am needed. And so I'm really privileged and humbled by this work every day.

I'm humbled by it.