Day 2: PANEL: Business Recovery Post-Megafire: The Crucial Role of Private Sector Support
“It is becoming a cheerleader for the community that we’re [private sector] back.” —Tim Zahner
“It takes all of us to make a recovery. There are no heroes after the disaster itself. We all have a role to play.” —Lynn Knight
“The Kupuna up there in that forest are so alive more than ever. They’re just needing conduits. And those conduits are us.” —Kalikolehua Storer
2024 WILDFIRE LEADERSHIP SUMMIT
When disaster strikes, the human toll is immense, but the economic impact can be just as devastating. Businesses shut, jobs lost, and entire industries disrupted— the ripple effects can cripple a community for years. Hence, rebuilding the local economy is essential for restoring normalcy and resilience.
In this episode, Mark Bodenhammer, the CEO of Sonoma Chamber of Commerce leads a panel of experts, including Sonoma Valley Tourism Executive Director Tim Zahner, NOVACES Director of Economic Development & Resilience Programs Lynn Knight, and HYATT Hotels Training Specialist Kalikolehua Storer.
Tune in as they share their experiences and insights on navigating the complex landscape of post-fire economic recovery— from balancing human needs with business support to diversifying industries and communicating with visitors, plus much more.
Highlights:
- 00:22 Meet Our Panel: Tim, Kalikolehua, Lynn
- 03:03 The Role of Economy in Recovery
- 10:41 Balancing Economy and Human Aid
- 18:35 Supporting the Business Economy
- 22:21 Facilitating a Healthy Relationship Between Businesses and the Government
- 25:03 Open for Business
- 29:40 A Cause for Pride
Twitter:
After a disaster, getting businesses back on their feet is crucial for community recovery. Join in as Sonoma Chamber of Commerce CEO Mark Bodenhammer leads a powerful conversation on economic recovery with NOVACES’ Lynn Knight, HYATT Hotels’ Kalikolehua Storer, and Sonoma Valley Tourism’s Tim Zahner. #Recover #Rebuild #Reimagine #podcast #wildfire #DisasterRecovery #AfterTheFire #2024WildfireLeadershipSummit #EconomicResilience #CommunityCollaboration #BusinessSupport #TourismImpacts #EmergencyPreparedness #ResidentEngagement #PublicPrivatePartnerships #FutureResilience
Quotes:
03:03 “If I don’t have a job, I can’t fix my house, and there is no hope to feed my family. So you’ve got to get the small businesses back up and running quickly.” —Lynn Knight
04:04 “When do you talk about economy? Because months after the fire, we weren’t thinking about economy. We were thinking about not sleeping in a tent.” —Kalikolehua Storer
04:32 “It is becoming a cheerleader for the community that we’re [private sector] back.” —Tim Zahner
04:51 “Nothing’s getting back to normal until the economy’s back up and running.” —Mark Bodenhammer
10:17 “Just showing people simply what’s happening, we can project what we need to do to adjust in the future.” —Lynn Knight
12:46 “Diversifying your economy is the hardest job of all, and the worst time to try to do it is right after a disaster. It’s a long term prospect. You need to be very deliberate and holistic about it, and you need to look at your targets in a fact based way.” —Lynn Knight
14:13 “You have to tell the story of our people, or somebody else is going to write it and somebody else is going to tell it.” —Kalikolehua Storer
17:50 “It doesn’t just happen with diversifying and changing [your business], but it happens with what they said about building relationships with your local government and those that you can trust and help to change the trajectory of your economy.” —Kalikolehua Storer
18:56 “You got to be clear, you had to consistent, you got to be truthful, because those things will keep echoing around for a very long time.” —Tim Zahner
24:21 “You got to make sure that your local government, you have a relationship with them, before a disaster starts.” —Kalikolehua Storer
27:47 “I didn’t sign up for recovery work, it came to find us. And the goal is to take the 25th hour that doesn’t really exist and be wise and sit there and think about far, why, deep.” —Kalikolehua Storer
28:58 “It takes all of us to make a recovery. There are no heroes after the disaster itself. We all have a role to play.” —Lynn Knight
30:32 “The Kupuna up there in that forest are so alive more than ever. They’re just needing conduits. And those conduits are us.” —Kalikolehua Storer
Meet the Moderator:
Mark Bodenhammer, CEO, Sonoma Chamber of Commerce
Mark Bodenhamer is the CEO of the Sonoma Valley Chamber of Commerce. He is a native of Santa Rosa and has a strong passion for helping businesses succeed. Mark has served in various roles with Chambers of Commerce and other non-profit organizations12. He also hosts the “Sonoma Chamber Chat” on KSVY 91.3 FM, where he discusses local businesses, nonprofit organizations, and events in and around Sonoma12.
- Website: https://www.sonomachamber.org/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/sonomachamber
- X: https://twitter.com/sonomachamber
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sonomachamber/
Meet the Panel:
Lynn Knight, Director of Economic Development & Resilience Programs, NOVACES
Lynn Knight is an economic developer with extensive experience working in disaster recovery. She has worked in 23 states and U.S. territories that have faced serious disasters. Lynn became passionate about disaster recovery work starting in 2014 when she was the Vice President of the International Economic Development Council and placed economic development volunteers in communities across the country that needed assistance.
As an economic recovery expert, Lynn now works as a contractor for the U.S. Economic Development Administration, managing the economic recovery support function for FEMA. She brings deep expertise in understanding the economic impacts of disasters and helping communities develop strategies to support business recovery and long-term resilience.
Connect with Novaces:
- Website: http://www.novaces.com/
Kalikolehua Storer, Area Hawaiian Culture/Training Specialist, HYATT Hotels
Kalikolehua Storer is a dedicated community member with a passion for both cultural preservation and environmental stewardship. As an area training and cultural advisor for Hyatt Resorts, she shares her knowledge of Hawaiian traditions and values with visitors and employees alike. She also serves as the Pu’u Kukui Watershed operations supervisor, playing a vital role in protecting this critical ecosystem. Her diverse roles reflect her commitment to connecting people with the land, its history, and its future.
Connect with Hyatt Hotels:
- Website: https://www.hyatt.com/
Tim Zahner, Executive Director, Sonoma Valley Tourism
Tim Zahner is the representative from the Sonoma Valley Visitors Bureau. His role is to promote the Sonoma Valley area, encourage people to visit, support local businesses, and help the community recover after disasters. Tim has worked closely in disaster-affected communities, leveraging his expertise in tourism and marketing to aid in the recovery process. With experience navigating the balance between supporting residents and welcoming visitors, Tim brings valuable insights to the discussion on reviving the local economy after emergencies.
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/timzahner/
Connect with Sonoma Valley Tourism:
- Website: https://www.sonomavalley.com/
Transcription:
Tim Zahner: My name is Tim Zahner with the Sonoma Valley Visitors Bureau. Who here is from out of town, raise your hand. Quick. Raise your hand, and keep your hand up if you’re staying in a hotel. Oh, my god. I’m with the Visitors Bureau. My job is to promote people to come here, have a good time, support our local businesses and go home. And I represent the area from roughly the San Pablo Bay up to Santa Rosa. So that’s the Sonoma Valley, and it is God’s chosen place on this earth mark, as you know. Thank you.
Lynn Knight: Hi, I’m Lynn Knight. I live in Virginia now. I grew up in California. I have worked in 23 states in US territories that have had very serious disasters. And my specialty is economic recovery. I’m an economic developer, and I became really passionate about working in disaster recovery. Starting in 2014 when I was vice president of the International Economic Development Council, and we placed economic development volunteers in communities across the country, and they really needed help for community leaders,
Kalikolehua Storer: Aloha. My name is Kalikolehua Storer. I belong to a few organizations. I’ve been with Hyatt hotels for the last 26 years. I helped to steward the second rainiest place on Earth according to past data at Pu’u Kukui Watershed. And then I was minding my own business, and the Mayor called and said, can you be a part of my advisory committee? I wore multiple hats today. I’m sitting here to talk about what we’re currently going through in the Lahaina wildfires. I’m still going through it, but happy to be here, and happy to support you. And I’m happy to go home too.
Mark Bodenhammer: Wonderful. We’re very excited to have you all. Thank you all for participating in this. First things first, I want to just go over a quick note about the tone that we’re planning to use today. In our planning meeting, we got together and we were discussing, this can be a sensitive topic. A lot of people may have just been through something really traumatic, and we were wondering, what’s the right fit for us? Tone wise, should we be polite, kind and thoughtful? Or should we really just say, screw it. Let’s be direct, honest and blunt about things, and as candid as we can be. And we decided to err on the side of being direct, honest and blunt, because we think that that’s something that will be most helpful for you. And B, that’s what’s going to get things done when you’re recovering from an emergency. So that’s our plan, and we hope that that ends up being as helpful as we had thought. I want to start off the conversation by just talking about the big picture of the role of the economy in recovery. Obviously, human needs are the first thing that everybody thinks of and the most important. But then, what role does the economy play aside from tax revenue? We all know the importance of that. Talk about some of the things that are getting businesses back open and having your economy up and running again.
Lynn Knight: Jobs, jobs, jobs. If I don’t have a job, I can’t fix my house. And there is no hope to feed my family. So you’ve got to get the small businesses back up and running quickly.
Kalikolehua Storer: Late December 2023 when we were thinking about it, it just happened in August. And so I think about, while we were planning this panel, I said, man, in December of 2023, I wasn’t thinking about work. I wasn’t thinking about the economy, because we had so many different variables that were happening. And to be blunt, direct and honest, we hadn’t thought about that. And then not knowing the difference, especially the private sector that we may have been housing people, but you take out the housing for those that were staying in the hotels. You have an occupancy of 30%. If you’ve got a hotel worth 900 employees, not all of them can swing hammers come April, May into 2024. What I think about is, what is that balance? When do you talk about the economy? Because months after the fire, we weren’t thinking about the economy. We were thinking about not sleeping in a tent.
Tim Zahner: If I could just add on that, one of the things I think when after a fire disaster an intangible benefit is the morale boost that you get when your favorite ice cream shop is back online. And suddenly people are like, we’re returning to normalcy, right? And I think that’s a huge part. Because people that popped up on social media, like such and such are back, and such and such made it. So I think that it is becoming a cheerleader for the community that we’re back. We’re different, but we’re back.
Mark Bodenhammer: Great. Kaliko, you mentioned the balance of the human needs versus a local economy. Talk a little bit about that. Obviously, that’s really one of the most sensitive points of recovery. How to walk that line where you’re being respectful of people with what they’ve just been through. But also nothing’s getting back to normal until the economy’s back up and running. So can you guys go through some of what your experience has been in terms of finding that balance? How do you know what the right tone is, and what it’s like working through that challenge?
Kalikolehua Storer: I cannot help but to thank our Mayor. And obviously, it’s a different administration today. And to be able to settle down and then try to organize a community. And really, keep people of this land home. And that’s a tough one. Because in Hawaii, a large percentage comes from the tourism industry. There’s some that you cannot put out into the different sectors, because that’s all they know. And so it was such a hard balance. Talk about not wanting to walk in the public because you belong to a hotel, because you’ve chosen to go down that avenue. But when the Mayor was bold enough to create an advisory committee that was so different, I mean, my goodness, I didn’t know any of them really. And to be able to sit in a room to know that we’re going to have differences, and he knew that. And to be able to say, okay, when’s the right balance? I mean, you got 10 million ideas thrown at him and he says, there’s going to have to be somebody else. And to the point where I’ll say this, to the point where some of the private sector said, how does this advisory committee even qualify? They don’t belong at the table. We belong at the table. And I said, wow, that’s reality. Because maybe previously, the people of the community were not at tables. So it’s such a fine balance. But I believe that we’re working through it. And I can tell you a year later, all of us are on the same plane. I mean, let’s talk about it.
Mark Bodenhammer: Lynn, any experience?
Lynn Knight: One of the things in the disasters that I’ve worked at, and I work largely now as a contractor to the US economic development administration. We manage the economic recovery support function for FEMA. I have a playbook that I kind of go through for every mission. And the first thing is to look at what is actually going on with the economy. What has been lost? I don’t know when you want to throw up a slide, but I have a slide on that. And communities always underestimate, always. They always underestimate how long it’s going to take, how fast the business is going to get back up, and what the multiplier effects. And I have to tell you, on Maui, it is so huge. It’s not over, and it hasn’t turned the corner yet. And I worry about it. And what I would say is to spread the work. Yes, you want to achieve balance, but there are different people that want to work on different things. What have we seen here? There are people that are working to help kids. That’s great. People whose expertise is housing and mitigation, and environmental impacts. Well, there are people who want to help businesses and your chamber of commerce, your destination marketing organization, industry groups and us.
We have five or six federal agencies that have specialties in different aspects of the economy. We are there to help that so don’t prevent the support of businesses. It should happen as fast as you can, because you can imagine these small businesses don’t have a lot of resources that they can wait for. Let me show you just real fast. So this is what’s happened to employment. You can see unemployment spiked up really fast in July. It’s getting better. It’s still higher than the state by a couple points, but it is coming down. This is where we’ve lost jobs. I would be very surprised if we can turn that around fast. We’ve lost over 2,000 jobs in restaurants alone, and it impacts a lot of other businesses, suppliers. Even farmers have been telling me that it’s tough because they were selling to restaurants. This has some tourism impact. So what I can see in air service, when you’re on an island, that’s the only way you can come. So for months now, we’ve been tracking this, and air service is down about 25%. We are told that it may go down further until demand comes up. We’re also tracking on the islands how different hotels are doing. The hotels in West Maui actually did better for a while than everyone else, because they had the bump from survivor families. That’s changing. Now, this is the money slide.
I can’t sleep at night thinking about these. This is the shortfall that tourism has brought into the island. It’s already 10 months worth of data. It’s already been $2 billion down, and that’s with no multiplier effects. So with multipliers, our economist is telling me that it’s way over $3 billion in losses out of all the businesses on the island. And what did that mean to the government? So the state tax loss is already 292 million in the counties, getting close to 80 million in 10 months. Who has the kind of money to take that out of your local government budget? It’s really a lot, and it’s not going to turn fast. So the reason why I keep tracking this is because I feel like just showing people simply what’s happening. We can project what we need to do to adjust in the future.
Mark Bodenhammer: Thank you, Lynn. Tim, we’ve worked together quite a bit on tourism. There’s always that friction between tourism and residents of the community. Talk a little bit about that balance of after an emergency getting everybody together and finding the balance of best for the economy versus just human aids?
Tim Zahner: Kaliko, you have a great point there. When you’re in a place that was affected by a fire, that is a tourism economy, you get a double whammy. You’ve got people who may have lost their homes or their businesses, and then people don’t show up shown by the red indicators up there, then they might lose their jobs. We had a problem here where after the fires, people didn’t come. The hotels, we love our FEMA friends, but it was full of people who weren’t here for leisure travel. They were full of contractors, insurance agents and stuff like that, which was displacing further leisure travel. There is that weird, not weird, but that tension between the people that live here and the people who come to visit. I know it’s very acute in Hawaii. We had to thread that needle and say, look, it’s crucial that we have to support our local businesses, but we have to take care of our residents first. And we could talk more about that when the messaging gets to, but I just want to go back for both the things. It’s about patience and grace. You talk about being at the table. The most important part is everyone’s nerves are raw, everyone’s angry, everyone’s scared, and you just have to take a step back and breathe. And give people a bit of grace. Because otherwise, you’re not gonna get things solved. I have a lot of those grumpy meetings, and you just gotta get through this.
Mark Bodenhammer: Absolutely. Thank you all. One of the things that I noticed on your slide was the huge impact on the food service and the hospitality industries. And one of the things that came up here after 17 fires and during covid, I would imagine you guys have seen this in a few places. People in an economy like ours are so dependent on the hospitality industry. And one of the things that you’ll see is elected officials saying, well, we need to diversify our local economy so that this doesn’t happen, which is not a bad idea.. But timing wise, it can be something that’s maybe not the top priority when you’re coming out of an emergency. Talk a little bit about that instinct. What things do you see? What are the things that pop up? Ideas that are vague, big picture ideas. Lynn’s ready. Lynn, take it away.
Lynn Knight: So as an economic developer, I will tell you that diversifying your economy is the hardest job of all. And the worst time to try to do it is right after a disaster. It’s a long term prospect. You need to be very deliberate and holistic about it, and you need to look at your targets in a fact based way. We’ve looked very deeply at Maui’s targets, and they’re all industries that are going to take a long time to develop, and they have their own issues. I think it’s better to focus on what you’ve got, the businesses that have gotten their feet on the ground of skin in the game. Focus on them first, and then make diversification a long term goal, which is a good resilience measure anyway.
Tim Zahner: After the firefighters leave, the next person should be someone with a PhD in economics. We love them. They’re great. But it’s really like, let’s get people back to work so they can feed their families, and then let’s talk about the long term stuff.
Kalikolehua Storer: When we had our pre-planning with Lynn and she said that, I almost felt like I got punched in the gut. No, it’s all good, and that’s why I told you to be blunt. And the reality is, that was hard. I learned at a very young age to dominate, you got to infiltrate. And that to me meant that you’ve got to be at the table. And if the table is in hospitality, then you have to tell the story of our people, or somebody else is going to write it, and somebody else is going to tell it. And so for my ohana and I, we are a very hospitable family, whether a hotel or not. So to be a part of that type of environment, for me, it is educational. But she had shared that with me, because we love our Aina. And because as a people, we have had historical trauma in all of our children, from our grandparents, parents, young adults into the children of where we are from. They know their history. When the fires happened, the chains went up, the doors went up, the dogs came out because we were checking everybody at the ramp. And that’s not the way we were raised. Trauma had come back.
So when we’re talking about this not diversifying, man, she kind of shook me. Maybe you gotta get up 30,000 more feet in the air to be able to see this. Because I remember a situation that I was a part of in December about a contract that was hoping to come in April. And at the time, our emotions were so high that all we wanted to do was lock the gate, throw up, put a rock in the middle of the road, close the road. And these are real things because we were trying to protect all we had left. And then now to think that we had come through April, and I, personally because I was living in the hotel, and I was part of this environment. That is how I have provided a comfortable life for my family, and became a homeowner at a young age that I had to really look back on. And I said, wow, where is this? Where do I go now? I work in the world of conservation, and I can tell you that maybe I can afford a small car, a very standard car. Maybe not live as comfortably as I live now. And so I think, how do we diversify and I live? And I’m around movers, shakers, thinkers and visionaries that travel all over the continent and I think, how fast can we turn this boat to be able to diversify our economy? And when she said that to me, I thought, well, maybe we can’t change it as quickly. And so I posed this, and I threw it out to the owners of our hotel. I said, I’m going to first tell you something. I don’t want you to own land. You’re not going to own land, but I want you to think about those innovative ideas. Think how you become a Natural Resources Specialist, someone that can be stewards of their own land division like our elders had taught us. I said, don’t give me the answer. Let’s get to a table. Because how do we diversify? Does everything that is above us in the second rainiest place on earth have to come down or not?
Lynn Knight: I’m not saying, don’t try to diversify. Believe me, I’ve been all over the targets and trying to figure out how to help them happen faster. I did a paper recently called Barriers to Business Recovery, really studying what those other industries need. And I see ways, but I just don’t see it being fast. And it’s not a reason to leave your existing businesses behind while you try to diversify.
Kalikolehua Storer: I’ll add one more thing. I was part of a seminar, and I learned from our farmers in Maui. One of the elders, he’s very much a trailblazer. He said, the thing about it is that our community on Maui needs to get in with the local government. They need to lobby, because the amount of money that is allocated for farmers is less than a percent. And I thought, wow. It doesn’t just happen with diversifying and changing it, but it happens with what they said about building relationships with your local government and those that you can trust and help to change the trajectory of your economy.
Mark Bodenhammer: Great. Thank you. I want to turn the page and move more directly into business recovery and how we can support them, and what are the right steps for communities to take to support their business community right out of the chute right after an incident in those immediate hours and days, those are very complicated times. We’ve already talked about the emotional side of it. So let’s talk about what people can do in those first few days? You may not get something done, but you can plant a seed for something that can be productive later on. What are those immediate steps that you guys have seen that are successful?
Tim Zahner: I will talk from a business bureau standpoint. The first thing we say for the community and for the businesses is, don’t go on social media and pass bullshit around. Because we got a lot of that. We got a lot of people saying, oh, my gosh, such and such is gone. Oh, my gosh, this is good. And that’s a spread. Don’t want to use an analogy there, but it spread throughout the internet. You got to be clear, you had to be consistent, you got to be truthful because those things will keep echoing around for a very long time. The other thing was, you had to go back to people that were grieving and say, I know you’re hurt, and we’re going to console you. But you know, we’re going to eventually get through this. It’s a very cute, weird time there to be a business leader at that point.
Lynn Knight: Three things right off the bat. Ask them what help they need. Talk to the businesses. This is a very good role for the Chamber of Commerce to do a quick survey and find out what’s going on with the businesses. Where are they at? What do they need help with? Is it a new location? Is it having a place to work with air conditioning and internet access? Does it help prepare their loan application? Does it help pivot their business model?If they’ve just lost their customers, maybe they need help marketing online. So what kind of technical assistance do they need? And then the other thing, they always need money. So gathering up all the information about the funds that are available. Small Business Administration, of course, not everyone wants a loan. Are there grants? One of the things that was done really well in Maui is they quickly pulled together the Maui Bridge Grant, which provided money. There’s never enough money. But they did get some money from the state, and were able to deploy that. And I thought that was great. If we could refill that fund maybe with some philanthropic resources, I think that would be cool.
Kalikolehua Storer: I think from boots on the ground, what worked well is, and which at the time didn’t look like it was working well is all the different sectors. So things were happening simultaneously, but identifying in the areas that weren’t quite affected. So we have different neighborhoods. We had Napili, we had Kahana, we had Lahaina and so on. And so we identified the leaders that were in these different areas to serve as hubs, but also a voice for their community. Information could be funneled that direction and then be given back to the mayor. I definitely think that the advisory committee to the Mayor is an amazing thing because we have become, in Hawaii, we call it coconut wireless. We become the coconut wireless to him, the good, bad, ugly, insensitive, all the things. One thing we love about our Mayor is that he’s tough, and he can take all the lori comments all day long. And so we have that. And now we have someone in the business community. You have different people that can give information. But in the early set, it just didn’t seem like we were all getting along. Because transparently, we all weren’t getting along. Everything was called a secret meeting. So I think if you identify who these people are, and it’s obviously relationships that have to start now. Not just when a disaster happens. And then definitely comms. We need comms. So go get the right comms first. Don’t get a comms that you got for a discount, because that’s not going to work on a disaster. And then divide the comms up so that everybody can get back to whoever the conduit is to the main EOC.
Mark Bodenhammer: Great. Thank you. And our time is quickly expiring so we’re going to go into lightning round here. Talk about working with the government. What are some of the problems can be very complicated, but also, as we learn in every emergency, everybody working together is essential for getting out of it. What are your tips? How can you help people businesses navigate working with the government or your community facilitating a healthy, positive connection there?
Tim Zahner: You do the interactions. I would say real quickly. I’m just a moderator. I will say real quick. The government is slow on certain things. And so what’s nice is if you have those relationships with your government, they can offload it to the nonprofits and the other businesses to do it very quickly, and what they’re really good at. You mentioned the SBA, the support and things like that. You can help be a conduit for them, but they’re not as quick to do some great things.
Lynn Knight: Big part of what I do as a consultant in economic recovery is understand what all those programs are from the government and help the local leaders get full access to them, and what they can do with the resources. Like last Friday, I had a meeting with the US Department of Labor, making suggestions to them on how they can help the tourism industry. And so hiring a consultant is not a bad idea if they really know the federal programs.
Kalikolehua Storer: Start your relationships now definitely from government officials to be able to identify your community leaders that can go into these communities. Some of them are maybe not the best, but you can send them to identify the government officials. And I can just say this as a boots on the ground. The only person we really, really, really, really believed, I’m just going to say this was Tamara Paltin. She was our Councilwoman. And because we knew her in the community, we knew her as a lifeguard so we had a relationship with her. And so what she said, and she was very mindful. She had to make sure that her information came out correctly. But then eventually, over days, many of us know our Mayor way prior to him becoming the mayor. And for the record, he’s my uncle. So of course, I trusted him as well. But it’s because who I saw in the seat of government was also the person I saw at the seat in my grandma’s house. But not everybody knew that. So it’s really building relationships now and then. Also be discerning. You gotta be discerning. You have to make sure that your local government has a relationship with them before a disaster starts.
Mark Bodenhammer: Absolutely. That’s a great point. Let’s talk about those of us in tourism, hospitality communities. That moment when it’s time to let people back in so that they can help. We saw what happened in Maui. No visitors, the economy slows down. Talk a little bit about how you communicate that your community is open for business. And then what messaging can you use to help the visitors be good guests in your community to make sure they feel comfortable, to make sure they know what’s the appropriate way to approach people. Kalik, maybe you have the most direct recent experience.
Kalikolehua Storer: When we had decided to open for business, there was a video that had been put together. It was really playing on loop in all of the hotels. It was cultural leaders, it was business people, and they were just saying, be mindful of where you go and what to notice. It was a very nice message, and it was from people that were very reputable in our community. But the thing about it is, and I’ll say this because when I first saw the video, I was like, wow, where’s our people from Lahaina. But now looking forward a year later, it was those that were waiting in the wings to help. How can I help? I didn’t understand that because I thought all the messages from Lahaina should come from Lahaina, but we weren’t emotionally in the right place. And I didn’t know that until this video. Now, I watch the video and I go, we need a 2.0 version. Because whoever had written the script for that video didn’t say, no, we don’t want you. Don’t come. It was very graceful, it was very open. But also to be very, very mindful. The message came from all businesses, and I just thought, whoever had done that was very thoughtful of everyone.
Tim Zahner: And they call it permission to travel, right? Because all these people, they’re your biggest fans. They’ve come here, they’ve been to your destination. They have their honeymoon there. But now they’re scared. They don’t know how to help. And so you have to give people permission to travel. But then you also have to say, this is how you can help us. And I know Maui had similar issues that we did. People came up here to go see the burn, and we sent very strongly worded letters to the tour companies like, you’ll never work in wine country again if I see another one of your buses up there. And the people that were ready to be mindful travelers, we kind of explained, right? Go, go. Support this business because this business isn’t ready for you. And people want to help. People love Maui. People love Sinema.
Mark Bodenhammer: A couple of minutes left here. I want to just go through, we don’t choose emergency recovery work. It comes and finds us in the community that we’re in. What’s something that you wish you knew before you started working on emergency recovery?
Kalikolehua Storer: 25 hours in a day. What I wish I knew is that the things that are done previous, and this is not our first fire. But I really, really, really, really, really, really wish that the recommendations that were made prior recovery, I wouldn’t sign up for recovery work. It came to find us. The goal is to do and take the 25th hour that doesn’t really exist. Be wise, sit there and think about FAR, WHY, DEEP. So what I wish I learned is, I wish I prepared for this. Maybe this is my new calling. I don’t know. Obviously, you guys are all still here. It chases you down for however long.
Mark Bodenhammer: Anything to add to something you wish you knew before?
Tim Zahner: Well on the tourism side, we have the ability to sell this place as an amazing place to come visit. You can also turn that around and use the power of marketing and essentially propaganda to help people and to lift them up. And it took us a couple days to understand that we had to do that. So we turn around and say, yes, we’re Sonoma County. We’re amazing. Let’s use what we do, and do it. And I wish I had done that quicker in 17.
Lynn Knight: One of the first things I do in going into any community besides looking at their data is looking at who’s doing what. Because it takes all of us. It takes all of us to make a recovery. There are no heroes after the disaster itself. We all have a role to play. So the more we can spread the work and make plans to do it together, go in the same direction, that to me is the most important. So many community leaders burn out, and you don’t want that. You want to spread the work.
Mark Bodenhammer: Time for one more question, and I’m going to have Kaliko to address this. What’s something that you’ve seen, because you’ve been through this so recently, something you’ve seen that inspired you to keep going, or made you feel proud of the recovery efforts you’ve been working on?
Kalikolehua Storer: What I’m very proud of is our children. I see a lot more land based programs, and that really ignites me because it teaches our children. I hope I don’t offend anybody, but you don’t always need technology to grow your food. You don’t always need that type of technology to make you mentally well. As a culture, whether you believe in the kumulipo or you believe in the Bible, as human beings, we were left to be stewards. And it’s exciting to see on the shoreline that all of our voyaging canoes come to be a classroom. It’s exciting when I have the opportunity to receive childrens by the bus loads to teach them about their watershed, about the one of the rainiest places on earth, and that the kupuna up there in that forest are more alive than ever. They’re just needing conduits. And those conduits are us. And so it is exciting, it’s inspiring. And we will do this until every child recognizes that the more trees they plant, the farther down the rain will come.
Mark Bodenhammer: Beautiful. Thank you. Let’s give them a round of applause.
