Opinion Page: What happened in Pajaro isn’t just a ‘natural’ disaster
From the LA Times, March 14, 2023:
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The relief effort during the aftermath of the St. Francis Dam failure provides an instructive lesson in getting it wrong. The Red Cross, for example, largely refused to provide treatment to Mexican flood victims; local government officials instead enlisted the assistance of La Cruz Azul de San Fernando, a local charity that provided Latino victims mutual aid in racially segregated shelters and offered interpreter-coordinated services. The city of Los Angeles, the operator of the St. Francis Dam, was later accused of providing Latino farmworkers with lower payouts to cover property loss and for funeral expenses.
This is not just some long-ago history. In our research on wildfires in Ventura, Santa Barbara and Sonoma counties from 2017 and 2020, we found that undocumented migrants were rendered invisible by cultural norms regarding who is deemed a worthy disaster victim. In interviews with victims and analysis of government data, a pattern appeared: Resources were directed toward wealthier individuals, leaving local immigrant rights groups to provide essential services such as language access to emergency information in Spanish and Indigenous dialects, labor protections for farmworkers threatened by heavy smoke, and establishing a disaster-relief fund for undocumented migrants ineligible for federal aid.
Given their marginalized social status, undocumented migrants are particularly vulnerable to disasters and require special consideration in disaster planning and response. They are adversely affected by racial discrimination, economic exploitation and hardship, fear of deportation and communication difficulties. According to a 2019 state auditor’s report, emergency officials routinely overlook the state’s most vulnerable populations as they make preparations for foreseeable wildfires, floods and other disasters.
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darryll jones