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Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem has claimed one in six survivors of the Lahaina wildfires in Hawaii had to trade sexual and other favors to get basic supplies.
The comments were seemingly in reference to a report on female Filipino survivors, which one of the authors called a “gross manipulation” of the report, according to Politico.
At a review meeting for the Federal Emergency Management Agency on Wednesday, Noem said, “After the wildfires in Maui, residents voiced concerns that every FEMA employee that they spoke with had different answers.”
“None of them had conversations that resulted in getting assistance that was helpful or any clarity in their situations,” she added. “The situation in Lahaina was so bad that one in six survivors were forced to trade sexual favors, other favors for just basic supplies.”
The study on Filipino female survivors was conducted by Tagnawa, which states that it is a “Filipino feminist disaster response organization” in Hawaii. The review included responses from 70 female Filipino fire survivors and found that 16 percent had engaged in “survival sex in exchange for basic necessities post-disaster,” with “a landlord, an employer, family members, friends and acquaintances.”
One of the authors of the report, Khara Jabola-Carolus, told Politico that the Trump administration had misinterpreted the findings.
“I’m more concerned about just the gross manipulation of using that statistic to do the opposite of what the report calls for,” she told the outlet. “Like funding FEMA to improve their response for women’s needs.”
In a May press release, DHS states that the report showed “FEMA’s horrific neglect and mismanagement under the Biden Administration.”
At the FEMA review meeting Noem said, “This job of remaking this agency is not nearly as simple as it should be.”
“Because we’re up against decades of gross mismanagement and negligence,” she added. “The list of FEMA’s failures is staggering. The scale of those failures is matched only by their longevity. FEMA has been disastrous at times, incompetent at times. And not just in the last few years but for decades.”
President Donald Trump has been eyeing the shutdown of the agency for some time. Last month, he said he wants states to stop using the agency. The Trump administration has canceled FEMA grants worth billions intended for local projects to protect communities from natural disasters.
At the same time, White House officials have praised the agency’s work on responding to the floods in the Texas Hill Country, where more than one hundred people have been killed.
