Kayt Peck

 

I both love and hate the phrase, “It is what it is.”

 

Strangely I love and hate it for the same reason. It acknowledges reality.

 

I’ve recently faced that paradox twice. First, talking with an old and dear friend while sitting at the counter at Dick’s Pub and Restaurant In Las Vegas, NM. The second involved two Santa Fe-based contractors that work as advocates within the Hermits Peak-Calf Canyon Fire Claims Office. Neither instance was the reality that I would prefer to embrace, but, it is what it is.

 

This dilemma is very real for me, for my home was one of hundreds destroyed in that fire.

 

I was at the Contractor Connects event hosted by the New México Office of Homeland Security on Saturday, March 30. I’m very impressed with that agency’s work to create the New Mexico Disaster Case Management Team. I met with Ali Rye, Deputy Secretary for New Mexico’s Office of Homeland Security, and members of her case management team. It was a refreshing conversation, considering the FEMA roadblocks I’ve faced as a fire victim who lost my home, and as a member of a devastated community. I get the sense Rye and her team care, they truly care.

 

I was concerned about the limited number of local contractors at the event, but I know there was an honest attempt to support the community.

 

I digress.

 

One informational table at the event was staffed by two contractors from Santa Fe representing the advocate team with the Hermits-Peak-Calf Canyon Claims Office. I asked about two individuals I wanted to see at the booth, both of whom I knew stood for the well-being of the community and had served as employees with the advocate’s office.

 

The two men at the table looked at each other before one said, “They are no longer with the advocate team.”

 

I remember when locals urgently requested that the Federal Emergency Management Agency hire people from the area to work within the FEMA operation responsible for distributing nearly $4 billion from the Hermits Peak-Calf Canyon Fire Assistance Act.

 

A few locals were hired as navigators to help process claims and as advocates to speak on behalf of those claimants. The advocates were there to provide a local voice. It appears that the local voice is gone.

 

I expressed my concerns and asked the men working at the FEMA table to convey to Paula Gutiérrez, the claims’ office advocate, my disappointment in the situation.

 

The two men reacted differently.

 

One looked away, embarrassed, perhaps even a tad ashamed.

 

The other glared at me, making it clear that if I wasn’t there for them to help me with my personal claim, I wasn’t welcome at their table.

 

I’ll stick with my attorneys, so I walked away.

 

Once again, it reminded me of many prior experiences with the claims office. Obedience and acquiescence are key to receiving any recompense for damages inflicted when the U.S. Forest Service lost control of not one but two prescribed burns. The claims office is not to be questioned.

 

It is what it is.

 

This dilemma is very real for me, for my home was one of hundreds destroyed in that fire. How I miss my home. Yes, the cabin is gone, but I miss my land. I miss the deer, the wind in the trees, the sound now changed within the devastated forest. I miss my neighbors, two of whom have died, early demise exacerbated by the trauma of displacement.

 

The truth of the interminable waiting became very clear in my second encounter with reality.

 

I sat with a friend, my lunch companion, who wanted my advice. He talked about others telling him to give up fighting FEMA, aided by an attorney, and take whatever the federal government offers. Considering FEMA is required by law to give money to those devastated by the fire and subsequent floods, it’s not necessarily bad advice. It may not be as much as one deserves, but it won’t likely be chicken feed. He’s going through the FEMA process for his elderly mother’s claim, another neighbor I miss who still cannot return home.

 

My friend struggles to decide if his mother should accept what’s on the table and move on, even if it is not entirely what is owed.

 

“You tell your mom to go get what she can,” I said. “She needs to get it and enjoy it, making what’s left of her life as comfortable and pleasurable as possible.”

 

But that ain’t me. I am what I am.

 

At least some of us need to hang in there. I turn 70 this month, and I’ve wondered, will I ever have the chance to go home? I’ve witnessed and experienced the pressure the claim’s office puts on people to abandon their attorneys. I’ve wondered why. At one point a veiled threat was leveled at me, apparently to discourage me from writing. The implication I get from the claims office is, those using attorneys may be forced to litigate, delaying any settlement for five to ten years.

 

It’s not about the money. For me it’s about human decency.

 

In my business, I sometimes train those in the nonprofit sector about dealing with diverse communities. One observation I present is not always popular. I speak about avoiding the use of charity as a tool of oppression. If money is given out of a sense of superiority, out of the desire to control, it’s not a gift, it’s a purchase of obedience.

 

That is what I see with FEMA in its claims office for Hermits Peak-Calf Canyon Fire victims. I find that ludicrous because this is not charity. This was approved by Congress and signed by the President to compensate people, real people, and communities devastated by a disaster created by prescribed burns botched by a branch of the federal government.

 

How do I describe in a single paragraph what we’ve experienced?

 

From the very beginning FEMA has approached service to fire and flood victims with rigorous requirements to qualify for assistance, sometimes to the point of being laughable. I recently heard from a man who was required by FEMA to provide three years of check stubs to complete his request for compensation of business he lost due to the natural disaster. Then there is the prioritization of what kind of claims are paid first. The first major outflow of money was for reforestation with values determined by the Natural Resource Conservation Service, a branch from the same agency which caused the fires. Those of us who are still living patchwork lives because of lost homes—well, crickets.

 

All right, it can’t be put in a single paragraph. Perhaps a book?

 

The real issue right now is explaining why I’ll hang in there, working with attorneys who are in my corner. I’m fighting for change. I’m fighting for a FEMA that puts the needs of the people ahead of the affluence of contractors and the sense of power in bureaucracy.

 

Most likely, I’ll never see it, but I’ve read history. I know the world becomes better because of those who fight for change they may never see.

 

Kayt Peck is both a professional writer and also a victim of the Hermit’s Peak/Calf Canyon Fire. She lost her Rociada home in April 2022. In her ongoing column, Nosotros la Gente, she writes about the spectrum of experiences faced by wildfire survivors. This commentary  is republished from Source New Mexico under a Creative Commons license.