From Paradise to Lahaina: Camp fire survivors offer solace and advice in wake of Maui fire
Their advice is specific, practical and sometimes wrenching.
Cancel your utilities so you aren’t billed for water, power and internet to a home that no longer exists. Call your other bill companies, tell them about the disaster, and request a temporary freeze on car and student loan payments. Start a list of everything you’ve lost so each specific item is documented: This will be excruciating, but listing things by room can help you mentally organize the daunting task. And it’s OK to accept help, even if you’re used to being a “giver.”
For survivors of the Camp fire — the deadliest U.S. wildfire in a century until last week — the tragedy on Maui has rekindled searing memories and reminded residents of Paradise, Calif., of all they lost nearly five years ago.
It also has fostered an intimate sense of kinship with the West Maui residents now living the early days of a nightmare that these Californians know all too well.
As Hawaii begins to tally the damage and assess how to improve its safety procedures to address extreme fire weather, California can offer many lessons.
On social media and via calls and text messages, Paradise residents have rushed to share their deep and highly specialized expertise: how to trudge forward through unthinkable communal devastation, while navigating the seemingly endless bureaucracy of recovery.
April Kelly, a Paradise local who spent 16 years living on Maui before returning to Butte County a year before the Camp fire, has been the bridge between the two worlds.
Kelly has been in contact with hundreds of people on Maui, she said, including many friends who supported her after the Camp fire. Though her home survived, Kelly’s family lost more than a dozen homes in the 2018 fire, and she took in several relatives in its aftermath.
After the Maui fire hit, Kelly’s friends on the island immediately began to reach out for solace and advice. She started a GoFundMe page to raise money to fill specific needs in her West Maui community.
She and her aunt Kim Colombo also launched a Paradise-to-Maui Facebook group to serve as a sort of repository of knowledge and best practices, in which pragmatic answers can be provided in noninvasive ways.
“I started the Facebook page so that basically any of the Camp fire people can give advice to the Maui people,” Kelly said. “You know, what happened with FEMA? How did you handle your insurance? What did you do with your kids right away?”
The group, which as of Tuesday morning had more than 200 members, includes lengthy discussions on a variety of topics.
“It feels like my human duty,” Paradise native Jess Mercer said of wanting to share her expertise.
The Butte County trauma specialist learned of the extent of the Lahaina fire Wednesday while she was at the grand opening of a new building at Paradise High School — a celebration of the community continuing to move forward after the devastating November 2018 fire.
“I can’t lie. When we cut the ribbon, a lot of us were crying,” Mercer said, recalling how talk of the Maui fire spread through the crowd.
There was so much gravity to the day and weight in the juxtapositions, Mercer said. There was an aching pain for people she didn’t know and the horror of her own community’s recent past, as well as the beauty around her: a community continuing to rebuild, and the progress made in the long years since the fire.
She and others were careful to stress, however, that although their stories share some similarities, they are by no means parallel. Hawaii’s history of colonization and local fears of post-disaster land grabs and further displacement are separate and difficult concerns.
The majority of the victims were found dead in their cars or the surrounding water, Hawaii Gov. Josh Green said.
Mercer is also acutely aware of how “parachute people” can overwhelm survivors in the aftermath of a disaster, recalling her own memory of Paradise suddenly feeling like “an aquarium” with gawkers on all sides. For this reason, former Hawaii resident Kelly has been the main conduit to the community as others have taken a more hands-off approach.
Much of the specific insurance advice in the group comes from Amanda Clark, who managed a State Farm agency before opening a tree service business in Paradise. She became the de facto community insurance expert after the Camp fire, reading “everybody’s policies” and helping them understand the intricacies. It was a process so complicated that she wondered how anyone without her training could manage it on their own, she said.
“Even if we can’t financially support a whole bunch of people,” Clark said, “we can try to give them all of the advice and all of the resources — creative things that we figured out through our own problems.”
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