Shared Ground
Shared Ground is a podcast that explores resilience & grit, generosity & kindness. We start with true stories of kindness and support during and after the 2025 LA wildfires.
Shared Ground
Shared Ground: Our Story Starts Here
In this first episode of Shared Ground (www.shared-ground.com), Allan sits down with Sean and Nina to explore the roots of the project and the personal stories that brought it to life.
Together, we talk through the fires that changed everything for Sean and Nina's family—what it felt like, what was lost, and why those experiences pushed Sean to co-create this podcast.
This isn’t just a recounting of disaster. It’s a conversation about community, resilience, and the urgency of making meaning from what we’ve lived through. It’s the foundation of where we’re headed, starting from an unprecedented event in LA and taking us through the kindness and generosity encountered in the months following the events.
In all these episodes we'll talk through how individuals can prepare to grapple with high pressure situations, ideally finding ways to support themselves and from their their communities.
Shared Ground is produced by Sean Knierim and Allan Marks. Thanks to Cory Grabow, Kara Poltor, Corey Walles (from The Recording Studio) for your support in launching this effort.
For more stories of resilience & rebuilding, kindness & generosity: visit shared-ground.com and subscribe to Sean's substack. We invite you to share your own stories of resilience at the Shared Ground website - whether in response to the January fires in LA or other situations.
Follow us on Substack, Instagram, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
This is Share Ground, a podcast about resilience and community. I'm Allan Marks and I'm Sean Knierim. Thanks so much for joining us Today. Today's a little different from most weeks, most likely, in that I think I'm more of being interviewed than being the host, so I'm going to throw it back over to Alan.
Allan Marks:Good, I'm going to throw back some good questions for you in a minute, but we have a guest today who's very special. Today, Nina Knierim have a guest today who's very special today, Nina Knierim is here.
Allan Marks:Sean, would you like to introduce Nina for us? Yeah, so we're starting today talking with me and with my wife of 24 years together for longer than that. So really delighted you're here to join us. Thanks, Nina.
Nina Knierim:Thanks for asking me.
Allan Marks:So Shared Ground is a podcast that's looking at resilience, it's looking at grit, it's looking at community and things that help communities to become stronger, and a lot of what happens. Sometimes the communities require strong governance, strong leadership, but sometimes it comes from the bottom. It comes from the people on the ground who are going through things, and in Los Angeles we are going through things. We just had fires in January that caused over 150,000 people to have to evacuate. The fires destroyed 17,000 or more structures, including 6,000 or more homes in the Pacific Palisades and even more homes in the Eaton Canyon fire in the community of Altadena. These are not just numbers, these are real people, and with us today are two people who have lost their home in the Palisades fire, and you and your family, I think, typify what it means to be resilient. But I don't want to just, you know, jump to that. I mean, what you went through was harrowing and it's a real loss. So diving right in, Sean, why is it important for you to share this story?
Sean Knierim:So I'd say, in addition to how you described resilience at the top, something that's really struck me over the last few months is the importance of kindness, generosity, that expectation of reciprocity, people just showing up for each other in that community. And while you said bottom up, I think, and also think of bottom. I'm thinking in terms of, like the foundation of the kind of resilience we need in our society. Resilience we need in our society. Even talking about this helps me put in a buffer for the emotions that are still here, like right now. I feel tears behind my eyes and I've been talking about this thing for months. So, yeah, we lost our home. We are right now in the process of like stabilizing, but not yet stable is what I've been saying. But really blessed to be here to have a chance to talk about this.
Allan Marks:Nina, why are you willing to share your story today?
Nina Knierim:Well, first of all, thank you so much for having me in this inaugural podcast that you all are starting. I think it's really important to get this kind of messaging out. I've been fortunate to be able to do a little bit of storytelling myself and when I started thinking that, hey, is this too much? Am I going out and doing too much speaking about this particular topic? But I don't think I am and, similar to what Sean shared, it's very, very therapeutic. I find I am reinvigorated, I feel more gratitude and less loss when I have an opportunity to speak like this and just really hone in on the subject without external sort of disruptions and just, you know, be able to talk about it.
Allan Marks:Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, just taking a moment to speak makes us process, and I think you're right, sean, when you mentioned you were stabilizing, but not stable yet, I think. With respect to grief and loss, I remember a very wise person once telling me we don't get around it. We don't get over it, we get through it.
Sean Knierim:And, what's interesting, so many people are. I feel like people are naming the emotions that they're expecting us to go through and many times like I've heard grief over and over again and it's like you're going to see anger and you're going to see all of these different emotions that are part of the human. You know, panoply of what we feel coming out of these things. I can't recognize or identify what the emotion is, or I can't. Maybe it's because many of the emotions are coming through simultaneously. I can talk more about that in a bit and in fact we're going to have someone in a few weeks to talk with us about what he's recognized here, but I don't know that it feels like grief all the time for me.
Nina Knierim:Nina, are you able to recognize what you're feeling on a moment-by-moment basis? Right now I am trying to identify, at least not trying to identify exactly or name exactly what emotion I'm feeling, but where is it coming from? Because often I'm finding it coming out in not the right environment, not the right situation. Both of us are working full-time, you know. So we have the stresses of jobs, full-time jobs, and we also have two teenage children. So, you know, life is continued.
Sean Knierim:One teenage child.
Nina Knierim:Well, right, I keep saying my son is 20 now but he's still a student, and so we, when I feel those emotions kind of come up, I do try to identify where is it coming from? Is it really coming from whatever's happening in the situation now, or is it something deeper? And if it's something deeper, I do give myself grace. I'll walk away for a second kind of breathe and come back to it, because I don't want to be forced to let something out there that doesn't really belong in that context. So it's. It's not easy, you know. Emotions, mental health, everything that we hold dear to us because it it affects everything that we do, you know has been fractured, it has been bruised and battered. So it's okay to have those times when you feel not so settled and not so in charge of the thoughts going through your head and giving yourself grace, my self-grace, trying to get my spouse grace whenever we have disagreements. But that's what I try to do anyway, yeah.
Allan Marks:So let me come back to the kids for a second. Yeah, so at the moment the fires they break out and they became with the high winds. We had the very dry soil, the very dry conditions. This was an urban fire that happened to be ignited in an adjacent wildland. I don't ever like the term wildfire, really, because of the way the fire behaved and the way people were impacted, but when that happened, obviously you know you're not just thinking of yourself or each other.
Allan Marks:You're also thinking of your kids and your family. What did you do? What happened? What was that experience like when you knew you had to evacuate?
Nina Knierim:was that experience like when you knew you had to evacuate? So, uh, fortunately I do I did have some foresight into what the weather conditions were, uh, the dangerous, um, you know, impact that a wildfire would have or spark anywhere in the city, anywhere in the County. Really, um, and another multiple counties were also feeling the effects of those high winds and very dry uh, you know, overnight humidity levels and things like that that contribute to the wildfire that did happen in both the Eden Fire and Palisades Fire. And I would say that because we had more information, meaning I did have an app on my phone that's widely used within, you know, wildfire mitigation and wildfire preparedness.
Sean Knierim:What app is that?
Nina Knierim:It's called sorry.
Sean Knierim:I don't know, I don't have it on my phone I just lost it.
Nina Knierim:Sorry.
Allan Marks:We'll find it.
Nina Knierim:Watch duty.
Allan Marks:Okay, watch duty. So actually I downloaded watch duty that day because of the fire. Sorry, we'll find it WatchDuty. Okay, WatchDuty. So actually I downloaded WatchDuty that day because of the fire. Sorry, I'm not sure the number is right. Watchduty is an app that is extraordinarily timely and precise, right as far as figuring out fire risk, but also fires that are active and evacuations and things that are associated with it, so I want to continue on that 600,000, I think downloads of that just that week yeah.
Nina Knierim:Yeah, so I have been using that app for three years now, so I'm very familiar with it.
Allan Marks:You're OG yes.
Nina Knierim:It's been upgraded several times. It is run by a nonprofit, which I'm hoping you know something happens there where they get a lot of funding to continue to develop that tool because it's necessary. And if our own you know, first responders and organizational local government, state, federal government don't have warning systems in place that are timely, accurate and go off when they should, having that type of information on your phone will help you and an individual in communities be more prepared. So, because we were more prepared, the idea that a wildfire was coming and it was coming towards us fast put all of us into action quickly and we did know what to do. We did know what to take and we did know what to do. We did know what to take. However, it did not replace some of the other after the other until you reach safety. And I think, because we had some of those tools, it wasn't as bad of an experience as we left, but it was still traumatizing.
Sean Knierim:And a few nights before, on the first day of the year, overnight some fireworks went off in almost the same spot that the fire on the seventh broke out, and Nina woke us up in the middle of the night, having seen the alert, and we got to go through and prepare the cars and get ready. We saw the airplanes putting out the fires, but we were packed and ready to go and had to go through it. Thankfully, Nina. I mean with what you do for a living, I mean she's.
Allan Marks:We should pause and say what you do for a living.
Nina Knierim:I think it's pretty relevant to this. Nina, what do you do for a living? What do I do for a living? So yes, and I will preface it with the irony is not lost on me or anybody that I work with. I am a climate and disaster resilience professional, which means that I not only study the impacts of climate change with regards to extreme weather, but I also help communities, local government and counties throughout the state of California prepare for those inevitabilities.
Nina Knierim:And so when I say we were prepared, I mean we were prepared. And we were not only prepared for a wildfire, we were prepared for a flood, we were prepared for an earthquake, we were prepared for any other type of, you know, extreme or catastrophic event that could come our way, extreme or catastrophic event that could come our way. So when I say you know having prepared for a wildfire, when you prepare for one type of disaster, you're preparing for all of them. Sure, there are things that you would want to have depending, but you really only have to do it once and then sort of circle back to it, you know, every six months to make sure your supplies and things are together.
Allan Marks:Let me ask you both a question, though, about that, because, from your work at Core and your experience, you had your go bag. Yes, right, but what's in the emotional go bag? Not the physical one, but what's in the emotional go bag that people should pack and obviously different people have different personalities and respond very differently to a difficult situation like that but what's what's in the emotional toolkit that that would be helpful or that you wish you'd have had in your emotional go-bag?
Sean Knierim:so I think what's interesting here not having gone through an experience like this before, I wasn't sure how I would respond in this type of a crisis. I mean, our family's gone through some challenging things. We've been together for going on almost 30 years now, like so we've seen some times, but we've not gone through a hundred mile an hour wind whipping a fire at our house. So it was interesting to see how each of the four of us responded in that moment, and different of us have had different preparations for these things. Um, myself, I was able to see like parallel lines, or maybe stochastic multiple parallel lines going on of. I knew what the go bag was. It was this satchel, right, and I knew what needed to go in the car. Interestingly, the go bag, when I had a little extra time, was not packed the suitcases. It wasn't packed other stuff. I got out all of the stuff that was in the go bag when I had a little extra time was not packed the suitcases. It wasn't packed other stuff. I got out all of the stuff that was in the go bag and at the same time that I was getting thinking through, like how to get the kids out of the house, what Nina was doing with your core shirt on going around and making sure our neighbors were okay as we were trying to pack your stuff in cars. I was also still like I finished a Zoom meeting while everyone started packing the cars. I was also still like I finished a zoom meeting while everyone started packing the cars.
Sean Knierim:The hello fresh, hello fresh, the, the prepared box meal guy. I was the last one to leave the house. The hello fresh guy shows up as I'm watching the fires come down towards the house. I stop, he hands me the box, I point to the fires and this gentleman goes. I get paid by the box to deliver, which is one of the first moments that actually led to this podcast happening is thinking about what's the experience of everyone around? I took the box and I could have gone and packed a suitcase. I could have taken more stuff off the walls. I could have done all kinds of things. My son brought no souvenirs out of his room. I could have saved the cubs ticket when they won the world series. I put the box not only in the kitchen, I opened it and put all of the perishables away because I didn't want nina to be upset if we wasted food and came back later that night. So I was in normal mode and respond to disaster mode simultaneously, but almost in a disassociated way and there's two different songs.
Sean Knierim:And not being aware of it.
Nina Knierim:I will say almost the exact same thing happened and I didn't recognize it until you were just talking about it just now, the sort of like continuing to sort of see everyday life happening around you while this you know catastrophic wildfire is coming down the hill. Because of my training and what I've seen and I've visited burn scars I've worked with long-term recovery groups in wildfire areas in Northern California and Southern California. So when I was going around to the neighbors Sean mentioned that because I got to a point where I was like, okay, I've got at least 10, 15 minutes now I cannot live with myself if I don't at least knock on my neighbor's door, because she was a homebound woman in her 80s, blind, couldn't walk, couldn't reach any of her relatives, and so I was really concerned about her. So she was my first person to knock on the door Then and she got out.
Nina Knierim:And she got out. Yes, thanks. Yes, of course she got out.
Sean Knierim:Don't leave us in suspense on that, Don't, don't? No Thanks to her nephew who drove up.
Nina Knierim:No, no, it wasn't. It wasn't. It was our other neighbor, don't worry.
Nina Knierim:Our other neighbor, our other neighbor helped. So neighbors helping neighbors is really what I want to say there, because, as we're all seeing this fire coming down the hill, people are helping each other. And I was going around and, as this was happening, before the emergency orders came evacuation orders people were going about their daily lives, similar to what Sean said. Some of them hadn't even seen the smoke or the fire because they're you know, they're in their house, they're doing homeschool, they've got their dog, their baby or the nanny's probably taking care of the kids. So there was a lot of things going on for this interruption to happen, and my job is outreach, community education.
Nina Knierim:Like I said, I could not have left that community without stopping to knock on everybody's door before we left, and then, on my way out, I continued to jump out of my car and, with my core hat and my T-shirt on, I just put it over my pajama shirt and said I am a trained professional. Please listen to me. I know you haven't received an evacuation order, but you have about 30 minutes before that fire is on your doorstep. So please, please, get your stuff together, get your family and I gave them the things Get your important papers, grab some cash, you know, make sure you've got your pets food, clothing, you know, medicines, all those important things to take.
Allan Marks:A friend I know who lost his home in the Palisades was lamenting. I talked to him about a week ago. He said, you know, I I didn't and he's older so he has experience in life and family drama. On going back to the Holocaust, right.
Sean Knierim:So he said I was surprised that I did pack things and kind of left, but I left my laptop and my wallet on my desk so I didn't have those those, which was really sad you know, alan, for the last three months and this happened more at the beginning, but it still happens one of the four of us in the family will go my guitar, like there'll be some item that will all of a sudden be remembered along with the emotional hit of it not being there. And this could be I, I my t-shirt, my Ryan Sandberg jersey and there's things. But there's also memories that were left behind.
Allan Marks:Yeah, because the things are representative of the experience you have and the emotions and the feelings around the people you shared those times with.
Sean Knierim:Like for a brief moment in time, the Cubs ticket for example, because that's not happening again anytime soon, anytime soon. Thanks for that. That's the way to get the first episode off to get. So we're playing pretty well right now.
Allan Marks:Um, we so, um, but I'm gonna get back to the objects for a second, because let's let's not, let's fast forward. Yeah, so after the fire, you evacuated, you find out the next day that you you know, you lost your home. And when you evacuated, you find out the next day that you lost your home. And when you went back, you found something in the backyard that I think is symbolic in a way of how other people also reached out to you during this time. Right, there was an angel that had been in your backyard.
Sean Knierim:So we went back. Nina and her organization outfitted us in protective gear. We had to get our permits, we go up and all of us I don't know about all of us, but those I was with broke out crying as we started just seeing the devastation driving up into the area.
Sean Knierim:I also decided that getting food poisoning the night before would be a good way to then put a mask and things on to go see our old home before. It would be a good way to then put a mask in and things on to go see our old home. So as we went up in the front garden we had a ceramic angel that was sitting on a bird feet. I think it was in the, the bird bath in the front yard and this angel we found it but the head had fallen off. But the angel was still there and the kids positioned it and took some incredibly beautiful pictures and we'll include them on the website that people can see.
Allan Marks:I remember when you sent me those it was very poignant, and then it became even more indelibly inked into our family, oh, you mean Of. Aidan, oh yeah.
Nina Knierim:So my son decided because he knew he wanted to memorialize what had happened. He didn't really know how to do that, but once we came upon that angel, the statue of the angel, and brought it back, we put a bunch of things in tubs so the ash and things wouldn't get on our clothing and our skin. And we hadn't opened it in a while, not since we'd gone to the house, partly because I didn't want to have to wash everything, but also I don't think I was ready to look at it again. You know, it was like I saw it in the ashes, picked it up out of the ashes, I put it in this box and I carried it away, but I wasn't ready. You know, my son, on the other hand, as Sean had mentioned, you know, on the other hand, as he, as Sean had mentioned, you know, really look at it took some beautiful pictures and decided to get a tattoo of that angel without its head.
Sean Knierim:Yeah, because you know that is important and so yeah, he decided that the majority of people he was hearing about getting tattoos were getting phoenixes and he goes. That's going to be the most cliche tattoo in a few years I'm going to do something that's really personally connected.
Allan Marks:You literally rose that angel up out of the ashes. I mean, it is an important symbol.
Sean Knierim:It really is, and on the hill, so next to us, the only house on our street that survived is a house that took about three years to build. It was built with new construction and was lucky enough that it had some defensible area around it where the fire just didn't hit it. They took a cross out of our yard and planted it on the hill, and that's another picture we have of the sun coming behind and this cross looking down over the top of the devastation, down the hill, with the birds and the natural world still surviving around it, it was really an extraordinary time up on the up in the property
Nina Knierim:It really was.
Allan Marks:Tell me more about how community and family and friends responded to you.
Sean Knierim:It has been extraordinary and it really is. For me, one of the impetus points if you can have an impetus point for this podcast is to try and tell these stories. I've been writing about them, as you know, alan, the morning, so we found our way to the West End at LAX, so we're about 20 miles south of our house. We are in a northern exposed window on the 11th floor so you can see the mountains.
Sean Knierim:We could see all three fires that broke out that night and we watched the fires come down the hill night after night after night as we were down at the hotel. I woke up the next morning. I counted 750 text messages that I received. This is just me and you were getting outreach. Kids were getting outreach of people asking how are you, what do you need, how can I help? Like those were the three that and I was overwhelmed, both in terms of the outreach and people that I had not talked to in forever were reaching out to make sure we were okay and like two pieces that kept hitting me. It's like I didn't know what I needed. It hurt to ask for help, it hurt to tell people what I needed and it really hurt to accept help. So I had a hard time.
Nina Knierim:Yeah, and, and so you might be able to tell a little bit that we are a family of givers. Right, we've. We were raised that way and we've decided to dedicate our lives, you know, to that work and to those missions. And we've raised two beautiful children who obviously have met and have watched us and we've mentored them and they see how we treat our you know each other, our family, our community, and know that we are the ones that are going to be the first to give. So when Sean talks about the difficulty for anyone to ask for help, you know, let alone people, that's like kind of what they do for, you know, for a living, and have led their entire lives that way, as Sean being a high school teacher and a baseball coach in high school, and I was in the military and also did pro bono work for asylum seekers during the first as a lawyer, as a lawyer, yes, in the first Trump presidency. So you know, these are things that we do and we're not looking for anything for that. Right, it's just what you do.
Nina Knierim:And so when the tables were turned, in order for me to believe it myself, I had to sit and say to my kids I said look, we are a family of givers and I had to give very concrete examples to my son. When you were five years old and somebody in school didn't have their lunch, you shared their lunch with them, didn't you? He's like, yeah, I said. And tell me how many times he's like I can't even tell you how many times. All the way through high school, you know, sharing of lunch, money, things like that. My daughter same thing, like she, you know has been working in community gardens and been very, very supportive of her community, and so to think about receiving money, clothing, you know, other types of support did not seem or set right with any of us, and so when I was able to sort of say that to both of them, then you could see them sort of realize. I said now it's our turn and it's okay.
Sean Knierim:And it's okay. And it was tough and it is okay, and to have to come up with what we needed when we didn't know where we were was difficult. I will remember I had three phone calls, four phone calls the first morning as I was waking up and seeing this, and people called and said here is my home, you can have it. Alan. You are one of the people that called Yvonne Markman, sean Abramson, rc Buford all called and offered us their homes that day, like how can we help? So there were some people that leaned in and said here's what I think you need, can you help?
Sean Knierim:Others then showed up, helped set up a GoFundMe to support our family, helped create a funnel for all of these things where they took it from us. So there's a group of folks. But then over time there just continued this outpouring of love, of support, of hugs. I can remember a number of them very vividly, which we can talk about some of them, or we'll keep writing about them, but just in general it felt like we got support from this incredible group of humans around us.
Nina Knierim:We were surrounded.
Allan Marks:I remember the Saturday, so there were still embers coming down.
Nina Knierim:Oh yeah.
Allan Marks:Right and we had to wear our masks because the air quality was pretty scary. Yeah that your daughter and some of her friends from Pali High had organized a clothing drive, because obviously families who've lost everything need some clothes in a hurry. And my daughter and I went over and my daughter had, among the clothes she wanted to donate, picked out some things she thought that your daughter would like yeah.
Allan Marks:But your daughter doesn't want to accept things when she can give and I don't know if you know this, but you know she didn't want to have the first choice and she certainly she was much more focused on getting everybody coordinated and making sure that families that were and, by the way, what they did with social um, coming to social media and texting and calling and things and and the other mothers that were also helping some of their daughters with this uh, you know, if a family needed size xxl for the father and they had a five-year-old and a 10-year-old and a boy and a girl and you know what they like, this kind of we were putting together little kits and and making sure everybody got exactly the sizes and the kinds of things that they needed and what was amazing there, alan like but your daughter, I want to say really I mean really was taking one of the lead roles it was her idea.
Sean Knierim:We didn't know you and your daughter were going, like people were showing up and the fact that this was happening outside of our control, like this whole, like what do you have control over, it became pretty clear how little we did. So a few other little notes about notes, big notes about that Marmot. The company directed a good deal of their support to the LA community through a contact Maria has at Eastman chemical. But through Maria, like I have a Marmot shirt it's the first t-shirt I had and I will always hold onto this because it came through.
Sean Knierim:Maria came up with this idea. There was a doctor who came in who was doing a surgery. She wasn't able to get back to her house. She comes into this clothing exchange or the clothing giveaway in the scrubs she was wearing at the hospital and told Maria, I don't have socks, can you help me? And Maria was able to help her. Then Maria had to peel off. It got to be too much for her and she realized it and she did let it go quicker than her mom and me were able to let things go, but she was able to.
Allan Marks:So let me ask you a question about that. So, as a parent, you know you're responsible for yourself and for your children, and they're responsible for themselves and their peers and their family too. But it's not the same. And yet they've also just lost their high school. They've lost, you know, their whole.
Sean Knierim:And at that point they thought the high school was gone.
Allan Marks:Yes, that's right and it's still closed. Yeah, physically Yep, as they rebuild. But how do you, how is it different? Do you think for them? And remember, this is a cohort that also went through Zoom and remote learning for school because of the COVID you know pandemic just a few years ago. I mean they've had a kind of a tough run.
Nina Knierim:Yeah, I mean we laugh about it, right, because we I mean because we can't cry about it what these kids have been through, what our kids have been through, and trying to compare it to things that we may have experienced in our own childhood or growing up. And I'm not going to pretend to even understand what a teenage mind you know and how they are viewing everything that's happening right now, having processed and lived through COVID. But I will say that I believe that these events and what they've been through have made them more resilient, not just in okay, here's something else we have to overcome. Here's something else we have to learn how to manage and live with. Here's something else that is now our new reality, on top of everyday things that are going on, and absolutely I think it's making them more resilient.
Nina Knierim:And as parents and taking care of being responsible for our kids and our kids are a little bit older, right as teenagers and college student it's still you still want to protect them. We can't protect them from this. Right, we did our protection, which was being ready and getting out as soon as we could, but we can't protect them from the aftermath. We're all living it. That's hard, that's really hard.
Sean Knierim:And each of the kids responded differently. So Maria has an incredible and large community of friends high school friends, friends from grade school, the soccer community she's in and some of the other communities she's part of, and she has done a remarkable job of surrounding herself with people she could talk to reflect on, experience. This, together with Our son, has a more independent lifestyle, what he's doing in school, what he's doing as an athlete, as an aspiring athlete or current athlete and aspiring athlete, where his friend group is much tighter group and a smaller group that aren't necessarily in town. So for Aiden there was a lot more time with us. For Aiden there was a lot more time with the cycling community in Los Angeles that came together to try to take care of him in an amazing way, but that group aren't a lot of 20-year-olds.
Sean Knierim:There were some younger kids on his team that supported him, but these were folks from 30 through 85 that showed up for aid, and so it was a really different experience. Both of these kids have come through and they had each other Like. The thing our kids have been blessed with is the relationship that the two of them have. Those two, plus our dog, luna, really supported each other as well.
Allan Marks:What about other members of the community that have lost businesses or jobs? I mean, I think of a lot of the people who are, you know, taking care of landscaping or working, as you know, serving in the kitchen in local restaurants and things in the grocery stores. You know a lot of them. Now also, of course, are, are, are impact and they don't have the same assistance or insurance opportunities.
Nina Knierim:They have some.
Allan Marks:What do they? How are you seeing that?
Nina Knierim:Because CORE, as you mentioned earlier, the organization that I work for does humanitarian aid and disaster response internationally and nationally as well.
Nina Knierim:One of the things that they've implemented is cash and voucher assistance programming for people who go through, you know, catastrophes like this and crisis like this, because we found, as an organization, obviously, that individuals know what they need their money for, they know how to spend it for themselves and their family, and while other things like you know meal cards or you know department gift cards and things like that are all good and fine, how are you going to pay your rent or your daily motel rate if that's where you're staying when you're displaced?
Nina Knierim:So CORE is actually encompassing not just people who have lost their homes, but also people who have had their businesses impacted by losing clients lost their homes, but also people who have had their businesses impacted by losing clients or they. You know it was a region that they worked in close to their home, or maybe they lost equipment. You know that was at a house or a construction site that they were working on and so this money is meant to help supplement and kind of get them back on their feet while they reestablish their business, potentially in a different region or with new clients in the same area, and so that has been very significant in helping that community, both in the Palisades and even fire areas.
Sean Knierim:A lot of other organizations have offered similar support. Personally, I find myself feeling guilty from time to time where I was so focused on my family and those people around us that there wasn't a lot of time for us personally to be supporting others. The one place where we also saw some like not only those like the guy who helped with the property where we were living lost 100% of his work in that day. The restaurants that showed up to help ended up losing not only the contributions they were giving to those of us that lost our homes. A lot of free meals were offered and not many people went to the restaurants to eat during that time because people were hunkering down and didn't want to go out.
Sean Knierim:I remember a lot of those restaurants, like I just wrote about Milo and Olive. For a while they didn't have A lot of those restaurants, like I just wrote about Milo and Olive for a while, they didn't have a lot of people coming in. So not only were they giving, they were also not receiving from the community. So I think there's still a neat opportunity for us to think about. How can we support if we have to hire someone? How can we find ways to drive work to people who were affected, but also look at those businesses in town that really showed up for communities and find ways to bring business to them over time so that the community gets to help them in return and start replenishing what they have. So we're ready to help each other the next time.
Allan Marks:Let me ask you a question too, because I mean I know it's not in my family. We've been through some things in the past. You know people have lost a home. My uncle actually lived in the Bel Air fire in 1961 when you know several homes got destroyed on their block and you know there's other traumas that families, all families, have gone through. But a disaster that's community-wide is different because it's affecting so many people all at the same time and in some strikingly similar ways. Does that then signal that the response to it whether it's really well-coordinated or not maybe more spontaneous, but that the response to it is somehow also maybe stronger and better or capable of building more resilience because the entire community is affected? Or is it just the scale of it is so massive that it just makes that challenge more daunting?
Sean Knierim:I think all the above is probably yes. I think there's a lot to learn from this, to add to what we know about other type of disasters and how to respond with each other. I mean something that I have noticed a lot and I don't know how much you hear this name is people who try and compare their trauma and their experience to others. Like, well, I didn't lose my house, even though I know some people who didn't lose their home that in some ways, were affected more severely than others. So, figuring out how, as a community, we can recognize that some of us have lost things that need support and have been affected differently, but, at the same time, how do we acknowledge and honor what everyone's feeling and be able to support them in different ways? I think that's something that we don't know how to do. Well, we're always trying to compare, like you're hurt worse than mine, so therefore, I'm going to try and belittle what I'm feeling, and I've seen that in a lot of different people throughout the community.
Nina Knierim:Both Sean and I agree and a lot of different people throughout the community. Both Sean and I agree we do try and at least not be so, you know, emphatic about don't say that, don't say that, but explain why they should honor their own trauma and their own experience and their own feelings about what happened, while still expressing, you know, sympathy or empathy or whatever emotion or expression they're trying to give in a particular context. But yeah, it does happen quite a bit and some people get it when you kind of slow down and explain to them why we're all in this together and why it's not a know, it's not a comparison, as as Sean says, but just a collective, you know, experience and a collective trauma that we, that we all have and are sharing still, and there was one other thing, a nuance that might be interesting to explore.
Sean Knierim:Throughout a lot of these, these podcasts, I remember thanking people all the time. It was really important for me to be able to give gratitude, to acknowledge what people brought to us. So often I heard people say no, no, no, it was nothing.
Sean Knierim:Oh yeah, that too, it's the least I could do, that too, and it's changing now, but in the moment I remember every time that someone told me it was nothing, it felt like it was devaluing the gratitude I was trying to give. You're saying it's nothing, but for me it's the most important thing I've ever received. I didn't own a t-shirt and now this is the only t-shirt and you're telling me it's nothing.
Sean Knierim:But that to you it seemed like your gratitude was being belittled it was, and I started trying to share with people, especially groups that we're working a lot, spending a lot of time with groups that we're working a lot, spending a lot of time with. I'm like please just say you're welcome and leave it at that. Let us express our gratitude, our love, our tears. But don't take that away and I'm pretty sure I do this all the time because in this moment of community it wasn't nothing, it wasn't the least you could do, it was the most you were able to do at that moment and chose to.
Allan Marks:That's right, yeah, what makes you the most hopeful now?
Nina Knierim:Both of us are. I think it's a gift and I mean we are at this place right now to sort of lead the conversation and be part of the you know, resilience, the moving forward, but the rebuilding of and even building, I would say, building trust in communities, across industries, across areas that maybe wasn't there before. So that makes me very hopeful. Secondly, there's something that comes good. That is good because of a disaster like this People are paying attention, their ears are open, they want to know more, they definitely don't want it to happen to them and the people who it happened to definitely don't want it to happen to them again.
Nina Knierim:So it is an opportune time to be able to spread this messaging about, at least for me, more on the side of resilience and preparedness for the next event, because this is not the last time we will, or these communities will, be impacted by some catastrophic event or some other disruption. Maybe it's a long-term power outage, maybe it's, you know, other types of events, but they will be here and so knowing what to do in those scenarios and taking the experience that we had makes me really hopeful. You know that people will be more prepared next time and that and I see the work on the ground. I am very, very honored to be able to be in front of communities, to speak at the YMCA or the Boys and Girls Club, to be invited by local nonprofits and community-based organizations because they trust us. They trust us because we have the expertise, trust us because we have the experience but also— Real experience.
Allan Marks:Real experience, personal experience.
Nina Knierim:But also because people are also looking for leaders. But also because people are also looking for leaders and I would not identify myself as a leader so much in a general context At work. I am a leader and now I'm kind of finding myself put into this sort of you know platform position to carry this message, hearing your voice emerge has been extraordinary, both as someone who loves you deeply but also as someone who's looking for hope in the community.
Sean Knierim:To see voices like yours emerge, to see you on the Today Show, PBS NewsHour, but also talking with communities around. It's been remarkable seeing you and loving you and watching you kind of lean into this moment and then seeing a lot of other leaders around town from across systems. I think your point of trust is really important, Like trust becomes the currency of this resilient Even more so now.
Allan Marks:And trustworthiness too Seriously. I think, one reason you are a leader is not just because you do the things that leaders are expected to do ordinarily in the day job right Of setting a vision, mobilizing people around it in support of it and executing. But now you're also, sadly, a role model.
Nina Knierim:Wow, I didn't think of it that way, and that's a different level of leadership too. Yeah, I didn't think of it that way at all.
Sean Knierim:And then, as I'm thinking of moments of hope, seeing the community come together the way it did in a city that might not have been thought of as a really resilient, cohesive giving city in Los Angeles.
Allan Marks:But a phenomenally to watch, To my surprise. A phenomenally is.
Sean Knierim:It was extraordinary. Like this feels like home now. I don't know if I would have said that four months ago. Like I love la, I love the fact that we've lived here. This is a home to me now in ways that few other places are like. I feel really rooted here and I feel a deep commitment to this area and I know others that feel that way. Seeing the kids show up and do things, to see how my daughter showed up, to see the leadership my son has exhibited in in his role, in what he's doing, and then to see a lot of the other young folks around town, in altadena, in the palisades, but high schools around the country sending stuff here to be of service. It's, it's amazing and this isn't just an la story. I think the hope for me comes from seeing how this rippled outside of this region in ways that there are connections established between sectors, industries, domains, geographies, sizes of organizations that did not exist four months ago and I think that bodes well for the future strength of this region.
Allan Marks:Yeah, I couldn't agree more. Both of you thank you for sharing so personally and openly what you've gone through. Nina, especially, thank you for being the guest on the first episode for this.
Nina Knierim:This is terrific, and Sean.
Allan Marks:I know I look forward to future episodes of Shared Ground where we can explore this with others and kind of see what they've gone through and what the lessons might be for the future.
Sean Knierim:Yeah, and to take this personal experience and be able to broaden out and hear that personal experience for others and figure out how do we keep grooving together into the future. Absolutely, it's a shared ground.