On August 8, 2023, the power went out at 5:59 a.m., just as the last drip of coffee fell into Kim Williams Stiller’s mug.
At that moment, Williams Stiller was at the top of her professional game. Formerly a schoolteacher for 13 years, the Maui-based account executive at the 2016 Counselor Family Business of the Year, Williams & Associates (asi/360450), had joined the firm only after proving her commitment to her father, Bert Williams, in a formal interview. Her sales had climbed nearly 80% the year before, and just months earlier, she’d been named an ASI Media Distributor Salesperson of the Year finalist. Clients in hospitality and tourism raved about her persistence and kindness.
So, when the lights stayed out and the silence lingered, she refused to waste the day. Unable to work from her Kahana, HI, condo or her office in Lahaina 8 miles away, she and her husband loaded up the car with their dog to deliver products to clients across the west side of the island.
The trip was fraught from the start, with traffic at a near standstill and roads blocked by downed power poles and trees. It took four-and-a-half hours to drive what would normally take 15 minutes. Still, they pressed forward and reached their destination of Kahului, a town on the north central shore of the island. When they tried to go back, the road was closed. Williams Stiller (like thousands of island residents who received no emergency alerts that day) had no idea why. They sat in their car and waited.
During that time, one of her employees, Rowie Castro, was able to connect with her for exactly 90 seconds – a miracle, considering that all cell and radio communication in Lahaina was down – and said she had to evacuate her home. It was just enough time for Williams Stiller to give Castro the lockbox code to her condo – a stroke of fortune that allowed Castro, eight others, and a cat, a dog and a small goat to evacuate safely.
With no way back, Williams Stiller, her husband and their dog drove to her niece’s house in nearby Waikapu. There, she began piecing together the truth: A wildfire had swept through Lahaina. The damage was catastrophic. Shock overtook her. Miles away from the blaze, she was able to call another of her employees, Heather Ganis, who was in California taking her daughter to college. Ganis had no way to reach her family in Lahaina to know if they were safe. “We fell asleep on the phone, crying together,” Williams Stiller remembers.
The Lahaina wildfire was the worst natural disaster in Hawaii’s history. Two years later, families and businesses in this coastal Hawaii town are still struggling to recover, many left with no home to return to and no way to earn a living. The people who remain have worked tirelessly to help each other and rebuild Lahaina as they recover from the extreme physical damage and emotional toll wrought by the fires.
“After living through such a disaster, you never know what it’s like until it happens to you,” says Charlie Osborn, whose business Island Printing & Imaging (IPI) was destroyed by the Lahaina fire.
The road to recovery has been long and trying. From the ashes, print and promo professionals cleared debris and reshaped their businesses after their local clientele had been decimated. Still, from unimaginable hardship, something remarkable has emerged: hope.
Read this full feature, complete with firsthand stories and accounts, on ASI Central.
