Hawaii’s tribunes to the central government and the contributing author of a revealing study on the catastrophic effects of the Lahaina wildfire have leveled serious objections against Kristi Noem, the Secretary of Homeland Security. Secretary Noem used the incendiary contents of the report to lambast the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s insufficient aid during the calamity. The research, a ground-breaking study from a Philippine feminist disaster response group called Tagnawa, examines the state of women and gender equalities in Hawaii post the lethal wildfire of Aug. 8, 2023 that claimed the lives of 102 individuals.
The firestorm provoked controversy when Noem appropriated this report, which encompassed a survey that sampled seventy wildfire survivors of Philippine descent. Worryingly, the survey surfaced the dirty secret that every sixth respondent exchanged sexual favors for basic survival essentials during the aftermath of the disaster. Following this revelation and using it as ammunition, the Department of Homeland Security castigated the Biden administration for its laxity in response to the Hawaiian wildfires in a scathing memorandum.
Secretary Noem didn’t stop there. In a FEMA review meeting following the deadly flash floods in Central Texas on the 4th of July, she invoked the testimonies within the Tagnawa report to advocate the dissolution of FEMA in its current structure. She posited that states should assume a larger role in disaster management, thereby decentralizing the responsibilities and accountabilities involved in such responses. The tragedy in Texas, which resulted in the deaths of over 120 people, seemed to provide an unfortunate but opportune context for her arguments.
The co-author of the study, Khara Jabola-Carolus, hit back at Noem for leveraging the insights from their work to indict FEMA’s holistic approach to disaster management. Jabola-Carolus argued that the grave concerns ignited among the immigrant community as a result of harsh immigration law enforcement practices have soared during Noem’s tenure. She stressed that this fearful environment had grown tenfold worse since the preceding January when the present regime stepped into office.
The study’s other author, Nadine Ortega, meanwhile, is engaged in the academic pursuit of Filipino history, film, and literature at the University of Hawaii, while working towards her doctorate, with emphasis on Indigenous politics and public policy. Ortega, like Jabola-Carolus, is an illustrious alumna of the UH William S. Richardson School of Law. She acknowledged her role in the formation of Tagnawa, describing it as a ‘Filipina feminist disaster response group’, and stressed the importance of their work for the survivors of the Lahaina fire.
The catastrophe in Lahaina illuminated critical deficiencies, one of which was the difficulty survivors faced in accessing available resources. Ortega identified a significant void of appropriate translations, services, and aid that the FEMA once again failed to recognize. The problem, however, has been persistent across multiple administrations across years, suggesting that uncomplicated increases in expenditure may not be the viable solution.
Ortega drew attention to the community structure in Lahaina, primarily composed of laborers in the service sector. A common misconception, she argued, was the focus on Hawaii’s ethnic composition, without realizing the sub-stratification by class, a mostly invisible but ubiquitously influential delineating factor. This sobering observation underscores the crossroads where socioeconomic dynamics intersect calamities, exacerbating the already catastrophic outcomes.
The flawed response to the Lahaina disaster, the gender inequalities revealed through the Tagnawa study, and the continuous failures of FEMA under the aegis of the Biden administration seem to indicate an overwhelming lack of competent leadership. These findings serve not only as a mirror to reflect the inadequacies inherent in the system but also act as a startling reminder of the grim consequences when policies and administrations fail their duty of upholding the societal safety and welfare.