A bus carrying farmworkers in central Florida overturned on Tuesday after colliding with a pickup truck on a rural road, killing eight people and injuring about 40 other passengers, authorities said.
The bus was transporting 53 farmworkers at about 6:40 a.m. when it collided with a truck in Marion County, about 80 miles north of Orlando, the Florida Highway Patrol said.
Authorities say the bus swerved off State Road 40, a straight but somewhat hilly two-lane road that passes through farms. It crashed through a fence and ended up on its side in a field. The workers were being transported to Cannon Farms in Dunnellon, which has been harvesting watermelons.
There is no immediate indication that weather was a factor. It is also not immediately known if the bus had seat belts.
“We will be closed today out of respect to the losses and injuries endured early this morning in the accident that took place to the Olvera Trucking Harvesting Corp.,” Cannon Farms announced on its Facebook page. “Please pray with us for the families and the loved ones involved in this tragic accident. We appreciate your understanding at this difficult time.”
Not yet known if farmworkers were migrants
It wasn’t immediately clear if the workers who were on the bus were migrants, but a Department of Labor document shows Olvera recently applied for 43 H-2A workers to harvest watermelons at Cannon Farms this month. The company again offered a base rate of $14.77 an hour, with promises of housing and transportation to and from the fields.
The H-2A program allows U.S. employers or U.S. agents who meet certain regulatory requirements to bring foreign nationals into the country to fill temporary agricultural jobs.
Caribbean immigrant farmworkers are particularly integral to Florida’s agriculture, particularly in labor-intensive crops such as citrus fruits, vegetables, and sugarcane.
Florida farms also employ more H-2A workers than any other state, about 50,000 a year, according to the Florida Fruit & Vegetable Association. Historically, Florida has attracted significant numbers of farmworkers from the Caribbean, particularly countries like Jamaica and Haiti.
In 2023, Jamaica’s Ministry of Labor noted that over 4,300 farmworkers were dispatched to the United States as farmworkers. States to which workers were dispatched in 2023 were New York, Washington, Vermont, Maine, New Hampshire, and Florida.
Associated Press contributed reporting.
