Fellows mentioned in this story: Josh Stanbro

From Vox:

President Joe Biden’s disaster declaration came within hours of the wildfires that tore through Lāhainā, Maui, last week, where the death toll is at least 111 and a thousand people may still be missing. The disaster declaration helped unlock federal aid for Maui, adding to Hawaii’s emergency stores another 50,000 meals, 10,000 blankets, and $700 cash for survivors in the immediate aftermath.

But questions around the response at every level of government continue to mount. Many of the disaster’s survivors have said the assistance was slow to arrive, wondering days later why distribution centers were so disorderly, and missing persons numbers still so high.

...

To unpack some of this context, Vox spoke to Joshua Stanbro, who served as chief resilience officer and policy advisor for the city and county of Honolulu from 2017 to 2021, and led the adoption of Honolulu’s first Resilience Strategy and Climate Action Plan. Today, he is a policy lead at Elemental Excelerator, a nonprofit investor in climate technologies.

Continue reading at vox.com.