Haines shares what it learned from deadly 2020 landslide

More than 140 miles away in Juneau, Sylvia Heinz picked up her phone and read the news of the fatal landslide in Wrangell.

"I put my phone down. I couldn't read it. I couldn't think about it. I felt sick to my stomach," Heinz said. "My second thought was, 'I wish I was there because now I have all of this experience and resources and I hate for that to go to waste.'"

She's not alone. Several people in Haines said hearing about Wrangell's Nov. 20 landslide triggered memories and emotions they're still dealing with years after a winter storm in 2020 caused widespread damage and a massive landslide in Haines that killed two people.

Heinz was instrumental in helping Haines respond. First, she was the logistics section chief for the community's emergency operations center. Then she transitioned into working with Haines' Long-Term Recovery Group, coordinating between government, nonprofits and tribal disaster response efforts.

Once the foundation for recovery efforts was laid, she was hired by the Chilkoot Indian Association as their reconstruction project manager.

Heinz and Sara Chapell, who chaired the Long-Term Recovery Group, and then-Mayor Doug Olerud, who had just taken office when the landslide struck, said they learned a lot of lessons about disaster recovery that they want to share, even though it takes an emotional toll.

"It's tough because you want to help people," Olerud said. "If there's something that they can learn from us that makes them get through that trauma quicker and easier and helps people in their recovery, you want to do that."

YOU'RE NOT ALONE

When Heinz first joined the disaster recovery efforts, there was a lot she didn't know and there's no book or manual to decode the disaster-recovery process. Every disaster is different, each community has different needs and access to resources.

"I wish I knew who to reach out to for what," she said.

Instead, it was a slow, continuous process of learning. But, there were many people who had been through the issues with their own communities, or who worked for organizations that specialize in helping communities rebound who stepped in to help her along the way.

For example, Heinz said a woman from the Mennonite Disaster Services visited Haines. That organization coordinates volunteers to repair and rebuild homes for people affected by disasters.

"They decided Haines didn't really fit. They weren't able to help us with reconstruction efforts," Heinz said.

But the woman pointed her toward a community in the Lower 48 that had been wiped out by fire twice, and its recovery group knew what they were doing.

"For each case, they had a little cover sheet and a story write-up. Everything was confidential, of course. But they had written - essentially - a one-page story of the family(ies) and what their challenges were and then pictures and also really accurate numbers and data for each of these."

Those case files made it easier for people in disaster-recovery organizations to come in and see exactly what the needs were and how they could help.

"As soon as I saw that, I started doing that, using that. And that's how I started to access more resources," Heinz said of the Haines efforts.

STRENGTH IN DIVERSITY

The Haines Long-Term Recovery Group came together quickly in December 2020.

It had Chilkoot Indian Association employees, people from SAIL (Southeast Alaska Independent Living) which specializes in helping people with disabilities or mental health challenges. There were members from faith-based organizations, the community foundation and the state.

Heinz said she learned about the importance of that kind of diversity and representation firsthand when she volunteered about nine months later to help with Hurricane Ida recovery in Louisiana.

"When I first got down there, I was kind of pissed off. I was getting triggered left and right. Because, on the one hand, there was so much devastation around me and I could really relate to all the people who lost their homes," she said. "At the same time, I'm in a parking lot where there's like - as far as the eye can see - trailers and personnel. (I thought} 'If I could just take one-one-thousandth of those resources, I could do so much for Haines.'"

But at the same time, people in Louisiana were falling through the cracks.

"I needed someone to sign a form and he was having trouble signing. And from my experience with our recovery group, it tipped me off that there was more at play," she said.

She asked to go inside his home.

"I walked in and there were these three small children on a moldy mattress. There was mold up to the ceiling," she said.

Nobody had any idea there was interior damage in this home.

"That would never happen in Haines," Heinz said. "What we have is connection. People are not as likely to fall through the cracks in small areas."

Chapell said it's also important for people to realize that disaster aid should be distributed according to need.

"It's easy to think like, 'Oh there's $100,000 and 10 families. Everybody's going to get $10,000 bucks,'" Chapell said.

"That's why you form a coalition effort so the nonprofits, faith organizations and the tribes are really working together to figure out who are the folks out there who are the most affected with perhaps the least amount of resources to handle their individual needs," she said.

GOVERNMENT

CAN ONLY

DO SO MUCH

When it comes to resources, Olerud said he was in for a rude awakening as the community transitioned from response to recovery.

"I kept thinking FEMA. FEMA is going to come in," he said. "And then hearing the limited amount of help that was coming was shocking to me."

The federal agency capped assistance for individuals and households at somewhere between $18,000 and $36,000 depending on a few factors.

Olerud said it was eye-opening for him. "A person could lose their house and only get $18,000. It's like, wait a second what? How does that happen?"

From the beginning, Olerud said one of his goals was to try and work with people to make them whole. "There's no way to do it," he said.

Ultimately, he said, local, state and federal governments don't have the resources to fully restore people. So, it's up to outside groups.

"This is where the Long-Term Recovery Group did an outstanding job for Haines. They were able to function in a way that the borough and state government couldn't," he said. "They were able to find groups ... that came in and that was huge. They took over the scene on several houses where the owners had no way forward."

PRIORITIZE

MENTAL HEALTH

In December 2020, people in Haines were already on edge. The community was coping with the COVID-19 pandemic and that meant masks and tests and isolating from each other.

Heinz said the landslide was traumatizing for many in the community.

"That was a huge betrayal. These mountains that are part of our identity, that we love, killed our people," she said. "Mountains are supposed to be solid, your homes are supposed to be safe. And all of the sudden you have to deal with the reality that they're not. ... You're also dealing with just the reality that life is unstable and the illusion of control. And that's pretty hard for us humans."

One issue that came up in the immediate aftermath was the lack of mental health resources in town.

Bartlett Regional Hospital in Juneau sent a team of trauma specialists in the beginning to help with therapy. Heinz said she took advantage of it.

"But the mental health needs continue for years," she said. "All of Haines is affected by ... this landslide in Wrangell. Those triggers continue."

As the days and months pass after a disaster, community mental health needs change.

"There's generally a honeymoon period where the community is together and they're all there for each other and love each other and you feel kind of strong and on this high in the face of such devastation and destruction and grief," Heinz said.

"But then the community continues into the process of recovery and the road is so long and the needs are so vast and the resources are so slim. In the cycle of disaster, there's an oncoming slump."

Olerud focused on telling people in as many ways as possible that they needed to think about their mental health and remember that their friends and neighbors were traumatized.

He said it's important to remember that the first responders, borough staff and people who are managing the disaster recovery are equally affected.

"They're going to have people that are calling them that are in trauma, that are calling and transferring that trauma to the person that's trying to help them," he said. "And especially when you can't help. You've got somebody that is a community member and somebody you care about and they call you looking for you to help and you can't. That was the hardest thing for me ... so many people wanted help and you don't have the capacity to do it."

Chapell said Haines was lucky in that external organizations pursued mental health funding.

"Chilkoot Indian Association went out and secured a large federal grant at the same time that Chilkat Valley Community Foundation secured a no-fee fund through the Alaska Community Foundation. ... Those were like two different entities that went out and found these big chunks of money into the community so we had access to funding that otherwise wasn't there before."