DAY 3! From Flames to Futures: Navigating Wildfire Leadership with Hope and Resilience with Jennifer Gray Thompson
“It’s not enough just to give, you have to always receive as well with the same grace and gratitude and aloha.” —Jennifer Gray Thompson
“Aloha is boundless, and we know that Aloha reaches all shores and all states. Even in the most trying of times together, we are one team.” —Mahina Martin
2024 WILDFIRE LEADERSHIP SUMMIT
Welcome to the final day of the 2024 Wildfire Leadership Summit. We’re so glad you could join us for this last session— it’s been an incredible few days filled with insightful discussions, powerful presentations, and meaningful connections.
Today, we have an exciting lineup of speakers and workshops that are sure to leave you feeling inspired and empowered in your important work. This community of wildfire leaders is truly special, and we are honored that we get to learn from each other one last time.
With that, let’s get started on an amazing final day as Jennifer shares the importance of reciprocal care and community support, the need to create a formalized support system and database for disaster recovery experts, the challenges of funding long-term recovery efforts, and the goal of making it easier for communities to access the help they need during disaster recovery.
Highlights:
- 00:45 Maui One Year Later
- 07:46 Listen to Your Music
- 11:54 The Voice of the Future
- 18:46 Give and Learn to Receive
- 23:39 A Path Forward
- 27:10 Servant Leader, Not a Hero
Twitter:
Welcome to Day 3! Today, we’re diving deep into how communities can support each other through long-term rebuilding with @jengraythompson. #Recover #Rebuild #Reimagine #podcast #wildfire #DisasterRecovery #AfterTheFire #2024WildfireLeadershipSummit #Day3 #MauiFireRecovery #CommunityResilience #HealingThrough Tradition #DisasterRecoveryNetwork #LongTermRecovery #ServantLeadership
Quotes:
13:20 “Aloha is boundless, and we know that Aloha reaches all shores and all states. Even in the most trying of times together, we are one team.” —Mahina Martin
19:25 “It’s not enough just to give, you have to always receive as well with the same grace and gratitude and aloha.” —Jennifer Gray Thompson
28:14 “In this work, a lot of people end up blowing up their financial lives because they’ll do anything they have to in order to help the people of their community because they love their community.” —Jennifer Gray Thompson
28:53 “You cannot ask us to solve the hardest problems and then to suffer the most alongside of it. It is unfair and unkind.”
Meet Jennifer Gray Thompson, MPA, Founder & CEO of After the Fire USA
Jennifer Gray Thompson, named one of Forbes’ “50 over 50” IMPACT Leaders in 2022, has led Rebuild North Bay Foundation since January 2018, transforming it into a national leader in megafire recovery. A lifelong Sonoma Valley resident, she holds a master’s degree in Public Administration from USC and has worked for the Sonoma County Board of Supervisors. Post-2017 North Bay fires, she became Executive Director of RNBF, which aids wildfire-affected communities across the American West. As CEO, she developed the Wildfire Resiliency Network and Survivor Deployment Model, advocated for federal policies, and hosted national Wildfire Leadership summits. Jennifer also created the “How to Disaster” podcast and serves on boards supporting Latino communities and first responders’ mental health.
Connect with After The Fire USA:
- Website: https://afterthefireusa.org/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AfterTheFireUSA
- X: https://twitter.com/AfterTheFireUSA
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/afterthefireusa/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/atf3r
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCuTefxZgWUJkDVoZGZQpxgQ
Meet Mahina Martin, Director of Public Affairs, Maui
Mahina Martin is the Director of Public Affairs for the County of Maui in Hawaii. In this role, she leads the county’s public outreach and communication efforts, particularly during times of crisis and disaster recovery. Mahina played a key leadership role in coordinating Maui’s remembrance and healing activities for the one-year anniversary of the devastating West Maui fires in 2022. Through her work, Mahina has demonstrated a deep commitment to supporting her community and upholding the cultural values of aloha and resilience in the face of adversity. Her collaborative approach and ability to bring people together have been instrumental in Maui’s recovery efforts.
Transcription:
Jennifer Gray Thompson: So we’re going to start off today, something a little bit unscheduled. Our community from our ohana from Maui. Come on up Mahina. They would like to do a very short presentation, and I don’t want to contextualize. I would like you to do that, if that’s okay. Is that okay?
Mahina Martin: Thank you. Jennifer. Aloha, and good morning. I’m Mahina Martin for the county of Maui. I’m the Director of Public Affairs. In our style, in our custom, we always bring gifts with us. So you spent the last few days learning a whole bunch of things about Maui, Hawaii’s culture and our style. So these are gifts that we want to share with some of you. We didn’t bring a hundred of them, so our Mayor has randomly picked some names on the list. Sorry Maui people, you do not get them. But before we distribute them, we’d like to tell you what’s behind the enclosures in the NH bag. So I’m going to share really quickly about something that Maui did in our fire.
One year has since passed on August 8, it was just last month. And so in our unique way, when you deal with public affairs, these are the people who support operations by deliberately being placed to help that track of recovery and healing, and dealing with the response in our community. So for us, one year later, it was called Kuhinia Maui, and that name was taken from an old chant that speaks proudly of our island Maui. We started though two weeks before the one year anniversary, strategically to allow for the community and survivors to begin their healing processes, and deal with the anxiety that was growing as we all knew we were approaching the one year anniversary. This came as an idea from two members from the Mayor’s advisory committee who felt strongly that the media was carrying a lot of photos of their town. And yet, they only had limited and restricted access. So for three days in July, we offered five chartered rides. Almost 600 survivors took us up on our offer. They came on a ride. Every bus started with a prayer from a local pastor of West Maui in that area, in that district, and they went on a very short one hour drive through their town. It profoundly began the healing process. It was very traumatic for many as they boarded. As they came on. We had over 700 registers. We had 590 that showed up. So there were still some that were trying to deal with whether or not they would go.
In the week of the Kuhinia Maui remembrance week actually, starting on August 8, we were a little ambitious. You don’t have to do this, but we did four days of nine community gatherings. We specifically said gatherings and not special events. It was important for us as a team in the administration under the guidance of the Mayor’s Advisory Committee, as well as the Mayor himself, that we help our people not be home alone. It was too traumatic for folks not to be among each other. That our own team of supporters, workers, and even our federal state agency and nonprofit supporters wanted to be among each other. So we ran four days of nine events with over 600 volunteers. Lots of help from resorts, airlines that flew in, some special performers and restaurants and businesses. We fed thousands throughout the four days. We had an area called the garden in the prime area where we held most of our gatherings. This was set up to look like this, and that furniture was brought in from the council for Native Hawaiian Advancement. These furniture pieces went to survivors. At the end, they could take it home if they wanted to. But this was a particular area set aside where all our crisis counselors were located.
So when the bus tours came in upon completion, all riders were dropped off at the gate of this garden. We call it the garden. And through this, they could also hang out, have some refreshments, and counselors were available for them. Our first event on August 8 started in the morning. All of these events are community inspired and done with aloha, run by all volunteers and our small team. Hawaii has a great tradition, I guess, our custom too. We call it the paddle out. And the community felt that it wanted to paddle out, get on the ocean. The other part of our world is on the water. So we had a tremendous turnout. At the top right photo, you’ll see two voyaging canoes, Hokule’a. You probably hear about it, our voyaging canoe. You heard Archie Kalepa speak about it earlier, the other day. As well as Mo’okiha, which is Maui’s voyaging canoe. They’re part of the armada on the water. Quite a day. We celebrated our love of kupuna, our elders, our seniors. And felt that they should have a special gathering so that they could be among each other and get support from each other. But also, quite frankly, they wanted to do their favorite thing with each other, which was play bingo.
Believe it or not, throughout the recovery months, there was an area called, or an activity called, Kaunoa Clubhouse where the seniors were bused in or gathered to stay with each other so that they could find comfort in their friendships, and also check in on each other. So Aloha for kupuna was a tremendous turnout. A lot of fun, a lot of activity. That was the same day. Immediately after the paddle out, we ran to the Lahaina Civic Center. That night was a one year anniversary mark. We did a tribute and remembrance gathering. All the names of the missing unaccounted for, as well as those who lost their lives in the fire were scrolled on a screen in a very long moment of silence. But through that, we had a tremendous turnout. Understand, we didn’t know if two people would show up. 200 or 2000? No idea. We prepared for as many as we thought we could. The reason why the bottom photos are there is part of the program. We had each of these in their own native language. Say a very short paragraph acknowledging their community, their very own community. And at the very end, we had it done in English. Usually, you do the other way. You do it in English, and then you translate. We did it the other way through that moment. And I want to point out the one in the middle, next to Laurie Degama, wearing red. She was an English reader. The woman bowed in white. She read it in, and she said it in Chinese. If you were of her community, you got it. If you didn’t, you could feel it. The room was just the voice and the emotion behind it.
Then we ran on the same day to the other side of the island, to the top of what we call the country area of Maui where cooler fires were, and that community wanted to get together, hear from their dignitaries and see each other. So we hosted an up country luncheon in that area. It is a community center. We use that community center as an evacuation area. Our team felt that they should make it look different, and that’s why you see those white curtains. We draped the entire community center so that it would look different. We journeyed into the central part of the island so that others could gather. This is 140 plus students from Kamehameha Schools on Oahu, a different island, for a repeat encore performance, for a script that actually their kids wrote. Their 5th graders. The school flew them in on a charter flight to offer this performance to the people of Lahaina. And this was tremendous. When they started singing the Lahainaluna High School alma mater, the entire auditorium stood up with them and sang along. That evening, we returned to Lahaina, and in a concert of musicians from and of Lahaina were all the songs of West Maui. So we encourage the community to come and listen to your music. Hear the songs of old Lahaina, hear the songs of today’s Lahaina. And boy, they all came. It was a huge turnout. We included a special drone show, a very favorite moment for Mayor Bissen. We had everyone leave the center, and we lit up the sky with icons of Lahaina, lighted pictures of surfing, parts of Lahaina that were familiar to folks there, and we ended with love you Lahaina.
The ulalena photo on the bottom, that reason why that was a big deal, that group of 50 or so performers are generally all West Maui. Lahaina people. They all returned in order to do four numbers that evening, bringing down the house. It was amazing to see them. A tradition in Lahaina is called the Lahaina Obon. It’s a Japanese tradition. It’s a gathering, but it was also very popular to that community. And in this case, this is where you saw old generations coming together with new ones. The photo on the bottom probably tells a story for many of us. They’re actually doing a motion as part of one of the Obon dances circling the red stand. That is a traditional attire from one of our kupuna, our Senior. And that is a young gentleman also walking around the (inaudible). Those are the Buddhist priests of different Jodo missions in Lahaina. Their churches burned down. Their missions burnt so they came together to do what they normally would have done. But bringing that stand was huge. Where’s Mish Shishido? Her job under Lele Alohaa under their nonprofit was to transport the only last standing Yagura from Lahaina. Careful enough a few miles on the road so that this could happen. Huge turnout. It was such a healing moment for so many.
On the day of hope and prayer, which was the fourth day and final day, we brought in pastors and ministers of the churches that were impacted in Lahaina. They led the day, but they also talked about hope. These are our speakers. You met earlier, Kaliko and Earl Kukahiko, part of the Mayor’s Advisory Team. They were powerful speakers about faith, about hope, about moving together as a community. And then, of course, if you’ve never met her, Mayor Bissen’s wife, our First Lady Ka’ihi Bissen, in the pink dress on the left. And our final gathering was called up Country Aloha. We went all the way back to the country that evening. I’m telling you, we were racing around the island, and it was so unique and different. We were in cowboy land, so to speak. So very different from the experience in Lahaina. Great turnout. Everyone got paniolo burgers. They have music, and they had a lot of focus on children because it was an early afternoon event. One of the highlights of that was a 17 year old girl who said these words, she was our keynote speaker on the last day of our 4th day, a remembrance week. (inaudible) spoke the voice of the future while we look to our elders to guide us from what we were. We look to the teenagers who will be Lahaina in the future when it is rebuilt.
And finally, what you’re getting in your bag are theTeam Aloha shirts. These t-shirts were part of the 600 people. All they did was run around and be Aloha. And so our gift to you, because you’re an extension of that in all you do and wherever you do, and we’re so proud of the way that the community comes together. But when you wear it, if you’re so fortunate to win one. And my people, I hope you have your own. Mayor is not going to let us give you one. But we know that Aloha is boundless, and we know that Aloha reaches all shores and all states. So when we say WE ALOHA YOU, we really do. One of our favorite sayings is aloha kekahi i kekahi. Love one another, even in the most trying of times. Together, we are one team. So at this time, Cynthia, we may randomly pick names. She’s going to read them out. Could you please just go where you can raise your hand, and then you can come and get your prize. Inside are some ulu flowers. It’s the breadfruit, which is part of our story you’ve heard a little bit, and it’s a children’s book written by a preschool teacher after speaking to children survivors of Lahaina.
Okay. Melissa Baurer, are you here? Melissa, you must be present to win. Marko Bey. Lina Blanco, okay, we’re not playing bingo. Okay, let’s go right here. Julie Atwood. Frank Bigelow, Belinda Brown, Junji Chen, Charles Connolly, Charles Conley, Kasey Earnest, all right. Reno Franklin, Jackie Jorgensen, Patrick Joseph, Gavin Kroeber, Terry Logsdon, Paul Lowenthal, Mike Wink, Henry Miller, Eliza Munger, Tanya Pineda, Tanya Panetta, Lisa Orloff, Nancy Presser, Marika Ramsden, Joe Ruiz, Vidya Sampath, Jamie Swayze, Michelle Thomas. All right, thank you for your time. To Matthew Topper, (inaudible) Vargas, Ann Watley. And her last name that was randomly said was Oren Wool. We’re gonna hold one for the woman outside. Jim Alvey, you gotta run because you know you’re hyper lucky.
Thank you. Mahalo everyone for your hospitality and your Aloha. We, on behalf of our team and our mayor, we’re so grateful to be here and happy to share some Aloha with you too.
Jennifer Gray Thompson: Thank you so much. A round of applause again, that’s very generous and kind. Well, Steve, are you resetting? Thank you. While he’s doing that, I have to make a note. So probably if you were here at the end of yesterday, I feel very fortunate to have shared that moment with you and to have blubbered all over my face. My nose was running. It was beautiful, but that was one of the things that really struck me about working. In Hawaii and on Maui, I’m really used to walking to communities and we give, because that’s my love language. I’m like, what can I do for you?
But one of the big differences when we walk into Maui is there’s always the reciprocal part of the culture, really striking and really healing, even more so for people who’ve chosen to pay it forward. And this is just one more example of how that is. And it really came home. We did our half day with native Hawaiian philanthropy, and they had sushi, and had the massage for us. And it was really almost too much for me, because I’m just so not used to that. But it really was a good intro, it’s not enough just to give that you have to actually always receive as well with the same grace and gratitude. And aloha. I’m just so grateful for all the lessons that I continue to learn from working there. It feels so full circle in so many ways in this work. And I know that a lot of you, especially if you’ve worked in Maui, you feel that same way about, I think it’s one of the reasons it becomes so personal is we’re not used to being cared for. On the other end, I’m not saying that you really do have to start chauffeuring me around, but it’s just very healing. So thank you very much. Mahalo. Thank you.
Today, what we’re doing is we’re starting with a workshop, and I’m going to explain the WHY of it. A couple of notes. Our lunchtime today is at 12:15. If we are running behind, we’re still going to end at 1:00 pm for lunchtime, because I do want to make sure that our program ends on time at 2: 30 today. And then for those of you who are not doing the CSAC part, we will also send you off. Again, thank you so much for coming today, and for coming today again. I just saw supervisor Pyska walk in. Where did she go? She’s from Lake County. Welcome. They’ve had a lot of fires up there. And Mike Wink is here too, well known as my favorite CAL FIRE guy. Even though I love CAL FIRE generally, I should just give you an idea of how much I venerate that person.
So the workshop today is really about, how do we pay it forward and creating a community of practice for long term fire recovery, which is really very much a very wonky term. And I am a policy wonk, so I appreciate that. But one of the reasons why I started having this conversation with this particular group is I love this work so much. I work with contractors. But otherwise, it’s just me, Reva and Natalie, can we just give Reva and Natalie a round of applause? Reva’s over there. Natalie’s over there. Reva probably just left the room for a moment. I’ll do it at the end, and I’ll do it at the end more profusely. This was 9 months of a lot of work, and just so grateful for their care and understanding, compassion and dedication towards the issue. But one of the things that I worry about in the daily life of After The Fire is the fun, the funding parts are always hard because people are not that interested in long term recovery. I appreciate that, but I need some parts of it to grow up. I’ve been doing this for 6 years, 11 months and three days straight.
And so we were wondering like, how can we make it easier if you are a public official or an emergent leader to have a database that you could go to an association, and we can look at it and we hear, oh, we pull the demographics just like I normally do. And then say, who’s the right person that it’s been vetted? Because you have to be vetted, and you have to have the same ethical core. I will never, ever deviate from that so that we can send mutual aid on a more formal basis in the sense, and as needed, it’s not like we’re just going to deploy without asking. We’ll follow all the same rules. And not just showing up to be heroes and saviors to tell you exactly what you should do. My really quick side aside, I did have somebody call me a week before I left for Maui. She had been there, and she’s like, Jennifer, they’re never gonna listen to you. I’m like, oh, okay. That’s fine. If they don’t want you, that’s fine. I can totally handle that. I just kept telling them over and over again exactly what they needed to do, and they just wouldn’t listen. And I’m like, oh. I’m clear, because I don’t do that. That’s not my style at all. And so I knew I was optimistic, but also always open. If I walk into a community, if it’s not the right time, if I haven’t brought the right people, if I need to learn a new lesson, whatever it is, I’m fine to come back. So we would like some way to make it even easier and faster deployment, so that if people are having an issue and they want to know that we could put together and fund a deployment, because most of the people who come with me to these places, they come on their own dime.
I’m lucky that United has given me these flights for the next year, which is wonderful. And I’m going to be able to do a lot more of that. But it’s the same thing. On Monday, I leave for DC to go do lobbying for a week, and that’s self funded through others. Not mine, but everybody else is self funding for their hotel and everything. I’m looking for a path forward where I’m not also asking fire survivors who are paying it forward to continually have to dig into their own resources, and I pay for what I can. But this is a growing problem, and this is a model that works. I’ve seen it work over and over, and over, and over again. It’s different from the other very well intentioned, wonderful and effective organizations that show up. But we are survivors, and we understand. We don’t need people to tell us like, you don’t have to sing for your supper for us. You don’t have to tell your pain so that we can somehow understand it, so you can justify why you ask or need something. Especially for fire, for disaster survivors, we all know what it’s like. We love the fact that people care so much, and they care a lot here too.
But there’s also something so personal about it. Even if the whole rest of the world cares about your fire, it’s still incredibly personal and wounding. It cuts you off from everything you thought was true the day before, is not true the next day. You’re layering that, and you’re moving forward. And you’re doing everything you can for your community. But it’s almost like it can even be a burden when people show up and they’re like, if you have a personal tragedy and you want people to just know what to ask and how to ask it, and the best people to do that are the other people who’ve had the same personal tragedy. It’s why they have support groups. Essentially, we’re trying to formalize a support group for disaster survivors, and we’re starting in the area of megafire. In particular, I feel so passionately about people who I love. When people are very good leaders in the public sector and they are so competent.
I just saw my friend Rebecca Hermosillo is in the back of the room. She’s going to be up here soon who’s our incoming supervisor. I feel so confident that if we have another fire here, that I will be able to work so closely with her because I did in the last one. She’s been working for Congressman Mike Thompson for a long time. And when I needed something that I couldn’t get, I could just call Rebecca, and she was the one person who could always get it for me. Or even if I need one elected official to come out to the least well resourced part of town with the highest population of Latinos who are afraid in their homes right now, because somebody just got up on national TV in 2017. The head of ICE said that, and I quote, illegal aliens started our fires. And that was on national TV. That meant that they were all sheltering at home, and they were very scared. So I needed an elected official to come out and provide some comfort. Also to talk to La Luz as we were serving that particular community. Rebecca is from our community, raised in our community, and she was just elected to be our new supervisor. I’m very excited and proud of her.
It’s this servant leadership, while you’re in this room, it’s the servant leadership while you were invited to be here. It’s why I never compromise on that. And I’ve said it before, I’m not trying to be mean. But if you’re uncool, or if I think you’re a savior hero complex, this is just not the place for you. You’re welcome to the rest of the world, but not here. Not on my delegations, nothing like that. So this is part of the process of formalizing it, we’re really just trying to get an idea of what it is that you would like. You can go to the next slide that announces the names, and I hope that you give them your time and attention. We’re going to shorten it a little bit to stay on time. We’ve been talking about this for about a year, and it really also came out of the mutual respect for what these people do. But also their admiration for what we do at After The Fire. But sitting through two of these summits previously and saying, how can we actually help people so that they’re not also making a personal sacrifice financially in order to go. This is also my moment to plug the fact. In this work, a lot of people end up blowing up their financial lives. I’ve seen this often because they’ll do anything they have in order to help the people of their community, because they love their community.
I had a very long, like two and a half hour session with three groups from Maui all at once. I’m not going to say their names, but it really drove it home that this cannot be acceptable anymore. We cannot reward philanthropy for underpaying people to the point, or donors for insisting upon it to the point where they’re not happy unless they become the client of the organization. I do not accept that. You cannot ask us to solve the hardest problems, and then suffer the most alongside. It is unfair and unkind.
Okay, so I’d very much like to welcome up to the stage right now, Michael, Matt and Commissioner Heather. Thank you.