GIFF JOHNSON
There is a striking development in regards to the fire that destroyed the Nitijela.
In the Executive Order declaring a state of disaster issued by Acting President Kalani Kaneko on August 28, two days after the fire, among a list of action directives to government ministries and agencies was the directive to Marshall Islands Police Department: “Lead the investigation into the cause of the fire.”
Further to this is the fact that MIPD does not have fire inspectors qualified to conduct the kind of forensic investigation no doubt needed to understand the cause of the fire.
Due to this situation, the week of the fire, top-level government leaders directed MIPD to request assistance from the US government for an investigation. This has been standard practice over many decades in law enforcement here. If there is an investigation that requires certain skills unavailable locally, the US Embassy has been asked to help. And in our experience, the US government nearly always provides the requested technical assistance.
Typically this has brought the FBI in to conduct investigations or to provide laboratory analysis of crime scene samples. In the past, investigation assistance by the FBI has helped RMI authorities with prosecutions of criminal activity — prosecutions that would have been impossible without such investigative work.
And in this fire situation, the US Embassy not only received the request from the RMI government, it responded quickly to offer assistance from the ATF — which is the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives within the US Justice Department.
But at the same time as Acting President Kaneko was issuing the disaster declaration mandating an investigation of the fire and the request was made to the US to provide technical support to the investigation, the same government leaders were authorizing Pacific International Inc. to proceed immediately with demolition of the building so that the government could fast-track construction of a new parliament building. PII responded to this directive from government by mobilizing heavy equipment to the fire site Monday September 1 and by the end of last week, the building was gone.
What that means is, there was little opportunity for any investigation into the causes of the fire — and certainly inadequate time to bring in fire investigators from the US or elsewhere.
This is unfortunate for many reasons. The main problem with this lack of coordination and not allowing enough time for an investigation is that the causes of the fire are essentially left to speculation. Was it simply a small fire lit for cooking some food or similar that went out of control? Was it an electrical fire? Was it a fire caused by malicious individuals with intent to do harm to the RMI government? Now, no one can answer these questions given the lack of a thorough investigation.
A thorough investigation might have required leaving the charred building standing for another week or so to allow for a full inspection. In our opinion this would not have led to significant delays in the rebuilding of Nitijela. Instead, however, the way this played out leaves a forever question mark in people’s minds.