From The Conversation, this is Don't Call Me Resilient. I'm Vanita Srivastava. Indiana Jones is a photocopy of a photocopy that points back to an original person that also helps us understand why these histories of archeology had really problematic roots and how there's some pieces of Indiana Jones we might think are totally unreal, but if you look closely, you realize, oh, this is actually related to a moment in history. I love watching a good adventure movie, especially at the start of summer. I have some great memories of eating popcorn in my suburban movie theater, watching aliens take over a spaceship, or a group of kids hunt down lost treasure in an underground cave. At the same time, even as a kid, I remember thinking how awful some of the racial and gender stereotypes were. I specifically remember watching Indiana Jones and The Temple of Doom, and cringing at the representations on screen, especially the ruthless and flat-dimension South Asian characters, and the ridiculous idea that South Asians ate monkey brains.  Anyway, those of you who grew up watching Indy know what I mean. Need to mention the fact that Indiana Jones comes from that mid-century brand of Euro-American white archaeologists who believed foreign artifacts belonged in a western museum. Well, the final Indiana Jones movie is coming out tomorrow, 42 years after the first movie was released, and as the series comes to an end, it's hard to know how to feel about it, highly problematic stories, or guilty pleasure, or canopy bull. Christopher Haney has spent a lot of time thinking about this. He's written a book about the original Indiana Jones, and this week wrote a great piece in The New Yorker about it. He's a professor of Latin American history at Penn State University, and he's here today on the pod, our last episode of the season, to unpack everything Indiana Jones. Welcome, Christopher. Thank you so much for being here. Thank you so much for having me, Vinita. I read your article in The New Yorker, and you do. You clearly have a lot of love for Indiana Jones. Can you tell me how that started for you? I'm 42, and I'm about a month older than the original Indiana Jones movie. So I did not see it in the theaters, but the very first one I saw was Last Crusade on video, and there was just something about the story and also the relationship between Indy and his dad that made me fall in love with it, because it seemed to be all about learning about the past, solving mysteries, maybe fighting more over the past than necessarily learning about it, but also being with a parent and adventuring together. But it took me a long time to figure out how I felt about it in a more complicated way, because as a white American male who was very easily able to identify with the main character, it took me a while to realize the problems in it. Did it spark a kind of love for you for some of the work that you do today? Absolutely. Soon after seeing that first movie, I remember getting a book about The Legends of the Holy Grail, which now I, looking back and not realizing it was mostly myth and not actual history. And when I went into college, I thought I was going to be an archaeologist of the Andes and studied Peruvian archaeology for one hot semester, but I had a professor of Latin American literature who showed me the manuscript of an Andean chronicler named Guaman Poma de Ayala, who was writing about the Incas in the early 17th century. And I had my mind blown. I realized, oh, archaeology seems to have told me that it's the story of the past and of people who have disappeared and that there's some sort of mystery to be solved. And here's somebody from the Andes talking about the Incas as a present thing and who lived on. And so after that, I shifted from archaeology to Andean history, but retained a love and interest to exactly what kind of stories are we telling ourselves when we talk about lost peoples and lost cities and who are people of the Andes and the Incas and what can they teach us? And I think there is that still piece of that spirit, maybe not in Indiana Jones because there's not much time about the cultures being encountered, but in what archaeology is that I still think is special. Is the Department of Archaeology glad for Indiana Jones or are they mad? I like the line that you use, you get into it, how you get into it. I watch those Indiana Jones movies as a kid also and very attracted to the adventure and the swashbuckler and all of those things. But Indiana Jones, obviously we've mentioned, he's also a really problematic character. So can you walk me through some of that? I mean, it's there from the very first frame almost of the very first Indiana Jones movie. He visits this temple on the eastern slopes of the Andes and I think it's really interesting and important for movie starts in Peru, because I think it also has a lot to do with where the character comes from. But he walks into this temple and there are killer traps and the remains of past explorers that he's stepping over to get to a golden icon in the middle, which would have probably, if we're going to take Indiana Jones as some sort of reality, would have been a god or deity to the people who built that temple. And he grabs it and runs. And one, the archaeologist will probably object that that's not what an archaeologist is supposed to do. And two, everything in that temple is so much more interesting than running off with the gold piece. He's walking into a temple that obviously shows incredible technology and traps and steps out of it in a way that destroys it as he goes. And then the second step is that he is taking all this stuff back to the United States and discovering it quote unquote for white scholars. And if you follow that on through the particularly the second movie, Temple of Doom, and then Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, you see how the movie series uses other people's history as a backdrop for this white American adventure. Great set pieces, but people become objects and their history becomes something to fight for, fight over, not necessarily for and end up back in a museum, which is one of Indiana Jones's classic lines. It belongs in a museum. Right, right. So it's kind of funny that you say that it belongs in a museum, but you also said something interesting, which is that you said the movie, the very first movie, starts in Peru, which says something about the character's origins, perhaps. And I didn't know this, but you wrote in your piece that Indie is actually based on a real person or maybe it's a composite. But can you tell us about that? It's like Indiana Jones is a photocopy of a photocopy and that points back to an original person that also helps us understand why these histories of archaeology had really problematic roots and how there are some pieces of Indiana Jones we might think are totally unreal. But if you look closely, you realize, oh, this is actually related to a moment in history. That was the part that was really surprising to me. Like I thought, well, this is outlandish. This story is outlandish. But then I saw that you said, well, this is based on 19th century scholarship. Right, the kingdom and the kingdom of the crystal skull.  And the movie ends with the aliens taking off and discovering that this Andean temple in the jungle is actually an alien spaceship. All of that's indebted to Eric Fondanikin's theories of human contact with space aliens from the 1960s, where everything that connects humanity is from outside influence, which is really damaging to indigenous people and goes back to the 19th century, where American scholars collected Andean skulls and said, oh, their strange shape suggests that they are of a race apart, which was another way of saying that indigenous people didn't make the temples or weren't responsible for the heights and lasting culture of their descendants. I've always placed a lot of faith in scholarship. But then at the same time, when we look at the history of scholarship, the history of eugenics and so some of the scholarship is changing, I'm sure. But before we get into the changing scholarship, I really want to hear a little bit more about this real person that Indiana Jones is based on. In fact, you've actually written a book about this. So maybe tell me a little bit about this guy. My first book was about Hiram Bingham. He was a Yale historian who also thought that he was an explorer and he had the family money to make that true. And in 1911, he traveled to Peru to find the last cities of the Incas. These were the citadels that the Inca emperors that rebelled against the Spanish fled to and held out for 40 years, holding off the conquest. He was pointed that direction by Peruvian scholars, one of them and Andean archaeologist named Julio César Teo, who was studying in Harvard and wanted to go with Bingham. But Bingham seems to have wanted the credit for himself, so did not respond to his invitation when asked. And along the way to these last Inca cities, Bingham is told to look at a place named Machu Picchu or Huayna Picchu. And on July 24th, 1911, a man who lived on the river below named Melchor Artiaga, a Peruvian soldier named Sergeant Carrasco and Hiram Bingham hike up to the site where they're met by the families who already live there, the Ricarte, Alvarez and Fuente families. And the son of the Ricarte family leads Hiram Bingham into what is his backyard and his home. But we know today as Machu Picchu, the Inca citadel built by Pachacutec. We talk about the idea of fiction coming from fact and the idea that this scholar and explorer was led by a young person is very much like what we see in Indiana Jones and that story where he's led by the young boy, I guess it's very much taken from this time period and from this scholarship that, as you say, itself was it's many things that are embedded in that scholarship that since the 19th century was very racist. And that's where the filmmakers borrowed from. So in some ways, that's how we ended up with this kind of film. I'm sure there's other complicated reasons. But thankfully, archaeology and anthropology, like many studies and social sciences have expanded since the first Raiders film in 1981, and perhaps more rapidly in the last few years. What are some of the changes that you see in these fields? One really important one is finally listening to the cultures and nations and indigenous peoples who see this not as their past or as objects or specimens, but as their ancestors or continuing continually surviving beings that have ended up in the museum or national patrimony. And this also goes back to the Hiram Bingham story, the story and our sensitivity and awareness of it. And when I say we, I mean, I'm speaking very consciously as scholars who identify as white in the academy and then the culture that has been trained to listen to them in the mainstream media has become a lot more sensitive to it over the last 10 to 15 years. But it's not like the indigenous peoples being collected or the nations being looted weren't protesting. In fact, in the case of Hiram Bingham back in 1912, when Bingham came back to excavate at Machu Picchu, the outcome was that the Peruvian government said this material can leave the country, but then it has to come back because it belongs to Peru. And it took another hundred years for that to happen because when Bingham came back, it seems like he might not have told Yale about that deal. And then the Yale dug its heels in when Peru asked for the stuff back. But in the meantime, that sort of question of who does this belong to also gets into the culture and it shows up in the Indiana Jones story in interesting ways that are unexpected. The character of Indiana Jones was, you know, partly a creation of George Lucas and Steven Spielberg. But to craft the movie, they really looked at an earlier movie named Secret of the Incas starring Charlton Heston from 1953. And that movie set at Machu Picchu. And it's about an American explorer who wants to take an Incas sun disk for himself, but then has doubts about it and gives it back to the local people. The main character played by Charlton Heston has Indy's hat and leather jacket. But the story is inspired and affected by the Machu Picchu and Hiram Bingham story. In fact, they're representatives of the Peruvian government and local officials sort of devising on the story and saying make sure that you say in this movie that all this stuff belongs to the Peruvian people. And so is that in Raiders of the Lost Ark? No, but I think it's also ironically thereby its absence, a decision to turn this real and hard story of broken promises, racist belief that this stuff should be in the hands of white American scholars. It's there because it's being hidden. And I think one of the reasons why Indiana Jones is so useful to think with is that we can look at these absences and presences and figure out what archaeology and humanities and scholarship can do better. And to your original question, I think anthropologists in particular, and now historians too, have really been at the forefront in the last 20 to 30 years of listening to their fellow indigenous scholars and scholars of color to think about what that responsibility is. What does it mean to not just share authority, but concede it to give it, return it to collaborate in a way in which the community drives the questions. Historians are learning to do this, but anthropology is at the forefront, I think. And it's interesting too, because you mentioned Yale and I feel like right now there's a movement of course the idea that museums are not neutral. There's a lot of protest right now at the British National, probably if you go outside the British National Museum, all of these things that are occurring right now, but universities with their institutions, they also have ownership of things that need to be returned. When you say Yale dug their heels in, I think it's very interesting because museums are filled with skeletons, and as you said, but so are universities. And we tend to look at universities and museums as these places that are, I don't know, not capitalist or whatever it is. And I think it's something I read that you wrote that said returning something doesn't necessarily have to mean the closure of something, it's the opening of something else. And I'm wondering now when we're talking about this, it's been 15 years since the last Indiana Jones movie came out. And given what we've just been talking about, that this field has changed so much. Do you have some high hopes for this film? What do you really hope to see with this? Oh, that's a complicated question. Well, I mean, will this film be a redemption for Indy's past mistakes? There's so many past mistakes that we can talk about. Is this an opportunity for redemption? It could be, but I'm not sure that there are parts of this history that can ever be redeemed. And maybe to be fair to the character of Indiana Jones for a moment, we never see him doing the worst that we know that anthropologists did. But when we know and think about anthropology's history, Indy is still in some ways like an idealized version of it. And so he's doing everything for the right reasons. He's fighting Nazis.  We're happy that he does that. He's a professor. He's in it for the the knowledge, the common knowledge, the common good. As you say, his famous line is it belongs in a museum. Yeah, but not everyone's idea of where the past or their ancestors belong should be a museum. I think that there's no way to have it be redeemed because it's his character is the character. And I think when with these complicated cultural characters, when we work to try and make them better, I mean, sometimes it works. But I think it's far better to create new things and create new characters that reflect different ideas and reflect all of us, which is one of the reasons why Dora the Explorer in the Last City of Gold is such a great movie. But for this new movie, there's some hints that it's going to be about sort of the Greek time travel device. And I know my friends in classics and ancient Greek history are already a little bit squirrely and upset about this because it's another sort of seems like ready made history channel idea that is now bleeding into the Indiana Jones movies. But at least I think it's the power move is a lot more lateral there towards ancient Greek culture. It's a European setting versus the global south. Exactly. Exactly. But there are hints that this is it for Indiana Jones. Harrison Ford has said he's not doing it anymore. There's a character played by Phoebe Waller Bridge, who seems to be his goddaughter. And other characters besides the suggests that this story is moving beyond mid century white Americans and Europeans fighting over other people's past. We don't know. I think it's a character to take on balance. And I think character to take on balance and root for it being better. I like when you talked about Dora too, because like I have kids and I'm always looking for stuff that I feel comfortable and happy sharing with them. I'll tell you, I haven't shown them Indiana Jones, none of it yet. But I have shown them Dora Dora and the Lost City of Gold and they love that. And we also watched the remake of National Treasure. It's a TV show, but the lead character is a Mexican American DACA resident. And she's chasing her mother's lost and stolen research. She was Mexican PhD student and so the interesting that's very different like who is the main character, whose story is being centered, not to say that there's not problems and things in there. Of course, there are because it's Disney, it's Hollywood. I want more Dora movies, honestly. I was so in love with that movie and a friend of mine, Amerigo Mendoza Mori. He's a professor of Ketua at Harvard. He consulted on Dora and Lost City of Gold about the Ketua that the Incas at the end would be speaking. And one of the things I loved about those Incas at the end, they weren't all wearing Inca clothing. Some of them were wearing Spanish clothing too. It's like they thought about this is not a people trapped in the past. Yes, it's a living culture. Exactly. Another shout out for your listeners, Pachamama, another movie made by South American creators about not just the Spanish invasion, but what also the Inca empire looked like to indigenous people in the Andes who weren't the Incas and saw this as two empires fighting over one another. It's a beautiful movie, computer animated. I hope that this means like what you're saying right now about these beautiful films or the films that you really like and the people that they consulted with. Maybe it's a sign that filmmakers need to have more true consultants, get those consultants onto your film studio into your screen writer's room. Okay, what we're saying is that this dashing, wonderful, problematic archaeologist is headed for the Pop Cultural Museum, as you say in your article. What kind of a send-off should we give? Do we celebrate this character or should we put it in a box and never open it? And I'm wondering for you, this is just kind of an envisioning question for you. If you were to hold a museum exhibit about the movies, what would you include in that exhibit? Oh, what a wonderful question. There would be stuff that represents and reflects the creativity that the filmmakers tried to bring in, but it would also be really strongly about all the other places that Indiana Jones has been that isn't Nazi Germany and that doesn't have to do with European history that would give power to curators of all the cultures that he dances through and knocks over and at times ridicules, especially in Temple of Doom, to say this is what matters to us. And these are the true and exciting things from our past and present that are being rediscovered. I think it's striking that I've talked to a few people, scholars who are archaeologists, anthropologists, and are from Peru or African-American who said, yeah, Indiana Jones was one of their ways in that sort of feeling of finding out something and a secret. That's real. That's what scholarship does, but then we've got to learn how to put it in context. And so putting them away in the back, I think, is actually dangerous to say we're not going to talk about this anymore. We're not going to think about why this is at times so pleasurable. It gives us a chance to build a better, I'm not going to say Jones, but a better hero. Yeah, I mean maybe it's not a Jones as you say, but maybe it could be some different type of lead role. Something that you said there is just making me think about it, but there is something very human about that curiosity that we have. I think it's normal for us to want to be that curious person, the adventurer, the person who wants to go explore, and as you say, can we do all of that and can we envision all of that and at the same time think about doing this respectfully and think about this more holistically than these movie franchises allow. And I think an important part of being a grown-up and also being a kid learning to grow up is learning how we or the people that we might love have been responsible for some awful things and that there is obligation to listen and make things better. And I think that's one of the things that's happening in museums and scholarship now, the sharing of power and also giving away that lets us understand when things shouldn't be in a museum. Oh, I love that. That's back to what you're, what we were talking about with the redemption, but in a way what you're saying is, I guess what I was asking too is now the, not the actor, but the character is retiring and as he retires, is there a room for redemption for his past misdeeds or mistakes? And in a way partly what you're saying is this character is very human. He's presented as human, he's made his mistakes. Can he also acknowledge, can one also acknowledge these mistakes and move forward to it? That's part of it is accepting the past misdeeds and moving forward. The acknowledgement is part of it. Yeah, and I think it could be really hard for the people of that generation who did it and were responsible for it, but often it falls to the children and the grandchildren to work out how they are still responsible and what they can do. You know, it's actually kind of an important moment for the character in the Neon Jones movie, Last Crusade. If this were the end of the character it would have been pretty perfect. There's a moment where he has the Grail and then the Austrian colleague betrays them by trying to run out of the temple with the Grail and an earthquake opens up and the Grail begins to be swallowed by the earth and she falls into the crevice trying to get it back. But then Indiana Jones almost does too until his dad says to him, let it go and he lets his dad pull him out. And I think there's a lesson there when we treat beings and other people as objects and things. We get worried about possession. I think understanding how we're the human connection and just living in a way that we can take care of other people better is, you know, that's a lot to hang on the end of The Last Crusade. Harrison Ford in an interview someone asked him what's the most precious thing you held in your hands and he said a newborn baby just to reflect what you're saying about the end of that, letting it go. Part of your story is also about the relationship Indy with his father and how that is so special and how their their tension is resolved in this movie that you're talking about The Last Crusade. They are able to be at peace with each other as well. One of the ways I land the story for me is that my own father was an anthropologist. I write what I write about the history of archaeology and anthropology. In part to understand where he came from and to be clear he was a very different kind of anthropologist than Indiana Jones but for me it's also unpacking this complicated relationship between like passion and interest and then power and privilege and doing it in a way that understands how things can change and we can do better. It's a very complicated thing to think about in the context of the larger history of museums and other people's dead in communities and it's one where I think the personal can sometimes get in the way. Does it matter that the archaeologist who looted Pueblo tombs was also a human with parents and children at the end of the day? Maybe not. For understanding who is harmed there it matters a little bit less but in terms of how we talk about their legacy and work out how to do better recognizing that we are as human as they and also capable of making mistakes that we don't even understand or that maybe we're being told about in the moment but we're choosing to ignore then it does become important. There's lots of room I think to grow from this time. I really want to thank you for all your time today it's been really a pleasure speaking with you. Thank you Vinita I've really enjoyed this. That's it for this episode of Don't Call Me Resilient. What a great conversation to end the season. I'm definitely considering booking my tickets for me and my family to see Indiana Jones and his final ride. What about you? I've dropped some links in the show notes on theconversation.com. I've also put together the few movies that we recommended in our chat but I'd love to hear some more movie suggestions so please share if you have some. Come find us on Instagram at Don't Call Me Resilient podcast or find me on Twitter at W-R-I-T-V-I-N-I-T-A or email us at DCMR at theconversation.com. Thank you so much for listening. Have a great summer everyone. In the meantime please consider sharing this pod with a friend or a family member or drop a review on whatever podcast app you use. Don't Call Me Resilient is a production of The Conversation Canada. This podcast was produced in partnership with the Journalism Innovation Lab. The lab is funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. The series is produced and hosted by me Vinita Srivastava. Bokeh Sai Si is our producer. Our consulting producer is Jennifer Morose. The audio editor for this episode was Krish Dinesh Kumar. Our regular audio editor Remitula Sheikh is on holiday. Athika Kaki is our marketing and visual innovation consultant. Journalism student Kikachi Meme is our assistant producer and Scott White is the CEO of The Conversation Canada. And if you're wondering who wrote and performed the music we use on the pod that's the amazing Zaki Ibrahim. The track is called Something in the Water.


a.k.a. Baez DJ Zinl are 25K Louis Vuitton shoes and their romance rumors divide social media.  Posting videos of her closet on social media recently, Zinl told fans that her boyfriend had bought her expensive shoes. I went to Louis Vuitton so many times looking for these shoes. So many times. And I couldn't find them in my size. But my boyfriend found them. Amazing. Thank you baby. Louis Vuitton confirmed that the shoes go for R16,300 but that they are currently out of stock in South Africa. In another picture flashing her designer wardrobe, Zinl said that her man regularly spoils her. Clearly my man doesn't want me to get cold because all the boots I own he bought. So I ain't getting cold this winter. In the video, are three sets of Louis Vuitton boots. Just one pair of the boots Zinl posted cost R25,000. Although Zinl did not name Bae, earlier this year fans pointed out that she and Aka went on holiday together. Watch this space.


Bingo, we're back for the 2 o'clock on Friday. Wow, exciting. Carl Kim, our old friend, director of the National Preparedness Training Center, right here across the street, national in Hawaii. That's right. That's right. Welcome to the show, Carl. Thank you, Jay. And Mikey Washta, the meteorologist for the National Disaster Preparedness Training Center here in Honolulu. Great. I want to be a meteorologist in my next life. Welcome to the show. Thank you. OK, so we had Lane. We have to do a dichotomy, I mean, what do you call it? We have to do a discussion and analysis of what happened with Lane or what didn't happen. So Carl, you look at this stuff all the time from the lens of how can we be better prepared here and elsewhere in the world. So let's talk about Lane. What kind of a storm? What happened in Lane? How did it affect us? What is the worst case analysis? And what can we learn from it, learning from Lane? Yeah? Well, I think it's really important that when these events occur that we look back in terms of what happened, also what could have happened and what we've learned from that. And for that reason, our center, the National Disaster Preparedness Training Center, which works on building capacity for state and local government throughout the nation is really interested in these types of events. One of the great things about my job is I'm surrounded by smart young people like Michael Iwashta, who's our staff meteorologist. Smile. And so I brought Michael along to talk a little bit about what happened with Lane and some of the weather lessons that we have from Lane. He has a very interesting background as well too. Okay, Mike. Yeah. So tell us about your background. How do you get to be meteorologist in the first place and for the National Disaster Preparedness Training Center, which is really something, you're at the cutting edge, you know? Sure. Yeah. So thanks for having me. So my background started at the University of Hawaii at Manoa in the undergraduate meteorology program there. After that, I joined the Air Force as an Air Force meteorologist and spent seven years doing that. And once I finished my active duty Air Force service, I joined the National Disaster Preparedness Training Center as a staff meteorologist, you know, hoping to continue my service to the public in order to help build. Sounds like your service at the National Disaster Preparedness Training Center. Notice how we all roll that right off our tongue. I've been thinking about getting a musician in to help you put it to music, but that's not the show. Let's later. So how central is your work to National Disaster Preparedness Training Center? It sounds like to me, it's very central, huh? Yeah. So NPDC specializes in the natural hazards and disasters, which many of those or the majority of those focus on, you know, weather-related, meteorological-related phenomenon. So it's a very central portion of our mission. Carl said you could tell us what happened in the lane. Yeah, sure. So Hurricane Lane, as we all know, entered the Central Pacific on the 19th of August. And throughout its lifetime, it intensified to a category five, which is the maximum strength or intensity of a hurricane. Is it possible we're going to see a six later on?  One day we find that climate change actually elevates the whole system. I don't think there's any official word of that right now, but, you know, nothing's impossible. So on the side that we had up earlier, it was showing the track, basically the track of Hurricane Lane throughout the Central Pacific. And the fascinating thing about that is that it went from a category five storm, which is the maximum intensity, down to a tropical cycle and was in the span of two days. So it's that fast? It's a very rapid decline, yeah. It was the second storm in our area in the Central Pacific of the season. So we're right in the middle of hurricane season right now. So it was not that we were prepared, everyone was prepared for Hurricane Lane, we'll be prepared for the rest of the season, too. Yeah, I have a question about that. So we've had Lane, we talked about Norman, Olivia, did I miss any, there was others. We've seen three or maybe four already, all coming from the same general direction, thankfully some going south of us, others going north, none of them hitting us directly, although they hit the big island pretty badly. So my question is, from the track of the storms so far this season, July, August, and from what we know about how these hurricanes are created, how they generate themselves through the east of Hawaii, can we make any predictions as to the rest of the season? Can we say there's going to be a number of others? Is this number that we've had already so large that it tells us anything? So the amount of storms that we've had up to this point does not necessarily dictate what or is not necessarily foretelling of what the rest of the season is going to be. Certain agencies within NOAA and some research agencies do produce what they call seasonal forecasts, and that's the closest that we can get to some kind of mid or long-term outlook for the entire season's timeframe. You call them up sometimes, call up NOAA, let's call NOAA today and see what we can learn from NOAA. Yeah, but I really want us to focus on Lane, I mean, if we go to that next slide, this is a really large storm too. Okay, let's see the next slide. So we've seen this, we've seen this slide, where is this from, this slide? It's been all over the news. So it's a NOAA slide, yeah? So this is a satellite image of Hurricane Lane as it was approaching Hawaii at the 150-degree latitude mark, and at this point I believe it was, like Carl mentioned, very large in size, about 300 miles across from one side to the other, and also at a category for an intensity I believe. So the significance of that, like Carl was saying, is that a lot of times we tend to focus, or as a public we tend to focus on the track, which is the center point where the center point of the storm is directed to. The impacts of the storm and the damage that can be done can expand depending on the size of the storm hundreds of miles from the center in any direction. Well this storm, it was slow moving, I remember that, Lane, and it declined rapidly, relatively speaking as you mentioned. Was there anything interesting about Lane that tells us anything about what the season is like? That it was slow moving, the fact that it declined so quickly? Yeah, so folks say on the fact that it was so slow moving, another interesting thing that occurred with Lane was the amount of rainfall that fell especially in Hawaii County, and that amount that was attributed to its slow speed and allowing the rain showers to be present over one land mass or one island in Hawaii County and so on for a prolonged period of time which increased the amount of rainfall, which led to the flooding and a lot of damage. So you start out with worrying about the speed of the winds and you wind up worrying about the quantity of rain? Yeah, definitely a lot of secondary third order effects associated with it. But yeah, if we go to the next slide, I mean if you see most of the hurricanes in this region, start in the east and then move towards us and then they come up from the south and fortunately there have only been a few direct hits that have come, is that most recently with tropical storms? Well the probability is favoris,t aren't we, we're a speck in the ocean. Well if you look at the number of storms that we've had and you know there's quite a few damaging impacts that have occurred. We always worry about the big one, don't we, the Iniki Plus kind of thing. Right, so if you go to our next slide there, actually the previous slide, if you can see this is the track of most of the storms that have come and you can see that for the most part they sort of exhibit a similar pattern in terms of where they're coming from and then turning north. I think the most damaging storms have been Iniki, Eva and I think Dot as well too. This slide suggests that we are in the center of a path of numerous hurricanes though and unless you're not including all the hurricanes on the out on the periphery it looks to me like we're we're a sitting duck in in manner of speaking right yeah and I think we brought this slide for another reason to sort of illustrate that we really are in the middle of the Pacific and so unlike other communities that are in more built-up areas we really don't have a lot of technologies and information or other communities that have experienced the storm we're we're on our own we're on our own and so and that creates a challenge in terms of forecasting yes definitely so like we saw with the rapid weakening of hurricane lane once it went on the the leeward side of the big island that I think was was a case where we like Carl was saying we don't have that much previous historical evidence of so that added to the challenge of being able to accurately forecast on that type of phenomena that type of a current well then that shall we just looking at I just wonder is there and I don't know the answer maybe nobody knows the answer is there anything about the wine island chain that protects us about the topography the mountains about the way the the wind works or the ocean works that that keeps the hurricanes away that makes it less likely they're gonna hit us it definitely plays of the topography of the islands definitely and especially the large mountains and on the big island play you know a pretty large factor in the dynamics of that going to the hurricane mainly in the form of what's called wind shear which is the variation of wind direction and speed throughout the vertical column so for for hurricane lane once it entered that area of increased wind shear that allowed it to decrease in intensity very rapidly and win sheers related to trade wins well which year is just a general term for the variation it can be related to trade wins but it's not specific to trade wins I'm pretty interesting okay so do we hit slide number five yet no we're almost there though let's go slide number five well well I think the other if we go to the next slide you want to say something about about I think yeah this is a really fascinating picture of taking from one of the from the NOAA hurricane hunters yeah so they were I did not this is from one of the National Weather Service employees but so during during the approach of hurricane lane there multiple agencies flying hurricane hunter aircraft between NOAA and the Air Force which which are reconnaissance aircraft which fly out into the eye over the eye of the storm to drop observation equipment and and measurement you know instruments which you're looking down into yeah that's not up no it's if you were looking up you'd be you'd have you'd have a problem yeah yeah down yeah you don't want to this that's not because we're in the middle of the Pacific to we have to send these aircraft out to get more real time information as to what what's happening as well too so when it happened if we drop the bomb right in right in the eye just wishful thinking right right right right okay we're ready for slide five one of the big impacts was the what was the flooding that occurred because of the size of the storm how slow moving it was the amount of moisture that it picked up the record setting amounts of rainfall I'm something like over 50 inches of rain in the Puna area which caused a lot of damage a few inches is huge yes yeah yeah four feet of rain right and what one day or something right yeah so just for a comparison that's that's how much 50 inches of rain is what a hurricane Harvey produced in Houston right right so that led to you know flooded roadways caused landslides in it in areas and so part of what we've been doing is estimating the impacts on the infrastructure not just on the roadways but to homes and businesses how do you do that girl how do you how do you make that estimate well we collect information on the damage claims and for assistance and in fact for one of the things is for debris removal I think Michael told me this morning was a hundred forty eight forty nine hundred forty nine requests for debris removal from this what just in Hawaii Connie through a volunteer organization called crisis cleanup which does all the most of the coordination for disaster and debris recovery work order requests for any kind of and usually that's roadways or is that more than roadways mostly private property yeah well take it off my front lawn sort of thing and what's good about Michael toes not he's just his meteorologist he's a big island boy and so he's got a lot of why didn't you say that before well I was trying to but I it's hard to get a word edge like you're a very different person like we know that we know that the big island you know and we always say it's the water it's the water on the big island makes people different yeah I could name names let's take a short break to think about that we'll be right back at one minute hello and welcome to out of the comfort zone I am your villainous host RB Kelly today we are playing two truths and a lie and I will tell you two truths and you will tell me which one is the lie truth number one this is a real mustache truth number two I want you to watch my show on Tuesdays at 1 p.m. so tune in and let me know which is the truth and which is the lie I'm RB Kelly without of the comfort zone and show up next Tuesday to see my mustache live hey Stan energy man here on think take Hawaii and they won't let me do political commentary so I'm stuck doing energy stuff but I really like energy stuff so I'm gonna keep on doing it so join me every Friday on Stan energy man at lunchtime at noon on my lunch hour we're gonna talk about everything energy especially if it begins with a word hydrogen we're gonna definitely be talking about it we'll talk about how we can make Hawaii cleaner how we can make the world a better place just basically save the planet even Miss America can't even talk about stuff like that anymore we got it nailed down here so we'll see you on Friday and noon with Stan energy man well huh okay we're back we're live with Carl Kim and Michael you washed up from the national possessed and preparedness training center actually committed that to memory a long time ago Carl when we first met that's right so what was the worst case analysis what could have happened with Lane yeah what we did was a plausible worst case assessment before the storm occurred and we use this damage estimate Asian program called has us it was it's put out by FEMA and so what we did was we simulated if a category one storm hit a wahoo what are the winds in the category one storm so for a category one that we're looking at winds of 74 to 95 miles per hour that can rip the roof off your house it could and that's sustained winds so there could be gusts that are much stronger than that okay right right so if we bring up the next slide we'll show you the track that we sort of simulated the actual track is it sort of veered off to the west but what we did was that it it continued north so that it struck a wahoo and then with that we estimated the damage that could occur if I could have the next slide up and so what this program allows us to do is to estimate the number of households that would be displaced or or affected the numbers thousands that would be requiring temporary shelter we also estimated the amount of debris generated by this category one storm which would be about 459,000 tons of of debris and then the damage to thousands of buildings and then the costs associated with this which would be upwards of 3.8 billion dollars and I have to say by the way that we only looked at the wind impacts we didn't really because we didn't have time we were continuing to do this we didn't really look at the storm surge or what would happen with heavy heavy flooding on a wahoo the secondary effect well they would cause these numbers to really increase even more so this was just sort of a first pass lower you know honestly Carl why why why do I care why do I care because this would never happen to me it would never happen to my house it's gonna happen to someone else your neighbor's house but again everybody but me maybe well I think the reason I ask you that silly question is because a lot of people think that way right not gonna happen to me right right right well again part of what we do is we focus on preparedness and the things that we can do and we can actually you know improve our detection warning alert systems improve our public communications we can try to make our buildings stronger and more robust but we also need to work on recovery planning and that's a big focus of our national disaster preparedness training center and so we've been working on recovery planning not just here in Hawaii but in the Gulf Coast in Puerto Rico in other communities that have experienced these disasters that's interesting because some agencies like Seagrant College up there at UH you know they focused on how to hold your house together how to make you know structural improvements so it doesn't come apart in high winds and you're in a different place on this well a Seagrant is doing some more interesting work too on reconstruction as well so they have a interesting project on that as well too and I think there are things that we can do to not just make our homes you know stronger and safer but better siting and location outside of the hazard zone or the or the red but you're going to focus on how do you pick up sticks how do you do together again yeah yeah and we we know quite a bit about recovery if I can have the next slide so we we developed for FEMA FEMA certified recovery class that really focuses on not just the government programs that are available from FEMA from HUD from Small Business Association administration and and so forth but really the ways in which the government the communities come together in this and and what we do know about disasters recovery is that it happens in stages there's stuff that you have to do in the immediate time you have to clear the roads you have to clear the debris you have to restore you know the basic infrastructure there's also mid-range concerns you know that involve getting our systems back up and going getting our businesses working again get opening our schools and and other businesses and then as the graphic shows there's also longer term concerns about redevelopment and recovery so that we're building back better stronger in a way and so and that in that can for big disaster take many many decades and so this is part of what we've been working on at our center and developing these sorts of courses and we started doing some of this work in Waikiki and I think I told you about our Waikiki pre-disaster recovery project that we did with the Waikiki business improvement district association and other partners in Waikiki he would that with the city we're also working with the the city's office of climate change sustainability and resilience to improve disaster risk reduction and and one of the things that we found out was one of the big gaps actually is with small businesses as well too and so if I can have the next slide if you look at what happens to small businesses after disasters immediately after disaster something like 40% of small businesses won't reopen they basically fail and then a year later something like an additional 25% more businesses are subject to failure and then this failure rate is really high 75% you know fail after three years if they do not have continuity plans and so that really is the importance of what's a continuity plan insurance well part of it is insurance but part of it is really having backup systems having your data stored away having worked out agreements so we've been focusing a lot on supply chains and in the management of of resourcing and and we think this is a really important topic and if I can turn to our final focusing on small business if we get to my final slide here you know this is this comes out of our training course you know really the small businesses are really make up a large proportion of the total employment that we have and what we know is that 99% of all companies are small businesses and they employ something like 50% of of all employment and then the amount of losses for small business on a daily basis could be as much as three thousand dollars per day or for a middle-sized business of twenty thirty thousand dollars and as a consequence that has a big impact on livelihoods on jobs on so forth and in from our research what we found were the big large corporations you know they can kind of take care of themselves because they have other branches or other hotels or other located in other jurisdictions where the small businesses really we need to to work on so so we've been working together my Michael's been one of our lead developers on this to try to increase the resilience the capacity to recover after disasters especially for small businesses and so that's that's part of our capacity building work that we're engaged in more slides no I'm so okay yeah okay I do I do have some questions so problem is that most people are complacent about this they don't follow it they think it's going to be somebody else's house somebody else's small business somebody down the block but not them they firmly believe that and so they don't do anything and you can tell them all day long and they still won't do anything because they think that for some you know reason God will spare them and and that's the way they operate and I think we haven't had enough bad bad weather to really make them think about this you know I hate to say it but we need some hard lessons before people get the right idea but the what I wanted to ask you guys is this you're you're preparing for disaster and you're preparing to rebuild the the community of the economy this is not easy because you know the community economy took decades years centuries to build the way it is at the moment before a bad storm and now you say well we have to rebuild all the essential elements of that and in a matter of hours or days not so easy and and and we know that government federal and state may not be just as we expect them to be we know that people may not be as responsive as we hope they will be so you have a kind of reverse government situation how you get the government to get in there and do all the things in your plan I mean part of it is government but it's beyond that it's households it's businesses it's the whole community and part of what we did in part to really look at what could happen is you know we went to Puerto Rico and we studied what happened after Hurricane Maria and how long the recovery took and it's not just a matter of weeks or months it's going to take years we can actually look back in time and what happened with Iniki how long it took Kauai to recover after after that storm and so part of what we've been trying to do is extract the lessons from communities similar communities island communities we also face another challenge or hazard that we're located in the middle of the Pacific and we're not connected by superhighways or rail lines and it takes a lot more time for goods and equipment and so your plan is going to be real different than San Diego's plan yeah I think it has to be I think I think it has to be and I think these events these near misses their wake-up calls for us and their opportunities for us to really focus on ways in which we can build resilience and increase our capacity to not just you know weather a storm to survive a storm but if there is damaged infrastructure damaged homes damaged businesses and how we can rebuild them and so that's part of what our focus is and so you know I do hope that we can come on the show and talk about our work in Puerto Rico I was I want to do that yeah yeah because Puerto Rico is a fascinating lesson well one last one last question before we go and that is my point about reverse government you got to get government to do this stuff government has theoretically the governmental power to do things and it has the agencies police fire what have you all kinds of agencies health's whatever how do you and your plan has undoubtedly calls for action in all of those areas and it calls for individuals I don't know if you name them to come forward and be empowered and take certain specific actions they have never taken before never taken before and do those things efficiently with the right attitude and frame of mind to save people and to rebuild the society how can you cover that in a plan it must be hard how do you address that well that's other another misconception I I didn't really believe that for response for relief functions we really do rely heavily on government emergency services and so forth I don't want to take away from that important role and mission but when we talk about redevelopment or reconstruction or rebuilding that really involves it involves much more than government and actually the amount of resources that go towards rebuilding businesses and homes and really comes out of savings it comes out of insurance it comes out of other sources of beyond government and so that's a really important thing to really recognize let's go to advice to the public Michael as a meteorologist in this you know at the planning process and the analysis of Lane and other storms what would you advise the public to think about from your point of view so there's few things you know for in the in the event or in the heat of all of everything as this you know the storm and is approaching we should as a public you know heed the warnings that are put out the advisories and the warnings listen to the information that is being broadcasted and take appropriate actions that you know it is in order to protect life and you know for personal safety and property but in the longer term like Carl was talking about I think another important factor is is just the fact that you know it's gonna affect the whole community so we're in it as a whole community so so when you know in a situation where it may not directly impact yourself as an individual it's gonna impact people that you know so just keep that in mind and you know it when that does happen if it if you're not directly affected you know definitely be ready and plan to help out your neighbor help out your friend or help out someone in need so that we can all recover rebuild you know faster and in the best way possible care for each other yeah exactly yeah sometimes it's hard to do that when you're in extremists and you don't have water or food but you can still care for each other there's always a way okay Carl what do you what do you advise what do you advise people like you know small businesses what do you advise people like big businesses to do to have the right approach to this and and and and what should they expect to hear from you what should they be looking for to hear from you well we really believe in doing risk and vulnerability assessment you know looking at what your risk and exposure is you know where you're located and then also look at what happens when these disruptions occur when you have a power outage how many days can you go without power how many days can you go without customers how many days can you go without other infrastructure services and what are your backup plans and so we've been looking at different businesses and examples that have survived and what are ways in which they can become resourceful and be engaged with the community to continue to to conduct their business to keep their employees to to survive in the time of disasters and so and I think Michael has really hit on an important part of it that we really do need to think about social capital as well as financial capital and how does all of that work and so these sorts of trust relationships are also very important why do I why do I feel that we're going to be knowing you better and more over the years to come you're going to be very popular you guys and you're going to be central in our lives more than before I call Kim the National Disaster Preparedness Training Center Michael E. Washta National Disaster Preparedness Training Center thank you very much let me only add at the end here that oil and vinegar in your refrigerator is not going to replace water okay in times of crisis thank you very much girl well thank you for having us on your show thank you Michael