Marshall Islands Correspondent
MAJURO, Marshall Islands — The fire was still burning at the Marshall Islands parliament on Aug. 26 when the Marshall Islands Cabinet met in emergency session and approved a plan to fast-track the construction of a new parliament building.
The fire, which started accidentally late in the evening on Aug. 25, had turned into an inferno by the early hours by the next morning destroying the parliament chamber, its archives and library section, offices, and meeting rooms.
By mid-afternoon, President Hilda C. Heine issued a short statement posted to the President’s Office Facebook page describing the situation and the government’s next steps.
She told the nation that the foundation of democracy and culture will never falter.
“As we see the ashes, it is a depressing sight to behold as Marshallese,” Heine said. “The Nitijela is a symbol of democracy, a place where our leaders converge and determine the future of our islands.”
The president vowed to start the work for a new parliament building before the end of this year.
“PII has an emergency notice to proceed rebuilding immediately – we have engineers flying in this week and will divert material for other jobs,” said Pacific International Inc. CEO Jerry Kramer on Aug. 27.
With Cabinet members placing a priority on constructing a new parliament building, this will now leapfrog ahead of the new capital building that is about to go into a design phase before construction starts. The four-story capital facility was demolished earlier this year by Pacific International Inc. in preparation for the building of a new government headquarters.
Now the government must develop both a new parliament and capital building located at the same site. The government of Taiwan has already pledged over $30 million to fund the building of a new capital.
It’s not yet clear what funding sources will be used to rebuild the parliament building. But U.S. Congresswoman Amata Coleman Radewagen of American Samoa has already said she will look at options for United States support for a new parliament.
Radewagen is the vice chairman of both the House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Asia and the Pacific and the Natural Resources Subcommittee on Indian and Insular Affairs, the two main congressional committees with legislative responsibility regarding the Marshall Islands.
Radewagen was in the parliament building in January 2024 for the inauguration of President Heine and has longstanding family ties to the Marshall Islands.
“The Marshalls are like a second home to me,” she said. “I spent part of my youth on Majuro when my father was head of government and through children produced by sibling marriage, the blood of the Marshalls runs through the veins of my family. So, this fire is personal to me and I will do all in my power to help the government in its restoration efforts.”
In the meantime, within a day of the fire, Nitijela (parliament) staff had already begun setting up the International Conference Center as a temporary meeting location for the parliamentarians. The parliament will make use of the conference center’s large meeting rooms to continue their current session, which was focusing on the government’s new budget for the upcoming fiscal year when the fire disrupted parliament operations.
The fire has caused irreparable harm to historical documents that were stored in the Nitijela library and archives, which were consumed by the fire. This includes many original documents, including the history of the first Constitutional Convention and the early Nitijela bills from its 1979 establishment forward.
Most bills and resolutions that were adopted over the years are available on the Nitijela website, rmiparliament.org.
Meanwhile, Nitijela staff said documents were digitized, but it wasn’t immediately clear how complete the digitization was or where the digital records were located.
“The entire Marshall Islands Revised Code (laws) is saved including the previous digitized public laws are saved as well,” said Nitijela Legislative Counsel Joe Lomae. “These were all digitized in the past.”’
Lomae said he was able to get into his office to save records. “I managed to run into my office to get my external (hard drive) and the CPU,” he said.
Although there was no official report available on the possible causes of the fire, two important factors were in play.
Perhaps most importantly in terms of controlling a fire was the lack of a functional Marshall Islands Police Department fire truck. The one fire truck based at the downtown police headquarters nearby the parliament has been out of service for months awaiting parts. A working MIPD fire truck could have been onsite at Nitijela within 10-15 minutes and, despite limitations of water tank size, might have had a chance to limit fire damage.
But with no working fire truck downtown, it was left to the Amata Kabua International Airport firefighters to respond. They arrived within 60 to 90 minutes, which given mobilization time and the drive to town was not an unreasonable response time.
Once the airport firefighters arrived on site, however, the fire was already consuming the archives section and had moved into the main parliament building.
The fire could have started from a section of the building connected to but blocked off from the parliament offices by a partition. Vandals had months ago broken into the outside doors, making use of the space. The location had not been secured by government authorities.
“That’s where all the crackheads, drinkers, players and homeless hang out,” said a local resident in a social media post after the fire. “People slept and lived there.”
It is speculated that a small fire in this area got out of control and quickly spread, causing the blaze that destroyed the parliament. mbj
