'The Other Side of Tragedy'

No one is sure what started last fall’s wildfires that engulfed much of wine country in Sonoma Valley, California. But as of late October, the result was 44 people killed, an estimated 8,900 structures burned, and at least 245,000 acres of land destroyed, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.

The fires came close to, but did not directly impact, Sonoma State University. A field across the street from campus burned, but most of the fire’s major activity was limited to the nearby hills, says William Silver, then dean and now professor of leadership at Sonoma State’s School of Business & Economics (SBE). Even so, the campus community was evacuated to make sure everyone was out of harm’s way. More dangerous than the fire was the cloud of smoke that hung over the campus and surrounding area. For that reason, anyone in the area was asked to wear a mask to filter the air.

“We’ve been under threat of fires in the hills and off in the woods, but we’ve never had a fire that took out so many homes and flared in so many different areas,” says Silver. “It’s tough to see a chimney standing or slag glass and know that was a person’s home. I can only imagine that’s what war looks like.”

The university had general emergency response protocols prepared, in terms of closing campus, for example. But the business school “didn’t have a dialogue that spelled out what to do during a crisis like this. We had been more focused on what to do during an economic fallout, such as California’s tremendous budget crisis that happened when I first got here in 2008.”

But the wildfires highlighted a real need to have such a plan in place. Sonoma State University is the only comprehensive university to serve six California counties, where the population is both suburban, in cities such as San Jose, and agrarian, in areas devoted to farming and wine production. “If you’re in a place with 50 other universities, it’s a different story, but here we’re the only educational catalyst of economic prosperity,” says Silver. “We’re the one that has to make things happen.”

Getting the Message Out

As the fires intensified, Silver’s first order of business was to send a message out to everyone on the SBE’s mailing list—which included faculty, staff, and students, as well as alumni, businesses, and practitioners—both to ask if each person was safe and to make clear that the business school could offer help if needed. In addition, within the first two days of the fires, the SBE started a Facebook group where people who needed help, such as a place to stay as hotels quickly filled, could connect with those who could offer it. At that point, Silver explains, the university began to take a more formal leadership role, which included collecting data on each individual community member’s status and assessing his or her needs.

Silver was among those who had to evacuate from their homes, but even while he was displaced he remained in close communication with the SBE community throughout the crisis. He admits it was tricky to strike the right balance between helping people handle the immediate emergency and looking ahead to what needed to be done next.

“We didn’t have a dialogue that spelled out what to do during a crisis like this. We had been more focused on what to do during an economic fallout.”

“How do we strike that balance when we’re still in the middle of the crisis, with new fires emerging?” he asks. “Yet, we needed to look toward the future and send out a message of hope and positivity. We needed to express that we’re going to emerge from this, that we’re going to be OK. We had to be sensitive to those who were still in crisis, but we couldn’t convey that we were in a disaster zone that was never going to recover.”

He points to news stories that often focus on the most negative images from any disaster, not the parts of the community that remain unaffected. “National media coverage often is sensationalized to the negative,” he says. “While there has been a tragic loss of homes, most of the homes in Santa Rosa—95 percent—are still standing. Most of our land was not burned. On the other side of this tragedy, the fundamental foundation and infrastructure are still here.”

Many at the university were personally affected, including Sonoma State’s president, Judy Sakaki. Sakaki and her husband woke up at 4:30 on a Saturday morning to discover their house was on fire. They ran from their home with just the clothes on their backs, only to find that the other houses in their neighborhood also were aflame. “Fortunately, a fireman who came by to do a final sweep of the area picked them up,” says Silver. “They had missed the evacuation call that came two hours earlier. They just got out with their lives.”

With so many people who had been evacuated, or who had lost their homes altogether, the university set up an emergency operations center to help people through the first couple of days. Silver says that almost everyone he knew was helping out, in whatever way they could. “My kids and I delivered Drumstick ice cream cones to the police officers who were there to quarantine the area, protect homes from looters, and help with further evacuations,” he says. His wife, a pediatrician, helped with people’s medical needs, and many in the university community delivered food and provided emotional support at emergency shelters.

Opportunities to Learn

The week after the fires were contained, the SBE’s leadership joined the regional rebuilding effort. On October 25, the SBE’s Wine Business Institute (WBI) held a meeting of regional wine industry leaders, who assessed the damage and discussed recovery strategies. In addition, Silver joined a newly created nonprofit called RebuildNorthBay.org (RNB), a group of community leaders that plans to work “to fully understand and critique … how the disaster was managed by both the public and private sectors and establish policies and procedures for the future,” according to an RNB statement. As its first step, the organization retained a consulting firm with expertise in disaster preparedness and recovery to assess how well the community responded to the wildfires, managed communications, and deployed resources.

The SBE faculty want to keep these conversations going, because the biggest danger to rebuilding is lack of action, Silver stresses. He points to advice he received from SBE faculty member and humanitarian logistics expert Anisya Fritz. “She has advised us that, in the beginning, a lot of people are setting up funds and doing the urgent and immediate humanitarian work, but those efforts can fall apart in the mid- to long-term,” he says. “We now must figure out how we can best use our leadership role for the rebuilding effort.”

“We now must figure out how we can best use our leadership role for the rebuilding effort.”

Through the WBI and RNB, the business school community will work closely with public and private sector leaders to address immediate funding needs and help shape effective legislation and regulation related to helping the region rebuild. “By gathering leaders across sectors, we can address environmental issues, help shape economic development, and partner with organizations that are raising funds for those impacted in the various communities,” Silver says.

Like leaders at other business schools affected by tragic events, Silver says that one of the greatest lessons he has learned is just how strong a community can be in times of crisis. “For all the differences we hear about in the world right now, to be part of something where people are coming together is just inspiring,” he says.

At the same time, Silver cautions other business school leaders to be careful of the language they use as they communicate to the community during a widespread emergency. “To me, these fires were a crisis, but not necessarily a disaster. And in any crisis come opportunities and lessons learned,” says Silver. “I don’t want to diminish the tragedies of those who have lost houses, or even their lives. But I’m a naturally optimistic person, and I think that when we use a word like ‘disaster,’ it can be a self-fulfilling prophecy.”