A new UCLA study published this week found Asian communities affected by the recent fires in Los Angeles County had difficulty accessing information about emergency evacuations and recovery efforts because of language barriers.
The study, which is part of a research series examining the impact wildfires have had on the county’s different racial and ethnic groups, found that more than 12,000 of the 50,000 Asian immigrants and their descendants living within four evacuation zones need language assistance. The fire zones are: Palisades, Eaton, Hurst and Hughes.
The group makes up 15% of the total population of these four areas, but researchers say the data point to a dearth in multilingual communication alerts about fire warnings, evacuation procedures and relief services.
“These language needs are part of a broader challenge in Los Angeles County, where over half a million Asian Americans are classified as Limited English Proficiency,” the study read in part.
Manjusha Kulkarni, executive director of Asian American and Pacific Islanders Equity Alliance, a coalition of 50 community-based organizations, said among the complaints they’ve heard from residents is that fire alerts were sent only in English and Spanish.
She said some residents avoided evacuation centers because there were no interpreters to assist them, while others complained they could not find online information about the fires in their native language.
“We put together a resource guide that was in multiple languages on our own because we saw nobody else was doing it,” Kulkarni said. “It’s available in English, in traditional and simplified Chinese, Hindi, Korean, Thai and Vietnamese and it includes information on shelter, housing, child care … the whole gamut.”
The resource guide is available on the AAPI Equity Alliance’s website.
In a written statement to The Times, L.A. County’s Coordinated Joint Information Center, which is tasked with releasing public information during an emergency, said the alerts are limited to English and Spanish due to system limitations of the Integrated Alert and Warning System that is maintained by the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
“These alerts are only one of several means of notifying residents to evacuate their homes during an emergency,” county officials said. “Our response also includes usage of the Alert LA County messaging platform, door knocks or first responders with loudspeakers driving up and down streets.”
County officials said its Disaster Resource Centers also include multilingual staff and county material that has been translated in multiple languages including Chinese, Korean, Tagalog and Vietnamese.
“Many social media messages from L.A. County accounts are regularly posted in multiple languages, including Korean and Chinese,” the statement read.
This coming Wednesday, county officials said, the Board of Supervisors’ weekly news conferences will be available in more than 60 languages through real-time language translation services.
While researchers and Asian American advocates applaud the efforts, they’re still urging county officials to assess the language needs of the Asian communities as they are made up of various ethnic groups who speak their own languages.
As part of the study, researchers looked closer at the diversity of these communities in the four evacuation zones by using U.S. census and elementary school data to develop a profile of the people living there.
The study’s findings show that the commonly spoken Asian languages in the four areas are Chinese, Korean, Tagalog and Vietnamese. But there are also dozens of other languages including Cantonese, Thai, Punjabi and Hindi.
Researchers found that older people, ages 45 and over, were more likely to have higher rates of limited English proficiency, or LEP, which the U.S. census defines as someone who speaks English less than “very well.”
The study shows that the Palisades fire area has the highest proportion of LEP Asians, followed by those living in the Eaton evacuation zone, where a large segment of the Asian population is located.
Chhandara Pech, researcher and deputy director at UCLA Center for Neighborhood Knowledge, the study’s findings underscore why government officials need to be more precise on the information they are distributing to neighborhoods.
“Government agencies should not only focus on reaching the largest population that’s affected by the wildfires, but it should also prioritize supporting the most vulnerable and hard-to-reach communities,” Pech said.
The study, the fourth in the series, is yet another reminder of the ongoing effort to tailor emergency preparedness and response plans to the needs of vulnerable groups such as immigrants, the poor, the elderly and people with disabilities.
Two years after the firestorms of 2017, California took a more serious approach in addressing these issues by launching a state program dubbed Listos California. The program, which played a vital role in distributing information during the pandemic, has helped prepare vulnerable communities for major disasters by partnering with community groups and local governments.
Kulkarni hopes county officials will do the same, especially in addressing the language barriers she believes exist in the county’s emergency response plans.
“Language is a critical component of providing resources and services,” Kulkarni said. “And a number of those responsibilities are governmental, but [it] can and it should partner with local community groups because we know the needs.”
“Let’s do this right,” she said, continuing. “Let’s partner and make sure we’re meeting the needs of these folks.”
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