There’s a bad, sinking feeling of deja vu over the sluggish pace of state unemployment checks that have yet to reach thousands of Maui people left jobless — and homeless, in many cases — by the Aug. 8 wildfires. More than two months after the infernos, thousands of applications haven’t even been processed, leaving desperately needed payments in limbo.

That’s wholly unacceptable — and Gov. Josh Green must exercise authority under the current emergency proclamation to get valid claims expedited. That means getting more emergency hands on deck, to deal with the unemployment insurance (UI) crisis. Wildfire survivors need steady income as they struggle through a difficult period that, in addition to job loss, might well include challenges over housing, food and schooling for children.

The scope of the Maui jobless-claims backlog was quantified last Wednesday by Jade Butay, director of the state Department of Labor and Industrial Relations (DLIR). Of 15,161 new unemployment applications since the fires, 8,731 are currently being paid. That’s a scant 57.6% of applicants being helped, with many thousands more without jobs waiting for a weekly aid check. Those eligible can get up to $763 a week in UI payments for 26 weeks.

The processing rate is even worse for those applying for federal disaster unemployment assistance (DUA) — workers who don’t qualify for regular UI, such as the self-employed, farmers and fishers. Of 2,200 DUA applications, Butay said, only 500 have been approved so far. That’s 3 out of 4 applicants still waiting.

The major spike in jobless claims was caused by the wildfire that leveled Lahaina — killing at least 98 people and destroying 2,200 buildings — but the backlog has been exacerbated by an antiquated state mainframe computer, and by fraud, which is time-consuming to ferret out. Unfortunately, these are the same obstacles that infuriated jobless folks two years ago, at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic that virtually shut down Hawaii’s economy.

“Fraud is rampant again,” Butay said in a Hawaii News Now report last week. “So we have ways to detect fraud. We’re trying to process them as soon as possible. Our staff is working seven days a week.”

Clearly, though, more temporary hires and reassigned staff to process claims are sorely needed. The lifeline payments would seem even more critical than during the pandemic, since the suffering of many Mauians today goes well beyond job losses.

“A large number of displaced families lost both houses and cars, making it extraordinarily difficult to commute to an existing job outside the burn area,” reports the University of Hawaii Economic Research Organization (UHERO). “While not qualifying them for unemployment, that still represents an additional employment loss.”

Given the scope of struggles, it’s good to hear that DUA eligibility has just been extended to workers too traumatized to return to work — offering needed extra support, on a case-by-case basis. But this will add to the state’s claims backlog — so unless better trouble-shooting and solutions are ordered by Green, it only stands to worsen.

Also extended was the DUA application deadline, to Oct. 26, giving folks more time to apply for aid. Having federal funds available, though, does little good if the people who need help can’t readily access it.

It was just a short month ago that DLIR expressed some confidence in being able to handle the workload, thanks to upgrades done to its upfront web system and mainframe. Unfortunately, things have bogged since then — and the chronic hope of modernizing the system now lies, apparently, in a to-come $35 million upgrade.

Uncertainty and problems are likely to persist, and UHERO expects that further layoffs may well occur as recessionary conditions weigh on many businesses. All that must spur Green and the labor department to tackle today’s UI problems vigorously. Because as bad as they are now, things could get worse — for the system, and for the very people who need help.