Two members of Hawaii’s congressional delegation and the co-author of a study on Lahaina wildfire survivors are criticizing Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s use of the report’s findings to blast the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s response to the disaster.
The report from Tagnawa, a Filipino feminist disaster response organization, was released May 29 as a first-of-its-kind look at how women in Hawaii and gender equality fared in the wake of the devastating Aug. 8, 2023, wildfire that killed 102 people.
Noem’s remarks last week targeting FEMA cited the report, which included a survey of 70 female Filipino fire survivors that found 1 in 6 respondents said they had exchanged sexual favors for basic necessities post-disaster.
The Department of Homeland Security issued a news release, also on May 29, titled “DHS Condemns Biden Administration Failures in the Wake of the Lahaina, Hawaii Fires.” The release, which linked to the Tagnawa report, contained a statement from DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin, who said, “One in 6 survivors of the Lahaina Fires were forced to engage in sexual acts in exchange for basic necessities like food and housing. These women — our fellow American citizens — were so desperate for food that they had to resort to such extreme measures just to feed themselves in our own country. That’s unacceptable. That is unAmerican. “
At a FEMA review meeting Wednesday, Noem used the survey’s findings to call for eliminating FEMA in its current form and instead shift more authority and responsibility for disaster response to the states. Her comments came in the aftermath of the July 4 flash floods in central Texas that killed more than 120 people.
“After the wildfires in Maui, residents voiced concerns that every FEMA employee that they spoke with had different answers,” Noem said. “None of them had conversations that resulted in getting assistance that was helpful or any clarity in their situations. The situation in Lahaina was so bad that 1 in 6 survivors were forced to trade sexual favors, other favors for just basic supplies.”
Khara Jabola-Carolus, one of the co-authors of “Equality in Flames: The Impact of the Lahaina Wildfire on Gender Equality and Filipino Women in Hawai‘i,” objected to the way Noem used the findings to criticize FEMA for its Maui response at the same time federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents under her authority continue to round up immigrants across the country, including Hawaii, further discouraging Filipinas from reporting demands for sex.
“Kristi Noem was making the point that it is a travesty that women are having to do this and, literally in the same breath, she goes and attacks immigrants and basically equates them to alien invaders, concealing the fact that the women she had just claimed to be outraged about were immigrants — many of them, not all of them, but many of them,” Jabola-Carolus said.
She added, “They’re scared of immigration enforcement. The Department of Homeland Security also has to take the blame for the reason why immigrant women are hiding in the shadows and not getting the help they need. Now it’s 10 times worse under the leadership of Kristi Noem that’s terrorizing the immigrant community … than before January, when the current administration came into office.”
Jabola-Carolus, a Filipino community organizer, is the former executive director of the Hawaii State Commission on the Status of Women. She lived in the Philippines, where she studied women and economic development at the University of the Philippines.
Study co-author Nadine Ortega was born in the Philippines and now teaches Ilocano, Filipino history and Filipino film and literature at University of Hawaii at Manoa while pursuing her Ph.D. with a focus on Indigenous politics and public policy. She also serves as executive director of the nonprofit organization Tagnawa, which means “mutual aid” in Ilocano.
Both study authors graduated from the UH William S. Richardson School of Law.
Ortega said she helped form Tagnawa as a “Filipina feminist disaster response group” in the weeks following the Lahaina disaster to better connect Filipino fire survivors with services.
“People didn’t know how to access resources,” she said. “There was a lack of translation, services and aid.”
In a statement Thursday to the Honolulu Star- Advertiser, McLaughlin continued to criticize FEMA’s Lahaina response under the previous administration.
“It is an indisputable fact that the Biden Administration grossly mishandled and mismanaged FEMA’s operations in Maui following the wildfires, which has led to incalculable amounts of unnecessary human suffering,” her statement said. “As Secretary Noem said in her remarks, FEMA has been failing like this for DECADES, and just throwing more taxpayer money at the problem won’t solve it. That is exactly why President Trump created the FEMA Review Council, which is aimed at addressing FEMA’s myriad failures and revolutionizing disaster management at the federal level.”
U.S. Sen. Mazie Hirono, D-Hawaii, condemned Noem’s comments in a post on X, saying “Noem, Trump, and the rest of this regime need to stop politicizing tragedies and start doing their jobs.”
U.S. Rep. Jill Tokuda, a Democrat whose congressional district includes Maui, the other neighbor islands and rural Oahu, agrees.
Tokuda told the Star- Advertiser that Noem “basically used these women as a means to an end, no different than the individuals who traded sexual favors with them in a time of need. She used them. … These were women who had to resort to survival sex, and yet she is no different than the individuals who perpetrated these acts against them by just using them to try to somehow push a false narrative that FEMA is so incompetent it should be disbanded. …
“It’s just disgusting and it’s a revictimization of these women and, quite frankly, the outcome that should be reached is that we should invest more in supporting entities like FEMA.”
Tokuda continues to support FEMA’s response to the Maui disaster. “I have no doubt we could not have responded to the disaster as quickly, as effectively, had we not had FEMA there,” she said.
THOSE conducting the Tagnawa report had sought FEMA’s participation but said the agency did not provide a response prior to the report’s completion.
Jabola-Carolus highlighted the “survival sex” findings herself when she testified to Maui County Council’s Housing and Land Use Committee in June as members considered Mayor Richard Bissen’s proposal to convert 6,100 short-term vacation rentals into long-term housing, with the goal of freeing up more homes for local residents.
Maui’s lack of affordable housing escalated after the fire destroyed an estimated 3,500 homes. According to the report, some 16% of the Tagnawa survey’s 70 Filipina respondents said they had exchanged sex for basic necessities post-disaster.
Some of the respondents were in their 20s and 30s but most were 50 years old and older.
“These women engaged in a sexual relationship or sex in order to have a place to stay, food, or money after the Lahaina fire,” Jabola- Carolus and Ortega wrote in their study. “This includes kissing, hugging, touching, and intercourse with a landlord, an employer, family members, friends and acquaintances.”
While Filipinos made up a large share of Lahaina’s population, women who engage in “survival sex” come from all ethnic groups, said Meda Chesney-Lind, a retired criminologist and UH women’s studies professor.
“Women who need things to survive will engage in survival sex,” Chesney-Lind said.
Rather than an issue of ethnicity, Chesney-Lind said that social status represents the primary reason women resort to survival sex.
“Lahaina was a working- class community where people who worked in the service industry lived,” she said. “People think about ethnicities in Hawaii but don’t realize we’re stratified by class. That’s an invisible marker.”
Source: The Garden Island