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
Episode 20: Rebuilding Using an Open Hand with Tyler Pew
🔥 From Wildfire to Renewal: Greenville’s Reimagined Future
In 2021, the Dixie Fire wiped out Greenville, CA in under an hour, destroying nearly a million acres. Among those left standing in the ashes was Tyler Pew, a fourth-generation local and design-build contractor. Faced with total loss, he moved back home from San Francisco and asked: What if recovery is not about rebuilding the past, but creating something better?
Tyler shares the hard truth about disaster recovery, why the toughest years often come 5 to 7 years later, and the difference between a “closed fist” and an “open hand” when rebuilding a community. He draws on lessons from other disaster-hit towns, integrates indigenous Mountain Maidu land wisdom, and helps launch innovative housing initiatives like Welcome Home Greenville.
📑 Check out the incredible body of work that Tyler and the LMNOP Team have led with a group of partners HERE — a 3-year index of projects completed in the general time sequence of the work.
This is a story of resilience, regeneration, and finding hope in the next generation.
🎧 Listen now to learn how tragedy can become transformation, and how open-handed leadership can shape a stronger future.
👉 If you have faced setbacks or care about community resilience, share this episode with someone who needs to hear it.
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 at seanknierim.substack.com, Instagram, or wherever you listen to podcasts (Apple Podcasts, Spotify, etc).
This is Shared Ground (www. shared-ground. com), a podcast about resilience and community. I'm Alan Marks and I'm Sean Knierim. Thanks so much for joining us. Today. We have someone we've been really looking forward to talking to on the podcast, Tyler Pew. Tyler, thanks for joining us. I'd love to throw it over to you. To start, Can you introduce yourself? Who are you and what are you bringing to us today?
Tyler Pew:Yeah, first of all, thanks for bringing me on here. I really appreciate it. My name is Tyler Pew, the founding principal LMNOP Design. We're a design build general contractor. I also happen to be born and raised in a small community in Northern California called Indian Valley, Greenville, California, that was destroyed in the 2021 Dixie wildfire along with close to a million acres of beautiful standing wildland. I come to the table with a lot of different experience and generational investment into that land and timber as a resource, and I have spent the last four years I like to call it like a PhD in wildfire. Recovery is basically it. So, yeah, learning from that.
Sean Knierim:Thanks, and you know, over the last few months we've started these conversations that focus on resilience and rebuilding. You have a few other R's that I think you're going to add to that list, with us today talking with people here in the Los Angeles area and now we're trying to branch out and talk to other communities that have grappled resilience over the last few years. That's a question we've asked many of the guests we've had. Tyler, just to start with, is based on what you've come through. How would you define resilience yourself?
Tyler Pew:Resilience, I think oftentimes can be the ability to withstand something. It's the difference between a closed fist and an open hand. Both are holding at the end of the day, and I think resilience for me is a version of an open hand ability to respond and adapt to the changes necessary, whether that's climate or whether that's social and cultural changes, things like that. So being able to still hold the hand open and hold hold the space, the community or, you know, the infrastructure, whatever it is, but doing it in a way that produces much more flexibility in the system that we're operating.
Allan Marks:I really like that description that you had. I want to ask you a question too, in a way that is different than what we've asked of many of our prior guests, because many people coming at fire or, for that matter, flood or other natural disasters, hurricanes, windstorms what have you tend to galvanize the attention right away? I mean, there's something which you might not have been thinking about as intensely and now suddenly it's all you can think about because you're having to deal with the immediate aftermath and surviving and rebuilding and recovering. But these things take time and you've got some perspective and some distance on what you saw in Northern California.
Tyler Pew:What's the lesson that you'd give to people? Because it takes time. How do you approach that? Yeah, it's one is, it's also time and the measure of success in sequence of that time. And so, through the recovery process, which the R's direct relief, recovery, rebuilding we're looking at regeneration right at the at the core of it. It needed to be more than it was before with regards to economics and population base and all those things for where we were at. And so in that I drove across the country visiting small towns.
Tyler Pew:In Greensburg, Kansas, there was a language that someone had given to the community, a grandfather actually, of like we're planting seeds for trees that we'll never see, basically, and that's, I think, whether you, you know, the seven generations kind of view for frameworks or whatever it is.
Tyler Pew:This like long view of time and history is understanding that the immediate response so wants to all of our systems, all of the systems that we've created, as well as human nature wants to recreate what we had at the moment of catastrophic loss.
Tyler Pew:Right, we want to rebuild LA, rebuild Greenville because that's my experience, let me focus on that is like we want to rebuild what we had before, but that is unrealistic.
Tyler Pew:That town was built well over a hundred years, right, la is like long span times of to get to that point of what we know or think of LA or Greenville or wherever paradise, whatever the community is.
Tyler Pew:And so what we can do and this is like architecture training and also very like complex systems looking at strategy, design strategy, which is my niche is how do we intersect people's will and desire at the moment with a vision of where we use this pivot point or this moment in time as a potential to start to change and relook at infrastructure that allows the town to last the 120 years, 200 years kind of thing, the seven generations kind of cycle, and to grow into that, because there's will, desire and interest by the community. And so this decade-long process is very hard to see in the short term, especially immediately after the first seven years. Looking at different communities, that five to seven year mark it's just there's a compression of time and energy. And then it starts to get into the long view of like, ok, we're going to be in the trenches for a very long time to get to a very strong community or what we had before, which will never be what we had before, to be honest.
Sean Knierim:So you said five to seven years and then the hard part start. Like, I think, in Los Angeles, we're hoping five to seven months is going to cover it. Then we'll be ready to start rocking and rolling. Tyler, before we jump into what you mean by complex systems and how these insights of the long haul fit into what you're building in the day to day, could you give us a personal view of what happened when the fire breaks out? Where were you? What's your connection to this community? Because you were a long way away physically when this actually happened. Right, and this changed the course of your life. It's, I think.
Tyler Pew:Yeah, 100%. Elemental P's been based in San Francisco for 14, 15 years now. I forget even the number of it. We started in 2000, 2012. And then with the Dixie wildfire, I actually went home to fight the wildfire on our family's property because my brother was up there, the rest of the family needed to evacuate and so he was up there fighting the fire. My family my brother owns a logging and milling business. We've been in that for four generations. We've dealt with fire my whole life.
Tyler Pew:I'm doing fire watch was one of the earliest jobs I had, and so when family calls you show up is basically it like period.
Tyler Pew:So showed up, was there until July 31st 2021, and saw a lot of really complex systems falling apart and working too in their own and working in different ways for better and worse, and then went left there, came back to San Francisco to work on projects and then in August 4th 2021 is when Greenville was destroyed in less than 30 minutes.
Tyler Pew:And so community and community engagement has always been a huge part of Elemental P and you know, in service of community and also founded an organization called Kid Mob that does design education with youth, and I've worked with the community's youth for many, many years up there and felt a deep responsibility to take my skills as best they could and help out. I didn't realize it was going to be quite the journey that it was in that drove across the first by September, so that was August 4th. By September, I drove across the country trying to visit rural communities that were thriving, not just destroyed but actually, in which we can all agree, are pretty few and far between because of a lot of different reasons extractive based economic systems and resource systems. All of these kinds of things layered over and went to Greensburg, kansas, in particular. That was destroyed in a tornado back in 2007. And that was what it really helped to illuminate the kind of complex systems that you're operating with housing, businesses, infrastructure, community engagement, overall economic position.
Sean Knierim:And then you come back home right after the fires and then immediately go in search of examples. That would be not just to look to study them, to read about them, but you went to actually be in these places to bring that back.
Tyler Pew:Yeah, it's like if Greensburg, kansas is seen as like one of the pinnacles at our scale, right At our scale of rebuilding, joplin Missouri is the other one that comes up quite a bit and those are seen very different reasons, and myself and two others from the community needed to be on the ground and understand what is success and I put that loosely in quotations actually look like it doesn't, look like the town it was before 100%, and so so we needed to look at that and I needed for myself.
Tyler Pew:It's like in early design research you're always looking for precedents and case studies and like what's worked and what hasn't, what is it like manifest and what are the process systems. So it was just incredible. The mayor there gave us two full days. It was absolutely. They were incredibly generous with their time and so it was one realizing this incredible arc that we're going. I went away from Greensburg saying for myself and my role it was two years, five years or 10 years. Those are the commitment arcs that we're in the year four to five right now, and so it's been incredibly rewarding and incredibly taxing and exhausting, all at the same time.
Allan Marks:Let me ask you a question about that, because there's a background in design and architecture. You have an insight into two things right. One is how do you put together a plan, and the other is the process of that. Not just what the plan is, not whether it's substantively a good design or not, for whatever its purpose is, but also the process of input getting input from other designers, from owners, from people doing a plan check, whatever it might be. There's all these different inputs into it. Some are aesthetic and some are practical. So if you apply that to recovery not just rebuilding, but recovery in a social way, not just a physical way, not merely a physical way how does that experience with the design process and kind of sussing out the best ways to solve problems, to get to solutions that work for the most people inform recovery from natural disaster?
Tyler Pew:I think from my personal perspective also. I'm not a licensed architect, I'm a licensed general contractor and we take projects from concept all the way through execution. And so one of the things that construction has given me is the skill set of understanding sequencing really well, like what happens when to get the next thing unlocked, kind of thing. Sequencing really well, like what happens when to get the next thing unlocked, kind of thing. And I was very fortunate to start my career outside of architecture school in San Francisco where interim use projects like guerrilla, like activations were really becoming a norm. They weren't a really significant norm in public space activations until, you know, rebar Group and a few others really started to like push this idea of how do we do tactical urbanism in cities to get things to spur forward, rather than waiting for a 10, 20 year long project to manifest. And so what this comes down to is realizing we needed to have early activations that get people excited and build will and show direction, capture capital. We needed to have food trucks out immediately to capture the contractors that are coming in and spending their per diem, that allow locals to have workforce, workforce development that then can spend local and stay local. And so in design.
Tyler Pew:Sometimes there's a knee-jerk reaction in architecture to say this is the solution, right, so we just put all of our energy to this solution and that might be a solution for the year five. But let's start at the year month two. That spurs to year five, and how can our early activations and engagement build confidence and clarity of what that year five project is? And so for two years I really just listened and supported a lot of the community members that were really interested in the early activations just doing something, the knee jerk reaction to do something, but it may not be in the best strategy. So supporting them and saying like, hey, that's a great idea, but what if we did it slightly differently? That supported the strategy long-term? And then we use that early activation or that public event or whatever it was as a way to build information and learning to what year five project needs to come down the line information and learning to what your five project needs to come down the line.
Sean Knierim:Why were you able to do that? Tyler Like to have that kind of trusted role. Can you talk about how you built that intentionally into this process to be able to work with the community the way you just described?
Tyler Pew:I would say it's not in totality, 100% Like there's. I would say, often when we say community, we paint it with one brush. We have one geographic community, many different cultures is how we refer to it. What I've said is that was laid the foundation for me to even have trust to come into the community was my grandfather, my grandmother. My grandmother and grandfather started one of the churches in the town. Like, have that relationship to the church? Have my mother and father that were key individuals that you know we were raised in the community.
Tyler Pew:It's a small community and so I am very clear that I have an incredible privilege as a designer and also responsibility to walk into that space with a degree of trust already that would not be there otherwise and, to be honest, justifiably so. We had to keep our arms like elbows out for vultures coming into the situation, and so where it's the double edged sword is. I knew, I'm very clear that I do not have all the expertise to do this, but my expertise is building good teams, and so after Greensburg, Kansas, I started cold calling firms from indigenous community experts architects, design just interviewing everyone. Like, how would you address this? What would the team members you would have on there. What would it look like? When would they come in sequencing?
Tyler Pew:And now it's well over 200 firms that I've interviewed at this point and basically built a team that I felt would culturally fit with the community while providing the core competencies and skills that we needed, like town planning or infrastructure improvements or things like that. And so my job was I felt like my responsibility was not doing the work, but it was facilitating the teams to come in and do the work and saying, hey, let's trust these guys, and also helping them to understand hey, don't ask a question this way, Like if you ask it it's triggering to this community, it's a little warm.
Allan Marks:Let me ask you a question about that, that because you talk about community and communities and I'm mindful of your family's background with timber management and you mentioned indigenous communities, because it's certainly Northern California, you know there are indigenous communities that have long relationships to the land, to forest management and to fire cycles within that of course as well, how is the relationship and the exchange now around this recovery compared to how things were before? Is it better?
Tyler Pew:I had an incredible conversation with one of the tribal members, a younger individual, and what he helped me understand is we had a great conversation in that we're not going to fix 100 plus 200 years of atrocities, like, let's be honest, we have not listened, we have even more, caused way more harm than anything, and so we're not going to fix it in our lifetime.
Tyler Pew:But the best we can do is start to make steps in that direction, recognizing the incredible wisdom that indigenous communities have around land management and forest management, that the knowledge base like I've literally generationally seen my grandfather's practice of taking the best, biggest and best to my father's practice of stewardship to now small practices in which we're not touching the forest, and I'm seeing the pendulum swing.
Tyler Pew:We need to engage with the forest, but we need to do it with wisdom that I think we had arrogance before, thinking we had a better way of doing things, and so what I do see is prescribed burning and cultural burning and those kind of practices.
Tyler Pew:What I'm appreciative is there's a new appreciation for indigenous wisdom that was not there before, and hopefully we don't co-opt that and control it at the end of it, like that's what I'm a little nervous of, but more elevate that and really say these communities you know were there, it's the mountain Maidu that have been there since time began and so let's look to their wisdom of how do we manage these land and resources. And the interesting thing is is they're not. They're not radical, they're very common sense. The loggers like for the most part the loggers agree like these are great practices. We look at thinning practices closer to communities. We use cultural and prescribed burning techniques along the hillside, in the valley that keep a healthy environment close to communities, and things like that. So they're not radical is basically it. That's good to hear.
Sean Knierim:So, tyler, as we were talking a month ago, there's a number of things that I wrote down like emboldened and capitalized, when I was sharing with some of my colleagues On this podcast. We've talked about recovery a bunch. We've talked about rebuilding, we've talked about resilience, and something that you added to the list for me was this idea of rejuvenation, and you had some really interesting insights or discoveries that you had about after disasters, what typically occurs in these towns, and I'm wondering if you couldn't talk through a little bit about what you find in that rejuvenation piece and how long it takes to bring back and what you guys tried to do in your hometown to play with this.
Tyler Pew:Yeah, so regeneration needed to be a fundamental principle when we started. If you look at Plumas County's statistics, it's declining population, aging population, lower median income. Like all of the metrics are headed in the wrong direction.
Sean Knierim:That's before the disaster occurs. Before.
Allan Marks:Yeah, before and for a long time.
Tyler Pew:Yeah, exactly, and there's correlations and culturally, you'll see whether it was when the timber decline happened in the 90s and early 2000s, like what are the kind of? What were the mechanisms that produced the situation? We can have disagreements on that and our conversations around that, but this is the reality. We need to understand that. This was a reality that you know. There was knowledge exodus, you know, of young adults because they couldn't get good paying jobs in the community and things like that. So those things were in existence before the fire. And so then it asks the question After the fire, driving across the country. The fundamental question should be asked is should we rebuild At its core, based on the geography and the region and things like that? That is a very hard position to tell or discuss with people. When you're talking about their homes, I hear that 100% and we need to have that conversation right. It's like if we're building in highly compromised spaces that put at risk again, what I recognize is like that's something we're going to have to grapple with whether we want to or not. And so, asking that question, I actually looked to the mountain Maidu. It has the essence for life there. It has good water, good soil. They live there in four seasons because it has a microclimate for it.
Tyler Pew:Yes, we had a catastrophic fire, but it was also with mismanagement of the force and the resources and, let's be honest, the fuel load is drastically different than it was at the time of fire. Like, by definition yeah, exactly, insurance companies still don't see it that way, which is fascinating to me, but that's the side subject. So, yeah, so should we rebuild. And I said, you know, in many, many conversations this wasn't just in my brain as a theoretical exercise. This was like also for me is like is this where I want to put my time, energy resources? And so, in essence, it was like yes, and we have to acknowledge that the metrics were headed in the wrong direction. So how do we actually spur that? And that was something in Greensburg, kansas, that they are realizing more now than they did directly after the tornado forward, which is they really focused on green energy systems. So being the most sustainable town that was. It was kind of a positioning statement and aligned to everyone, meaning governor, mayor, aligned FEMA resources and outside interest in marketing and things like that that spurred the town rebuild.
Tyler Pew:What they realized is they never reached the mark of their economic decline that was already in process, where their tornado dropped them to at about the seven I think it was the seven, eight year mark. They kind of landed at the same spot. They were losing population decline already. Then they had a tornado that exacerbated and made it quicker, kind of thing. But they landed around the same population and what it really came down to is it was a helpful thing, is workforce attainable housing, it's like where anyone in the workforce can afford to live there, like that.
Tyler Pew:It is so fundamentally key and that's the linchpin is basically at the end of the day. But you have to build good infrastructure for good housing and good business, like business district where young families want to be there, and community services all these things operate together. But if you don't have that housing, so they're really trying to like change the curve. They stopped the decline or triage kind of thing, but now they're trying to ramp it back up, and so it was helpful to understand that from Greenville's perspective that we needed to think about that ramp more than we needed to, and so one of the things that I'm incredibly proud of and I'll plug this really quickly is we being community members that are incredibly dedicated to the area retirees that have their stable income. They're in a solid position they had the PG&E settlements are investing back into the community. It is very unique and it's also a defining culture of the community, I'd say, is that?
Allan Marks:because of loyalty, which maybe is typical of the retiree generation? Is it because they already had longstanding ties to the community? And if they'd been transient, maybe that wouldn't be so deep?
Tyler Pew:A combination of the two. I would say. It's also a deep commitment to the area and deep commitment to young families being in the area and including new ones coming in Correct.
Tyler Pew:It's like we we know we need to grow population, so that means newness, which is really hard, right At the same time and we'll grapple with it with.
Tyler Pew:You know, every post disaster community will grapple with this new influx that has to happen as you have an exodus of individuals that, let's be honest, this is a traumatic environment that has deep history to it. Because of that, some people need to move, like that's their call, and so a group of and it's not just for retirees, it's been really incredible Built a program called Welcome Home Greenville. So we're building three bedroom, two bath manufactured homes for less than 300K. Our current sales price is 285K. That's what we're looking at with the front porch, and so this is as close as we can get to a starter home for workforces basically, mind you, the median or the average home sale price in Plymouth County right now is like $545. So it's like we are already starting to meet some of the demand or need, and the first home will be up for sale in this next month, which is incredible. So it's a testament to the community.
Allan Marks:Yeah, that's incredible. Were there steps taken by the government locally to expedite kind of the rebuilding, like you look at standardized plans, for example, or approvals of building and construction, getting the permits, getting the inspections as you're doing the construction jobs? That were helpful as well. There were any different than they were before.
Tyler Pew:Yeah. So massive shout out to Tracy Ferguson, our planning director. She's utterly incredible. We wouldn't have been in the position, and her and some of the other staff in the county and stuff like that wouldn't have been in the position, and her and some of the other staff in the county and stuff like that. Again, context here like you know, we're a county the size of Rhode Island but a population of like 15,000 people, right, so it's it's very different, contextual of like. So we did pre-approved plans. She got the ADU pre-approved plans and as well her and her team. So I think there's last I checked maybe 17 pre-approved plans. That number I'd have to get right. Those included three cross-laminated timber homes that were constructed, so new building technologies, higher fire resilience that were constructed in the area as well, got those pre-approved plans, as well as a couple other stick frame construction and a couple others that were built and so those move forward. I think we didn't see a massive tick up of those pre-approved plans. There wasn't like a hundred. You know, I think our housing stock was at 695, if I remember right these numbers. I've chosen to forget, in some ways, all of this data in my brain. Long story short yeah, we and that was there wasn't a huge usage of those we did.
Tyler Pew:Title 25, which is a way of creating, like single family, lots greater than an acre, so less density. There's deregulation that can happen per the county. There's challenges to this, looking at larger systems of the resale price of the potential lot and also the insurability of it. So every great idea has 16 different caveats around. It is basically it, and so they were helpful and also fully at capacity and still are right. You think about any. This is where I have an incredible appreciation for anyone working at state or county levels or city levels is just like you end up having your day job planning director and then all of a sudden you're doing wildfire recovery and long-term planning like on top of that and you're already taxed in that existing role oftentimes.
Sean Knierim:And if you lost a home, you're also figuring out what to do with the loss of property in that fire 100%. When we spoke, tyler, it stuck with me. You lamented that there was no manual to go grab right in this. That would have saved you from driving across the country or would have like given you some indication of what's the sequencing and the process. You also talked about how, in your experience, the process is likely going to be pretty similar in any community that comes through this type of natural disaster, but the resources and the constraints are quite different. I'm interested if you were and you kind of are now building at least a version of a manual that others might take from. How are you going to build that manual so that others can benefit from it?
Tyler Pew:Yeah, I kind of laughed when the first time. They were like no natural disaster is the same. I'm like, come on, they got to be really similar. It's basically it.
Tyler Pew:Now I realize how different they are, but there is kind of a general matrix right of things. Like everyone has to deal with hazardous debris removal it's different in a fire than it is in a tornado, but you still have to go through that process. What is that process Depends on the state and what the regulations are and what you got to do. So there's nuance to it. But overall there's a matrix is basically how I see it in my brain of these kind of phases that you have to go through, these key elements that have major factors like insurability. Was there, is there, legal action against someone that caused it? Or was it an act of God, like which? Where does it? Where does it sit? And so the best we've been able to do is we have a three and a half year index is what we call it of all of the work that we produced and kind of the sequence of that work that we've done, and for me, from a designer standpoint, it follows a very like planning and systems approach or a planning approach through design thinking exercises right. We start with the discovery phase of like, where are we at, what were we, where do we want to go, kind of thing. Then there's a vision when do we want to go, how does that look, what are the resources? And then we start to plan the town center and things like that. While that's happening, we still need to look at the larger projects and infrastructure and utilities and things like that. And so I think we've I'm pretty proud of what we've done with regards to the planning process because we fast tracked it.
Tyler Pew:Best estimate in my mind is about 18 months to two years. We're ahead of the curve and why that could happen is the nonprofit sector came in. So typically there's a long-term recovery group and then there's the city county governments and the city county governments then have state government and then federal government and all are trying to work per their prescription and they're very much directive Right and they work as fast as they can no, faster is basically it Right. And then there's the nonprofit sector. That really can be the early catalyst and that's what you know. We saw we had funding positions in the nonprofit to fund the early planning work through the Dixie Fire Collaborative, which was the long term recovery group, to do the community engagement, to do the on the ground truth, basically making things real, building up that community engagement and direction, to be able to hand that off to the long term recovery plan that comes in when it can, which is two to three years kind of into the process, just naturally.
Tyler Pew:And so I think that process of nonprofits, for-profits, government sectors, all foundations, all kind of working to not together on the same thing but in the same direction at least. Another example of that is Funders Roundtable. I think that was an incredible resource. So what we did is we had a ton of foundations all interested in funding projects, but some being local, some not being local, some being, you know, outside and not knowing where money should go. Basically, they formed a roundtable that then allowed any ask to come to that. That got vetted from kind of different directions and then funders were able to fund parts of projects rather than the entirety of a project and feel like they're just like putting their money on one thing kind of.
Allan Marks:Thing.
Tyler Pew:And that helped a lot of projects really move forward in a much more collaborative manner than typically we'd have.
Allan Marks:So what is a roundtable or something else? How do you facilitate the communication with people, whether they're owners or renters or businesses? You know, when they're dispersed, they're in temporary housing or maybe they've left the area. How do you?
Tyler Pew:get their input and keep them in touch with the other stakeholders and the governments as best we could. Not very well is what I would say. Like I think our earliest effort was the strongest, in which this is where, going to systems and processes, we needed to create a database of who the community was, so names, addresses, are you safe? Not, this is early on. This was January 2022, november. So also with the fire, it wasn't out until November. Right, it wasn't actually put out. So it's like August 4th.
Tyler Pew:This was a long duration, an incredible long standing traumatic situation that also has long term, long economic impacts in the duration. So, long story short, myself and Sue Weber, who is a key. So again, community members will start to rise to the surface based on skills and capacity. Hers is really in direct relief and recovery mad skills in that area. She came in and her and I just got frustrated that everyone was talking about a computer program or a system to document everyone. So she just got frustrated and she sat down and created an Excel spreadsheet and then used Landglide to track, basically pull out every community member's name. Then we worked with the Rotary to cold call all of the community members to find out where they were at. Are you safe, do you need support, do you want to be in contact, things like that. And so that built the database that then FEMA and CaliOS and the other entities mainly through the nonprofits that were the disaster case managers could then rely on, as it's saying oh, this is the community, and so that's what we started.
Tyler Pew:Then, from there, we did a ton of in-person events. We had a monthly Dixie Fire collaborative meeting that was on a Saturday. So, again, it was good that it was on a Saturday, because that worked for a lot of retirees in our community, but it didn't work for families, so it wasn't the best. And so it was just like this constant toggling of like how do you move forward? Where people feel a part of the process Based on everything that we've done and my kind of entrepreneurial brain, which is always running, and it was like that is the sector that has the most like a contact database, communication kind of platform, like it just can move communication and ensure people remember what they attended and what they voted on, because we're having this. People attended meetings 2022 and 23. And then, now that the projects are manifesting, they're like what is this kind of thing? And I was like, oh remember, we were at a meeting where you approved this.
Allan Marks:Yeah, remember you voted. There was a sticky note and a dot and you, you put it up there and I have a photo of you and they're like, oh, I didn't realize that was this.
Tyler Pew:I was like, okay, and there's nothing against the people, like what the brain is going through in these traumatic events is. It's a lot memory, a few memories going out the doors.
Allan Marks:I suppose schools and you know, churches or houses of worship and and maybe sports leagues or things. There's a lot of other community organizations that probably are also helpful in facilitating that.
Tyler Pew:Yeah, 100%, and we tried to you know the saying to meet people where they're at. One of the things that I was proud of is in 2023, we needed to build capacity and outreach and communication. So I ran a summer internship program with 10 architecture students that came and lived up in the community for 10 weeks and so all of a sudden, you have 10 people that can go to the grocery store and talk to people or like be at the you know, at the gold diggers days and things like that that can also, when you're in a community, sometimes you can't hear each other not a whole concept but outsiders that were coming in very deeply empathetic, especially students, where there's not a hierarchical like a consultant and the community member. It's like very equal footing. This group of interns was absolutely incredible and pivotal in creating like really robust.
Allan Marks:And has there been collaboration with people in other communities that are affected by the Dixie Fire or the Camp Fire in Northern California or other incidents that may have affected similar communities?
Tyler Pew:Yeah, there's been like Camp Firefire we have a pretty strong connection with through Patrick Joseph who's the coordinator for the Dixie Fire Collaborative. Now, Also like entities that have been successful, meaning that they've been able to meet the community needs and economically be viable, which those things need to. We're looking at bringing them in into the community to support and just building, because they've been through a process. But yeah, so it's like continual outreach after the fire is an organization that's done policy work. It's been good. At the end of the day I would say it's like finding the right, you know, sister community that has a cultural alignment is basically at the end of the day, because then there's ease of communication and understanding of just like what are our values.
Sean Knierim:So, tyler, over the last episodes we've been talking to different individuals that will talk through the collective reactions and experience of coming through a disaster like this and also the individual responses where sometimes there's, like this, a high that you're going through because you're feeling progress is being made. Then there's a collective challenge that you're going to have to face. So you're a few years into this and, plus, you've talked to many communities around the country that has gone through similar things. Anything that comes out to you of different phases or gates that you go through I think at one point you said, year three to four, you go into the gates of hell. I think was the quote, which is a little scary because we're still two and a half years away from that in Los Angeles. But what's your experience of what it's like going through this stuff?
Tyler Pew:There's definitely arcs of the emotional responses like sociologically what's happening, the heroistic curve, I think, at the beginning, and then that starts to arc and drop down. You'll see leadership start to burn out in year three to five. We saw it and are in that right now. If you look at Greensburg, kansas, there's also write ups around kind of the backlash of progress kind of thing is like if people are moving forward there's a rubber banding kind of that happens within community members, where it's like we've been moving forward and also the community feels left behind at some level. It's just going to be part of the process and so with that, leadership changes over and so there might be a little bit more slowing of the process and slowing and moving forward and then with each individual, like you're saying, it's their own roller coaster arc, depending on.
Tyler Pew:I mean, there were days and, to be clear, I didn't lose my home. I didn't lose. I was living outside of the community and moved back to the community by choice. I have a different privilege, I would say, than those that didn't have that choice and I recognize that and I can see how going to the grocery store and getting a bag of chips can be the worst day of someone's life, because that was the bag of chips at the day of the fire, like, yeah, triggering I don't know. Yeah, and so yeah. In that I would just say one of the gifts of a community member was like soft on people, hard on projects. I was like I like that. It was like let's move projects and like soft on people and that goes up to everyone, even those that I absolutely disagree with kind of need to be soft on each other kind of in this process.
Sean Knierim:For those that are going through it as a follow-up to that, those that are going through it as a follow up to that, those that are going through it, or for those that know people or care about communities that are going through this things that you've seen, mitigating kind of the downturns or supporting to be able to sustain some of the kind of the winds that come through Anything that you would just share with others of like. Keep this in mind when you're working yourself, coming through this or supporting others that are going through it.
Tyler Pew:Our community is really strong in like roll up your sleeves and get it done, kind of thing, and that is an incredible strength to our. It is part of the equation for resilience for our community, like that culture. What we're not as good at is like celebrating the wins, like slowing down and like having like community, like kind of suppers where everyone comes together that are outside of just like a monthly event kind of thing. Right, that it's like hey, we did this, let's all come together, kind of thing. And so what I would say is my hypothesis and I have no basis of this, so this is purely experiential hypothesis is that the beginning phases will draw the leadership that likes to get things done, like wants to move they're like problem, let's move into solution state, let's start to move that.
Tyler Pew:And the individuals that fall into those leadership drive, meaning out of the execution of things, not as much around the celebration of it, whereas those that are seeing it, or a part of it, or beside it, it's the celebration or it's the social connection, that that's what will keep them sticky into the community, right, it will keep them close. And so what I would say is like if we could have built a really strong communication mechanism, whether that's whatever, it is a really good, strong communication platform that people felt part of and it was, you know, two-way and celebrated wins. I think we would have. We would be able to process trauma a bit better. That's purely a hypothesis.
Allan Marks:And so let me ask you a question though, tyler, on that. It's interesting because you know you think about barn raising not in a community which is recovering, but just in a healthy rural community, say, or, for that matter, in a big city where you're cutting the ribbon on the new, you know, say, or, for that matter, in a big city where you're cutting the ribbon on the new, you know, transit terminal or the new art museum or wherever it might be, people can celebrate it, maybe in part because there's no trauma to process. And if barn raising is both a party to celebrate that you raised it and it's everybody getting in together and, you know, rolling up their sleeves and getting it done as a team for the community, I suspect that when you have the win of rebuilding after the trauma of, you know, the community loss, it's always going to be tinged with that kind of what was or what could have been, in a way that might make it hard to celebrate.
Tyler Pew:Yeah, I think that's good, really good perspective and point and I think I looked at like Joplin, missouri, my understanding of it. One of the reasons why I was able to recover is because of the strong, shared, cultural, like faith-based community that allowed barn raising of one house yeah, right, right, and so which then becomes an identifier for the community of this is what we do for young families to come in and actually helped raise the, be able to go into that regenerative kind of space. And so I think with our community you could see it working well with like the rotary group that relied on each other to do projects and then celebrate each of those projects very much the doing aspect of it. I think what is hard is depending on the culture of the community. We have a very high like rugged, individual kind of culture, bootstraps like pioneering, and that spirit is like super valuable and also super challenging. Sometimes when you're trying to build community right, everyone's kind of moving individually and so I think with like LA or any of the other communities is identifying like, okay, what is our strength, our cultural strength as a community? Like what, what are identifying principles of our community? That is a strength, how does that become a weakness and how do we kind of build processes to help address that? Because then that'll give us space of like, shared experience, post-trauma, defining what is rebuild and like.
Tyler Pew:If we say rebuilding, what does that mean? Is it a building? Is it the town exactly like it was before? Is it, you know, a gas station? Like we, I broke it into a series of phases. At the beginning, not I but the leadership team, I should say, broke it into a series of our first thing was five critical assets that we needed to have. Back. Then it was looking at what are the things around that would support homeowners, and then around that, what would support kind of businesses and economic kind of recovery, as well as the social institutions. And those five critical resources was like the bank, the gas station, post office, school, library. So the core question would be is in community that has experienced trauma, how do you create space for shared experience and wins when the win may trigger the trauma at the end? Yes, I think that's a good way to put it. Yeah, I don't know. I think each community would have to come up with that. It's cool, good thought.
Sean Knierim:So, tyler, a question, kind of pulling this down to the individual level. And then we have a question we ask everyone, as, as we close these off, yourself, as you've been working through this and you've been working hard, coming into, choosing to move back to this world and to work as hard as you have over the last few years, and you've you're in this slog period, right, you are officially into the gates of hell. In the time that you've been there, how are you taking care of yourself or how are you seeing others that are doing a good job taking care of themselves? Any takeaways you have for what's necessary to be able to sustain this level of emotional, spiritual, mental, community effort required to keep?
Tyler Pew:pushing forward. I would say, some days not so well is basically it, some days better. But I think for me it goes back to the definition of resilience. And as soon as I start holding things with closed fists, I'm not holding like, I'm not in a resilient space for myself, like realizing that when I start going like this I can realize the small I ego is just like this is what I believe has to happen for the next thing to has to happen, and every time I've done that I've had to basically take a giant step back because it's not around Again.
Tyler Pew:If we're doing something for seven generations, it's about doing the best we can now supporting in the repair of relationships and building an infrastructure and kind of those kind of things like that. That's the recovery right. That's the rebuilding right. That's the rebuilding is the social, social repair that needs to happen right between individuals and themselves, between community members and that.
Tyler Pew:And so as soon as I start hurting with a closed fist, that's when I can walk away and what it's given me perspective of and kind of is I have no control over the recovery. I really don't. It is going to go where it's going to go and it's. I get to choose whether this is how I want to spend my time, and so far I've been utterly privileged to spend my time with incredible leadership and incredible visionaries and impart my skill set, which is as an architect, creating a vision of a future Right, and then as a contractor, starting to hammer some nails and do a little bit of work kind of thing. And so that, for me, has been how I take care of myself, is releasing myself from the belief that I have control over this situation.
Allan Marks:That's beautifully said. Instead of grasping at that illusion of control, you're opening your hand to give what you can and accepting a situation and then, with others, improving it together realistically.
Tyler Pew:Yep.
Allan Marks:What real short answer. What, then, is the thing that gives you the most hope, or a long answer if you feel you need it.
Tyler Pew:I mean I struggle with hope as a word kind of thing.
Tyler Pew:I'd say I'm hopeful, I'm not optimistic of our future. I think our futures are going to be very painful in what we versus what I've experienced in mine. But going back to the word resilience, that's why I love working with youth Like Kid Mob is like they there's not even a word resilience, it's just built in to the brain and the response and how they think and the kind of connective tissues that they can see, that are out there kind of thing. And so, especially talking with youth around this and working with California College of the Arts and the partnership that we had with them and Young Architect, we're hungry for solutions, not in the way that we've had through the last 150 years, of a very product based like this is a solution kind of thing. It's like they're hungry for building healthy social systems and healthy relationships and healthy building systems and things like that that actually work with environments, not are the solution kind of thing. And so, in short, I'm hopeful because the young individuals I get the privilege of working with yeah that's what I'm hopeful for.
Sean Knierim:Yeah, amen to that, tyler, that was. This has been such a great conversation. Thank you for joining us. I really hope a lot of people who listen to this share this on with some others that might be able to benefit from some of the wisdom that you've shared with us. But really grateful that you'd come on to Shared Ground with Alan and me and spend this time just sharing your experience.
Tyler Pew:Yes, Thank you very, very much. Thank you both very much. It's been an honor.
Sean Knierim:This has been another episode of Shared Ground, a podcast about resilience and community.
Allan Marks:Follow us on your favorite platform or learn more at www. shared-ground. com.