Day 3: WORKSHOP: Paying It Forward: Creating a Community of Practice for Long-Term Fire Recovery
“Trust is so important to building a community of practice. And part of that trust comes from understanding where people are and where they stand.” —Michael McCormick
“Once the scene is stabilized and we start to clean things up, and then there comes a point where we start rebuilding things… and that’s when the long-term recovery begins.” —Matt McRae
“There are simultaneous disasters occurring at the same time everywhere, and you never know what’s going to hit you at that time, and you have to be prepared for it all. Anything and everything that could come, you have to be ready for.” —Heather Buch
2024 WILDFIRE LEADERSHIP SUMMIT
Building a strong, collaborative community of practice could be a game-changer for long-term disaster recovery efforts. By connecting experts, local leaders, and frontline responders, this type of network has the potential to streamline resource-sharing, accelerate rebuilding timelines, and empower communities to bounce back stronger after catastrophic events. Establishing these vital peer-to-peer connections is crucial, especially as communities increasingly face the compounding challenges of climate change.
Facilitating the discussion are Farallon Strategies President Michael McCormick, Lane County District 5 Commissioner Heather Buch, and Lane County’s Long-Term Recovery Manager Matt McRae
The workshop covered a wide range of topics, from the differences between emergency response and long-term community development to the need for better resource-sharing and peer-to-peer mentorship. Participants also engaged in interactive exercises and a lively Q&A session, underscoring the hunger for this type of collaborative network.
Don’t miss your chance to learn their strategies and get inspired to make a difference in your community. Listen now to the full discussion.
Highlights:
- 00:21 Reducing Risk and Recovering Better
- 04:04 Workshop: Tracing Back Connections
- 08:33 Response vs Recovery
- 12:33 Competing Issues at Play
- 19:30 What Makes a Production Network Possible
- 21:08 Workshop: Finding Value in Need
- 23:18 Q&A
Twitter:
Discover lots of great ideas on how to better support each other through the long haul of recovery in this episode as Farallon Strategies’ President Michael McCormick and Lane County’s Matt McRae and Heather Buch lead a thought-provoking workshop and share insights about recovering better. #Recover #Rebuild #Reimagine #podcast #wildfire #DisasterRecovery #AfterTheFire #2024WildfireLeadershipSummit #CommunityOfPractice #LongTermRecovery #MutualAid #DisasterResilience #EmergencyManagement #LocalGovernment #CommunityDevelopment #CollaborativeNetworks #DisasterPreparedness
Quotes:
01:13 “Trust is so important to building a community of practice. And part of that trust comes from understanding where people are and where they stand.” —Michael McCormick
09:22 “Once the scene is stabilized and we start to clean things up, and then there comes a point where we start rebuilding things… and that’s when the long-term recovery begins.” —Matt McRae
17:45 “There are simultaneous disasters occurring at the same time everywhere, and you never know what’s going to hit you at that time, and you have to be prepared for it all. Anything and everything that could come, you have to be ready for.” —Heather Buch
22:34 “There is great community in supporting individual communities that are that are going through disasters.” —Michael McCormick
24:25 “This can’t be a movement unless we create space for a larger group of people to be able to collectively go in and help.” —Heather Buch
Meet Michael McCormick, President, Farallon Strategies
Michael McCormick, AICP, is the Partnerships Lead, Founder, and President of Farallon Strategies, LLC, a California-based advisory, policy, and management consulting firm focused on climate change solutions and community resilience.
With experience across local, regional, state, and federal levels, as well as in non-profit, business, and government sectors, Michael leverages his diverse background to create interconnected governance strategies. He leads various initiatives, including work with the CSU Chancellor’s Office, the California Resilience Partnership, and CivicWell, and serves as an advisor and board member for multiple organizations.
Michael also teaches climate change, land use, and resilience at UC Davis and has held significant roles in local planning, consulting, and government, including serving in Governor Brown’s Office and the White House Council on Environmental Quality.
Connect with Farallon Strategies:
- Website: https://farallonstrategies.com/
Meet Heather Buch, Commissioner, District 5, Lane County
Heather Buch is a dedicated public servant currently serving as a County Commissioner for Lane County, Oregon, since 2019. She has been instrumental in leading the county through significant challenges, including the COVID-19 pandemic and the Holiday Farm Fire. Heather’s leadership extends to securing critical funding for disaster recovery and advocating for affordable housing. She holds a bachelor’s degree from Seattle University and has a background in real estate and non-profit work. Heather is also actively involved in various regional and national committees, focusing on transportation and community development.
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/heatherbuch/
Meet Matt McRae, Long Term Recovery Manager, Lane County
Matt McRae is the Long Term Disaster Recovery Manager at Lane County Government in Eugene, Oregon. In this role, he oversees the planning and implementation of recovery strategies to help the community rebuild and recover from disasters. His work involves coordinating with various stakeholders, managing resources, and ensuring that recovery efforts are efficient and effective. Matt’s expertise in disaster management and his commitment to community resilience make him a key figure in Lane County’s efforts to mitigate the impacts of natural and man-made disasters.
Transcription:
Michael McCormick: Great to see you. I’m Michael McCormick. This is my first After The Fire. I don’t know what it implies when she was saying that people that don’t get invited don’t belong here, because I got an invite about a week and a half ago. So maybe there was a spot, maybe somebody canceled that was better than me. I’m not sure, but I’ve been excited to be part of this team to talk about a potential community of practice for long term recovery. Why am I here? My team at Farallon Strategies, we help build communities of practices. I’ve been a part of building them for almost 20 years now, mainly in the climate adaptation and resilience space, where we’re really taking that multi decadal view on how we reduce risk and do recovery better. I support and build climate adaptation collaboratives and resilience collaboratives that basically bring people together in a container of trust. We’ll talk a little bit about that today, because trust is so important to building a community of practice. And part of that trust comes from understanding where people are, where they stand. And I have been so pleased and honored to see the work this week, the past couple of days, talking with all of you, and how different of a space this has been than most spaces I’ve been in the disaster recovery world.
I did eight years in the Governor’s Office of Planning and Research where I was supposed to do long range land use planning. But ultimately got pulled into many of the fire recovery efforts from 2011 to 2018. I also went to Washington, DC, worked in the Obama administration, working on long range adaptation planning, and ultimately spent half of my time on disasters. And so much of our capacity as communities to think about the future is pulled into the disaster dynamic, and really takes away our abilities to think about the future. So part of this intentionality around thinking long range recovery planning is we don’t think about that enough. Sometimes, it gets a short shrift. And when the funding and the resources leave after a couple of years, what is left the communities need to really help themselves rebuild. And sometimes, they don’t know who to reach out to. They don’t have those connections that they need to build to rebuild efficiently, effectively. They don’t have the access to the resources and the funding. And so just echoing many of Jen’s introductory comments here. I’m really excited to be joined by Matt and Heather here today, and we can go to the next one. We’re going to be using this survey tool. It’s the primary tool we’re going to use today, because we’re got about 22 minutes left. We are going to do a little bit of talking at the tables.
There’s a one sheet of paper on the table, should be right on the top. So we’re going to use that too. But if you haven’t used a Mentimeter before, pull out your phone. Take a picture of this, push on the little icon that pops up, and it’ll take you directly to our live polling software. We want to get a read on where people are. First, we’re going to do a little bit of a fun exercise. We’ll put up this QR code in another minute, though. So if we can go to the next slide, we want to do a fun exercise around how we got here. Jennifer Gray Thompson, let’s just talk about the Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon. Jennifer Gray Thompson, she didn’t see this before today. So look, we are all connected to her through this work. And this is one of the interesting challenges of our community of practice for long term recovery. They are connected to individual people that hold the resources, the connections and the relationships. And it really is about, who do you know? Who can you call? How do you access things really, really quickly? Immediately following a disaster. But also when you need to move forward independently after those significant resources leave post disaster. So let’s go to the next slide. We want to do a quick tabletop exercise. I’m going to leave this up if you haven’t looked here.
Just take a minute and talk with your friends at your tables, your colleagues at the table about how you got here. How do you know Jennifer? Because this is a great way to understand why we are connected the way we are in this work that we do. Just take a minute. Everybody’s so excited to talk about how they know Jennifer. I love it. Come on back everybody. If you can hear me, raise your hand. If you can hear me, raise your hand. Who else is taught in elementary school? Everybody should have this up on their screen. They should have the software pulled up and connected on their devices. If you don’t, raise your hand. Does anybody need some help with this? It’s okay to acknowledge if you need help with it too. I think we got a few last snaps. Let’s go to the next slide. So we’re going to talk a little bit about how many after the fires you’ve attended in which you probably got this information from talking with each other. Little test poll here. I was the first response, I wanted to make sure it worked. All right, look at all the first folks. This is great. We’ve got some long timers here. There were pre-after the fire convenings. Those count too. If you were part of some of those pre-convenings that weren’t titled as such, we got one person. Hopefully, at least Jennifer voted for that one. This gives us a good feel.
There’s a good chunk of people that are here the first time, and that’s. It’s activating new relationships. Unfortunately, it may be driven because of our disaster dynamic, particularly our friends from Hawaii are here. Maybe their first time as well. But I’m certainly in that category. Let’s go to the next one. What sector are you in? And this is a free response, so you’ll have three different options. You can write a one word answer, and we’re going to build a word cloud about it. This will help Jennifer also understand a little bit of who the heck is here. No, it’s a great way to just get a feel for who’s here, what you do on a day to day basis, how you’re connected to the space this week, emergency management, disaster recovery, government, the big G entrepreneurship. The entrepreneurial spirit in a post-disaster environment is great. I know this is so cool. I love word clouds. This is all about self labeling. How do you see yourself in space? We have a lot of government resilience, nonprofit recovery folks, certainly a number of folks in finance and housing capacity building, disaster recovery consulting. This is really helpful. How y’all feeling about this? Are you surprised? Does this make sense? Nod, if it makes sense. Okay, that’s good. That’s great. All right. Well, let’s move forward to our next slide.
Next thing we’re going to talk about is, how far are you in your recovery journey? I don’t think I clicked the button that says, you can click multiple buttons, because that’s an unfortunate reality in long term recoveries. Oftentimes, you’re recovering from multiple events at the same time within a decade. Some are not applicable. Maybe one or two people that are not applicable, is it because you’re working to support those activities and you’re not directly affected? Or you’re supporting, but you’re not directly affected? Four plus years, when we start thinking about anything beyond two or three years, that is long term recovery. Two years is pretty much when things start closing down except in some of the most extreme events. And look at that, look how many of us are involved in long term recovery. Good. Let’s go to the next slide. I’m going to introduce, or Matt is going to introduce himself very briefly, and introduce Commissioner Buch as well to make a few comments about why Lane County is so interested in this discussion. I think it’s a great story to ground us in why this discussion is happening today. Matt?
Matt McRae: Thank you, Michael. I’ll try to be very quick. I just want to start by thanking Jennifer for the work that she does to support us all, thank you, and for making space for this conversation here. I also want to acknowledge the Maui contingent, and just so inspired by the wholeness with which you all approach recovery. It’s really moving to me. I also have a sense for all the things that you had to leave and that are going on right now while you’re here, and taking that break is really hard. I found it to be really hard, so appreciate the sacrifice. I want to very briefly touch on response versus recovery. We have a bunch of first responders here who are on a scene, and they’re on the scene until the scene is stabilized and everybody’s safe. And it’s really after that that we start into recovery. Once the scene is stabilized and we start to clean things up, and then there comes a point where we start rebuilding things. And at that point, first responders have gone home, largely, because they have to be prepared for the next thing that’s coming. And that’s when the long term recovery begins. And from my perspective, long term recovery is a lot more like development. Like community development on steroids than it is emergency management. I work very closely with our emergency manager in Lane County, and I didn’t introduce myself, did I?
I’m sorry. I work in Lane County, which is Oregon, north of here. About 8 hours by car. Lane County contains the town of Eugene, and I’m working to support wildfire recovery up the McKenzie River. I’ve been doing that job for about three and a half years now. My apologies. I was in this position working on recovery as the Recovery Manager for Lane County. I started to reach out, for example, to try and see what other people have done. And again, After The Fire being a tremendous resource as a point of contact. But when we start needing other templates of assessments, housing assessments, behavioral health assessments, there’s a whole host of things that, as a recovery manager, a person steps into. And certainly, these things haven’t been done before. But there was no centralized place where there were good examples that lived. I could spend a bunch of time on the internet scouring and finding some examples, but I didn’t know whether they were good examples or really bad examples. And in the middle of recovery, at the end of year, the last thing you want to do is scour the internet because there’s so much stuff to do. So much work to be done. It was really that space that drove me into a conversation with Jennifer and Michael about, can we fill that space? What can we do so that we can better support each other? And I just want to call out, there are definitely resources. There are peer network resources for emergency managers. They’re very robust. There’s a tremendous resource for first responders to share best practices and get good at what they’re doing, but it doesn’t exist on the recovery front. FEMA, as many of you may know, has written a book on recovery.
But as many of you also know, they’re typically gone by about month 18. Is this your experience as well? By month 18, the last person from FEMA had left our stage. Their recovery plan, I think, is based on short term recovery, not the long term recovery that we’re talking about today. All I wanted to do is just share my experience as somebody working in a small county government that’s trying to figure out how to do this job. I had never done recovery before. And certainly, we have examples from Florida and Texas who can inform this work. But we’re not as methodical about it as we could be. I feel like somebody who has wandered through that space before. There’s a lot of opportunity for us to get better at supporting each other so that we can all do this job better. Thanks, Michael. Then I’ll just very quickly introduce Commissioner Heather Buch, who is one of five commissioners for Lane County. She represents the territory that was affected by the holiday firm fire, and has been an immense champion for the people that she represents. Thank you Commissioner.
Heather Buch: Thank you Matt. Good morning, friends. I feel like I’ve found my element here in an unfortunate series of events. When the Labor Day fires of 2020 hit Oregon, I was just in my second year as a county commissioner. They call them supervisors here in California, and I know they call them yet another name in Hawaii. I happen to have been chair of our board that year. Already deep into covid response, and worked when the fires hit later in September. I worked with two emergency management agencies and Incident Command teams simultaneously, trying to get as much information out to the public as humanly possible. And emergency management wasn’t my background. My personal professional background was housing and affordable homes for the most vulnerable in our community. And working with our largest social service agency in the area. So I was really new to know what it meant to be part of the emergency management team and first responder team in our community. Our fire was 170,000 acres. And at the time, I knew that if it had been the only fire, it would have been national news, except for the fact that all of Oregon had these fires. And in fact, all of the West Coast had that fire activity that year at the same time. So there were competing issues at play. And what I would have given for a peer who had been through a fire affected community once before to be able to be a mentor or a sponsor at the time, it would have changed the game. And instead, there were several of us commissioners that we’re all experiencing the same thing for the first time, trying to work through what it meant to be responding to a fire. Let alone long term recovery.
And what that expectation really went would be, in Oregon, we excel at responding to initial attacks. We’re very, very good with that, but we know nothing about recovery until now. We’re putting the plane together while we’re flying. I now understand. After four years of working in recovery, there is a somewhat very predictable series of events that as an elected and as staff that you will be hit with. I happened to be vacationing in Oahu when the Maui fires hit. I instantly knew exactly what would probably come their way in the next one month, three months, six months, and year after. And it saddened me. I would not have otherwise known that there was association like this, except through fire recovery and through my staff. Learning about After The Fire a couple of months ago, that shouldn’t and doesn’t need to be our future. We can be here for other communities in the future. I would have loved to have been given a heads up about what it meant to deal with all the donations and all that that entails. That is a whole system in and sub of itself. What does it mean to deal with FEMA’s direct housing mission? That was a whole nother mess that we had to deal with.
What it meant to our landfill space and hazmat cleanup in Oregon, our Department of Transportation was tasked with cleaning up these properties, and it took a course of years. Our Department of Transportation never, ever done anything like that before. So of course, there were problems with that as well. And now, long term housing and what it means to rebuild in a state where land use codes are extremely tight, and people’s homes that they had before would never qualify for being built in today. Let alone the cost of trying to rebuild them.My community was all unincorporated. So because there was no city, I was effectively their mayor, city council. Everything all wrapped into one. Some help and resources would have really changed the game. And unfortunately, we know that that was a combination of emergencies at the same time.
And when we think of a wildfire, sometimes we think of one fire here. And then a couple months, another one, and another one around the world. But in fact, there are simultaneous disasters occurring at the same time everywhere. You never know what’s going to hit you at that time. You have to be prepared for it all. I didn’t know that this is what I was signing up for when I ran for office. But when you do, I now have learned. When you sign up for it, you sign up for anything. Everything that could come, you have to be ready. That’s part of my story about coming here and meeting many of you today. I would love to remain connected. But if we could formalize it in a way where you knew for sure that this person had that experience and I could reach out, or another staff member in another location could reach out and be a mentor, I think we could speed up recovery in a big way. Recovery takes a long time. It takes generations to actually build a community. And yet, many of the expectations are, we need to rebuild that community like that in order for people to feel healed and back to their normal life. And that is not a natural way of rebuilding or building a community. And so there’s a dynamic that we need to really maintain with a community and their relationship. Talking with them about managing expectations. That’s gotta be one of the hardest lessons I’ve learned as commissioner in the aftermath of wildfire. Thank you.
Michael McCormick: Thanks, Commissioner. We just have a couple of minutes left, and I think one of the things that I wanted to talk a little bit about is, what makes a production network possible? This is super wonky, so I’m not gonna go deep on this. But there are some core things we need to do as a community practice to create some stability, to allow efficiency to occur. One of them that we talked about a little bit earlier was connectivity, and so much of that happens in venues and dynamics like this. And certainly, there’s a number of individuals in the space that are bringing folks together through that connectivity alignment as well. You can be connected and misaligned, and that can be challenging to work through issues together. Once you’re connected and trusting each other, working through alignment and identifying opportunities to really empower each other to do better. And then the last stage of that is really production. And this was produced for the American Society of Adaptation professionals. My colleague Beth Gibbons couldn’t be here today. But one of the things she’s done for the adaptation, climate adaptation community of practice is to really try to create an understanding of what makes a very efficient community of practice, so folks can move forward with really hard work, build trust and build connections along the way. Because in the end, we’re all humans in space. We’re all people. We need love, we need care. And it’s been great to see that in this event, and love to build that into the work that happens in the future.
I’m not going to stick to this, but this will be some of the things that we’ll talk about for those of you that are interested in continuing this conversation. So if we go to the next slide, one of the things we do is have the sheet of paper on the table, out of time to actually do our breakout groups because there’s folks that need to hop on a bus here in a little bit. But one of the things we really wanted to dig into is, how could this community of practice serve all of you? Do you see value in it? Do you see a connection to that need? And particularly, are there those of you that would like to engage with us in the future? There’s been a small group working to think through this. We have a position paper that we’re building out. And hopefully, I would like to share that with additional funders. We have shared this concept with a number of funders at the national level, and there is interest in supporting something like this. So if we can get something moving, it really creates a much more stable foundation to continue these conversations, so that individual champions don’t have to hold this as a single person. It can be built into an ongoing community of practice.
So if you go to the next slide, if you want to contact me, I’m going to cue those. All those folks up, we’re going to talk about as a small group. We’d love to have a follow up conversation about this. In a few weeks, we’ll share the paper with folks that are interested in engaging with us, further editing that, modifying that. And thinking about how we can move forward on this concept. Obviously, use this email as well to share concerns or things where, hey, this is already happening somewhere else. We really want to know that, because we do not want to be recreating this wheel. We would want to do something that’s really helpful to the folks out there. I think there’s the proverb that, in order to take care of others, you must take care of yourself. And there is great community in supporting individual communities that are going through disasters, and there isn’t the community for the community of practitioners that are supporting those communities. It is a multi layered cake. But really, it is about making it easier. Faster and faster, more efficient and a more trust based support process for long term disaster recovery. Super glad that you’re all here. And if you do feel free time today and you’d like to go through these sheets that are on the paper on the table, please do and be happy to collect those later. Again, email me with any questions, thoughts, concerns or excitement about this, and we’ll be following up with those that connect with us. Jen, any last comments on that?
Jennifer Gray Thompson: Anybody have any questions or something you would like to see in mutual aid? Obviously, firefighters and police do it great, so they already know. But does anybody else have any questions or comments? Comments are good. Oh. Jim Alvey, please say your name and your organization.
Jim Alvey: I am in the community of long term recovery groups now. I’m a Good360, and I heard the need for donations management expressed. I just wish that we had been connected then, but we will be connected through this. We’re definitely going to participate.
Jennifer Gray Thompson: Also a good lesson for me is to note that I went into Marion County in 2021, sorry, Miss Lane County, same fires, and so I’m always learning and listening. And so my apologies to you, because I focused on the neighboring county, but I really needed to look at it more holistically from all of the counties. Because then, we would have already been best friends. So okay, any other questions or comments. Go ahead.
Heather Buch: You have done such an enormous amount of work here and with the amount of fires that are going on, let alone other disasters that occur. This can’t be a movement unless we create space for a larger group of people to be able to collectively go in and help.
Jennifer Gray Thompson: I totally agree. I know this is true. Because when I look at this time of year, especially at the fires, I start counting structures, and then I start thinking about workflow. And then I started thinking about my travel schedule, and all of that. I don’t want any of that to be in the consideration. I wanted to just go. Who needs to go? Let’s send those people.
Jessica Pyke: My name is Jessica Pyke. I’m in Lake County. So we met many years ago before After The Fire when it was Rebuild NorthBay. But actually before the 2017 fires and 2015, kind of all of this started. This was the very beginning for most of us. And then Sunday, we had our most recent fire and lost 30 more structures. I do want to say that collectively, we’ve learned a tremendous amount, and none of us are in the same place that we were in the beginning. There’s so much progress for us to continue to make. So definitely count me in.
Jennifer Gray Thompson: So true. Be much more efficient and effective. And do we have any other counselors or supervisors? I see you, but I just was trying not to put you on the spot. Tamara, hold on one moment.
Tamara Paltin: Thank you. My name is Tamara Paltin. I’m a council member from West Maui. I guess my question would be like in the previous mutual aid section. You said about doing the paperwork on the back end. And if there could be pre position contracts or paperwork on the front end about how the compensation works and things like that, because you kind of want to know going in instead of getting a bill at the back end, or something like that.
Jennifer Gray Thompson: To be clear, this isn’t something that would end up charging communities. I don’t believe in that. That’s not going to happen. I will not participate in that model, quite frankly. It should come from larger associations. The private sector, all of the contractors that bid on this work, but never get to decide. They don’t get a say, and they don’t get to be in the room. I’m very clear about that. And you know what? Contractors don’t mind because they know what it is that we do. I’ve been doing scope of work for Fannie Mae for six, almost seven years. Not one time have they ever interfered with my mission or how I do it. They just ask for my findings. And so the way that we would set it up so that it would be funded, we could immediately deploy. I don’t know, another island community, something like that. And that you would know that not only would there not be a bill for that community later, but that you also would not be worried about your own financial stability in order to do it. Because a lot of our fire survivors who do stand up to do the most work, they’re not the wealthiest people. I’m not. I just live in a normal little home. I drive a truck, I got a mortgage, I got student loans. All of those things are normal and expected. It’s a good question. Thank you for clarifying that absolutely. Yeah. Anything else? Yeah. Supervisor Elect.
Rebecca Hermosillo: Morning, I think highlighting not just the professional society in support, but also your elected officials. When Maui had their fires, I reached out to their member of Congress to make sure that her staff knew the type of casework that was going to come into their office. Be it the Department of State, USCIS, the post office. Making sure that they were prepared for the type of work that was going to be coming. And then how we handled being in the community at the evacuation centers, connecting with stakeholders to see what the need is in the community. So everybody has a different experience at the government level, so make sure that you’re sharing that as well.
Jennifer Gray Thompson: We can list the states that have done it. What are the components? An island component is a different component. And that’s why before we go, we actually pull all the demographics we want to know. We learn as much as we can before that it’s never enough, but we do. But that way, we can deploy it. Paul, he was being quiet, but that’s fine. He’s probably been to most megafires. How he gets caught so much of this is like, oh, I know you. You know me. Now we’ve done this, and I’m going to give you that name. How I broke through into the Maui fires was because Senator Feinstein was still alive, and I had been working with her staff for years. And so Hirono staff called her, and they said, who do we talk to? And on August 10, Senator Hirono senior staff asked me to get on a Zoom. And I did. And then that way, at least it’s also vetted. It’s got to be vetted. On August 9, that contractors and developers, not all, I’m not distant contractors. We’re swimming across the ocean, for sure, trying to get there to do it. We need something that also helps you vet who’s going to show up immediately. So it has to be consistent. You can’t just show up once. I’ve been to Maui five times already. Paul’s been six times. He just got back last week. You have to be able to listen. Not only what’s around the corner, but the sensitivity of what happens first. Means that firebrain, as we call it.
The first year that we have to say, if you ask five times, we don’t care. You can ask seven times. You don’t have to remember everything from that one meeting that we had when there were other things going on. And we are also people who understand very clearly that you often, like Supervisor Goss here from Plumas County. I met him when the fire was still raging, Dixie fire, 105 days. That was ridiculous, but it was a monster. And four times, it ran at Taylorsville where his home is. He lost his pharmacy. It also had to be the way that I approached, that I went into and met him for the first day. Had to work for him, and that’s on me to figure that out. I lost my train of thought around that. But it’s got to be multifaceted trauma informed. Really important and full of grace at every single step. And that’s why this whole summit is sort of put together with the same heart that you’re witnessing over the last three days, including today. This is how we do it. This is how I believe in it. I’m not right about everything, sorry, right about this, though. Do you know how to approach it? Zeke’s gonna say something, and then I think we’re probably just about ready to go to the next one.
Zeke Kalua: Even message the shirt. Hello, my name is Zeke Kalua. Executive Assistant in the office of the Mayor, county of Maui. Oregon, were kind of collected already because you sent us a gift early on. His name is Jeff Gilbert. He’s a Regional Emergency Coordinator for the office of resilience and emergency management. He actually assisted the State Department of Human Services to write a federal grant that only the state could qualify with. Provided funding for tents and resources that came directly from Oregon State, that were then able to be set up and operated by a nonprofit in Kahului Maui to help immediately shelter some of the unsheltered in our community. So I just wanted to give Jeff a shout out and say that resources like that would have been something we may have found out at some point in the process, but it was very fast assistance that was able to go and help us provide one more resource that may have taken us a lot longer to source out. So as far as establishing a connection, in theory, we’re already connected to you folks. So thank you so much.
Michael McCormick: I would love to share that there are 8 people that have already emailed to be in this follow up discussion. Thank you all so much for your commitment, and looking forward to what will follow up in the next couple of weeks on next steps. Thanks.