THE Department of Foreign Affairs yesterday said 50 Filipino teachers working in Maui, Hawaii are safe from the deadly wildfires that devastated the island of Lahaina, killing more than 90 people and forcing the evacuation of thousands.
DFA Assistant Secretary Paul Cortes said the 50 are holders of J-1 visas. The J-1 visa is granted to foreigners under the work-and-study-based exchange and visitor programs of the United States.
“We have 50 teachers who are J-1 visa holders who were hired by the Hawaii State Department of Education to stay there for two to three years. They are assigned in Maui and they have marked themselves as safe,” Cortes told the Laging Handa public briefing.
“They are now being housed in a shelter provided by Hawaiian authorities. We will also give them aid through our consulate in Honolulu,” he added.
DFA Undersecretary Jose Eduardo de Vega said the consulate in Honolulu is set to conduct a consular mission in Wailuku town, Maui to get more information on the teachers and other Filipinos on the island.
“We’ve also authorized them already to provide financial assistance to at least 50 Filipino teachers who were identified as being in Maui under J-1 visas,” De Vega told CNN Philippines in a separate interview.
De Vega said the DFA is ready to assist the teachers should they wish to be repatriated back to Manila.
“Based on our experience, teachers, when they are abroad, they won’t ask to come home. They’ll ask for assistance, maybe to transfer jobs,” he added.
Cortes said at least 99 people have perished due to the Maui fire, the deadliest to hit the US in more than a century.
But he and De Vega said none of the fatalities were confirmed to be Filipino or of Filipino descent, but did not discount the possibility of Filipino-Americans among the victims.
“According to the consulate, there are 99 fatalities. However, they did not come up with a breakdown based on ethnicity. It’s a little bit difficult to say there are Filipinos who are Philippine passport holders who are affected,” Cortes said.
“We cannot confirm if anyone is a Filipino citizen. Unfortunately, we have to expect the worst because 17 percent of the population of Maui are Filipino-Americans,” De Vega said.
Citing the US 2020 population census, Cortes said there are 388,000 persons in Hawaii who have identified themselves as Filipinos or part Filipinos, with 200,000 of them pure Filipinos.
Philippine Consul General to Honolulu Emilio Hernandez said they are fielding a rising number of calls and emails asking about the status of Filipinos and Filipino-Americans in Maui.
“Queries received by the Consulate requesting assistance in locating missing individuals and family members have increased,” Hernandez said, adding the consulate is coordinating with local authorities for an updated and accurate listing of Filipinos and Filipino-Americans who may be missing.
He said local authorities are currently focused on conducting search and recovery operations and restoring normalcy in Lahaina.
The Maui Filipino Chamber of Commerce earlier said there were Filipinos among the 1,000 individuals reported missing in the aftermath of the deadly conflagration.
The DFA earlier said that Filipinos who have lost contact with their relatives in Maui, particularly in Lahaina, can contact the emergency hotline +18082539446 for additional information.
DEATH TOLL UP TO 99
Search teams with cadaver dogs have combed through 25% of the Lahaina disaster zone from the Maui wildfires, discovering the remains of a 99th victim on Monday, but perhaps hundreds more people were unaccounted for nearly a week after the disaster.
Fueled by winds gusting up to 80 mph (128 kph), an inferno burning at temperatures that the governor said reached 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit (538 degrees C) raced from the dry grasslands outside town into the historic resort town of Lahaina last Tuesday, turning block after block into ash.
The deadliest US wildfire in more than 100 years destroyed or damaged more than 2,200 buildings, 86% of them residential, causing an estimated $5.5 billion in damage.
Recognizing the anxiety of survivors still looking for their loved ones, Maui County Police Chief John Pelletier told a news conference that local, state, and federal rescue workers were proceeding as fast as possible but that there was a “reverence” that encumbered the task.
“It’s not just ash on your clothing when you take it off. It’s our loved ones,” Pelletier said, relating the instructions that a director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency gave rescue workers in a briefing. — With Reuters
