Hundreds wait in line for unemployment forms in Miami

Hundreds of people in Miami who are out of work due to the coronavirus pandemic spent hours Wednesday waiting in line to fill out unemployment forms after the website they were posted on crashed.

The Florida Department of Economic Opportunity (DEO), which processes unemployment benefit applications, could not handle the surge on its website as panicked Floridians flocked to it amid the coronavirus-induced economic downturn.

For the past two weeks, the page has had problems. Meanwhile people calling the agency's phone line have faced hours on hold.

Applicants were instead encouraged to download and mail in the necessary form -- but with most offices and businesses closed, many people did not have access to a printer.

On Tuesday, authorities began distributing paper forms in the Cuban neighborhood of Hialeah, where lines to pick up the documents wrapped around the block.

"With the coronavirus, I'm suffocating," 55-year-old Gabriel Rodriguez told AFP, having spent five hours in line.

"I have to pay for the car, I have to pay the phone bill, how am I going to pay that? And the rent too!" Rodriguez queued in his car after local health experts warned against the lines of people that became chaotic the day before, making social distancing impossible.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis said Monday that the southeastern US state had brought 72,000 new servers online to help handle the requests.

"We're in a situation where people have lost their jobs, they are looking for relief and they're having a lot of difficulty," he said during a press conference. Between March 15 and April 5, 520,000 Florida residents sought unemployment help, according to DEO chief Ken Lawson, while only 326,000 applied in all of 2019.

Nearly 10 million people lost their jobs in the United States in the last two weeks of March as the coronavirus spread throughout the country and businesses closed.

Florida has seen more than 15,000 cases of the virus and about 300 deaths, mostly in urban centers in the southeastern part of the state, while the US as a whole has recorded 420,000 cases and more than 14,000 deaths.