On Tuesday morning, Vermont Language Justice Project released a series of informational videos about flood safety in 16 languages, including Maay Maay, a primarily oral language spoken in Somalia.
The video was independently produced with local interpreters, using grant funding the organization received last year from the Department of Health. It was subsequently shared by state agencies including Vermont Emergency Management.
But Alison Segar, the language project’s director, argued the effort left too many Vermonters behind the curve in an emergency. An estimated 8,000 Vermonters’ primary language is not English and more than 30 languages are spoken in the state, according to state and federal data, including among growing immigrant and refugee communities from Africa, Europe and the Middle East.
Concerns about the forecast grew over the weekend, heavy rainfall began pelting the state on Sunday night and Vermonters awoke to dangerous conditions on Monday.
“When it comes to emergency management, I feel like we’re always one step behind,” Segar said on Tuesday.
The video series was not commissioned by any state agency, she said, but rather a community effort that was turned around in 24 hours in response to the severe flooding.
“We could have been proactive as opposed to reactive,” she said. “We’re a day behind.”
Segar noted with optimism that the Vermont Emergency Management website has flood-related advice available in nine languages, and acknowledged the high cost of translation work. But she wondered how many people were able to even navigate to the website to access that information, given disparate levels of internet access and other barriers.
Some languages are oral rather than written and some people are not literate in their languages, she added.
“I think that’s a really good start,” she said. “But it really doesn’t address the problem.”
The U.S. Census Bureau estimates that 1.3% of Vermont’s population, or some 7,700 people, speak English less than “very well.” That figure doesn’t account for refugee resettlement in the fiscal year of 2022, which totaled 387 people, according to the State Refugee Office.
In a statement to VTDigger on Tuesday, Vermont Emergency Management said it “has been working on enhancing our ability to communicate with non-English speakers for some time and it continues to be a high priority for us.” The agency highlighted the Vermont Language Justice Project videos, as well as an emergency preparedness workbook on its website. Available translations vary by topic and range between nine and 15 languages, including Burmese, Dari, Kiswahili and Russian.
As officials move into recovery efforts, the Federal Emergency Management Agency will have translated materials and “backup interpreters” available, the state agency said.
“(Vermont Emergency Management) has a contractor that does our translations, and we plan to add more information and languages,” the agency said in its statement. “The turnaround time is not sufficient to translate emergency messages in a timely manner during an event, so we do all we can to educate everyone ahead of time.”
Ahead of the rainfall, the Department of Health said in a statement, staff had “emailed some of our materials to their list of health equity partners, including those who work with non-English speaking populations.” The department said that it continually updates multilingual resources on its website.
‘People need to know’
The dearth of translated materials has made access to information insufficient for thousands of Vermonters in this emergency — and other potential rapid-onset disasters like a chemical spill, said Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale, D-Chittenden Southeast District, in an interview.
Under federal law, federal agencies are required to implement a system so that people who speak other languages can still have “meaningful access” to their services.
“People need to know about shelters, evacuations and road closures,” Ram Hinsdale said.
She noted that interpreter services are available when dialing 211 and 511. She also pointed to the Department of Health website, which offers flood safety tips in 14 languages.
But, “it’s static,” she said. “It’s not any kind of information about what’s happening right now.”
The state’s Office of Racial Equity issued a language access report at the start of this year, outlining the various gaps, including that most of the state’s emergency communications are not available in any language other than English and “are seldom translated into (American Sign Language) or other signed languages.”
The state senator said she has pushed for a multilingual contract with Everbridge, the vendor that powers the state’s mass notification system VT Alerts. Alternatively, she said the state could liaise with community partners to get live emergency information relayed in Whatsapp groups that local Somali and Nepali communities already use.
Some cities already have initiatives in place. Paul Sarne, a spokesperson for the City of Winooski, said in a statement that a city staffer had been in communication with multilingual residents through the texting app Whatsapp.
“The state has been working on their own language access plans, but I’ve been (saying) you need an emergency language access plan,” Ram Hinsdale said, arguing that the state should have kept the Vermont Language Justice Project “on retainer for this moment.”
Xusana Davis, the state’s executive director of racial equity, said that in addition to at least 34 languages spoken in Vermont, there are at least 70,000 people in the state who are affected by hearing loss. The conversation around language access is “inextricably linked to disability rights and accessibility in the state,” she said.
In what Davis called “a milestone,” the state budget, which was approved in May, carved out $2.3 million for translating existing vital documents and $700,000 in maintenance and ad hoc needs. But when producing translated content in a time-sensitive manner, there are myriad technical considerations.
The urgency of translated emergency communications is not lost on Davis.
“For those of us who come from immigrant families,” she said, “this has been a struggle and a challenge and a fear for all of our lives in the states.”
‘Not a single alert in any other language’
Organizations who serve communities on the ground said they understand the challenges of providing translation services.
But this is “life-saving information,” said Amila Merdzanovic, director of the Vermont field office of the U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants.
“All the alerts were sent out in English,” she said. “Not a single alert was sent in any other language.”
Merzdanovic was encouraged by the close cooperation of the state with community groups during the pandemic and said that with “continued dialogue and coordination … progress follows.”
Merzdanovic and two other leaders in immigrant communities — Will Lambek, of Migrant Justice in Burlington, and Joe Wiah, director of the Ethiopian Community Development Council in Brattleboro — said their teams are in contact with their members to ensure proper guidance if anyone is affected by the severe rainfall.
“We always put it this way: We’re building this ship as we go,” Wiah said. “The state and other providers have really stepped up; it’s just we all collectively haven’t gotten there yet.”
As of Wednesday afternoon, Vermont Language Justice Project’s website had received at least 2,800 views in the prior 48 hours, a substantial jump from its daily average of 150 views. Segar pointed to those numbers as reassuring evidence that their videos are reaching their intended audience. Her team is now working on a video series about contaminated drinking water.
“We’re just doing what we think is the right thing to do,” she said.
