 I'm Rusty Kamori and this is Beyond the Lines on Think Tech Hawaii. I was the head coach of the Punahou School boys varsity tennis team for 22 years. And we were fortunate to win 22 consecutive state championships. This show is based on my books Beyond the Lines and Beyond the Game. And it's about inspiration, welcoming adversity, and creating a superior culture of excellence. My special guest today is the owner of Bill Weiland Galleries. He is Bill Weiland and today we are going beyond the fires. Hey Bill, welcome to Beyond the Lines. Hey Rusty, it's good to see you buddy, good morning. Bill, you and I, we know each other for so long and you've been such a, I mean, you're a great friend and you help our community in so many ways. Your brother is the world famous artist, Weiland. And your gallery was in Lahaina Maui on Front Street. But before we get into that, I want to go back to that day of the fires. Can you share when you first became aware that something was wrong? Absolutely, and it came really early. It came, I get up early every morning. So I was getting up around 5.30 in the morning and went to turn on the lights and there was no light. So that day started really early with horrendous wins. And it pretty much knocked out the power in Lahaina early. So first thing in the morning, I was going to find some candles to light things up so I could see where I was at. But I was living in the building there in Lahaina. So Bill, what happened after that? I mean, when did you first start to realize or see the fire or smell the smoke? Well, that came much later. I actually went from when I got up in the morning, there was no power. I decided to go into Kanapali and see if I could find a hotel that had some power, whatever, so I could do whatever I was going to do. It was really windy, but I didn't think it was that big of a deal at the time. But when I got to Kanapali, the palm trees were bending over like they were completely going to come down. Everything was probably 80 mile an hour winds. They were doing barbecue because they had no power either. So pretty much the whole west side of Maui was completely out. I didn't really think that was no big deal at the time. It wasn't till I actually got back into Lahaina. I took the Harley down to Kanapali to find a place to get something to eat and kind of do my emails or try to find internet and cell phone service. But when I was coming back, it was even on a bike that big. It was blowing all over the road. I set off my staff. I had a gallery director that was in. Michelle was in my store and I called her from Kanapali and I said, it's getting really crazy. You need to go home. I said, there's no need for you to be in the store. There ain't no one crazy enough to come out with 80 mile an hour winds. So she went on her way and thank God she did. I came in probably half an hour after that. And that's when it was the winds were just howling. And I could see the smoke start on the other side of the road to Lahaina on the main road up by the gas station. I could see smoke just starting to billow. So I parked the car. I mean, I parked the boy and parked it in the back of the gallery. And I actually walked out to where Timo's is, looked over there, tried to look over the building, walked down to Dickinson Street. And I saw one of my employees that's retired. And I seen him and I said, man, I said, this is looking brutal. Those flames are going to come over the top of the road. And sure enough, I said, we better get back and get out of town because this is definitely coming over the top of the road. And Lahaina being a matchbook that can light up with a match, pretty scary place to be. So I hightailed it back to the gallery. And it was really, you could see the flames were over the road by that time. And I could see it was on the Lahaina side of the road. So that's when I really said, man, this thing is going to get ugly. So I ran upstairs and I grabbed my backpack and my computer and my passport. I didn't even go to my safe. It was coming that quick with those winds the way they were going. It was howling. So I didn't even go open up a safe or anything like that. I left the safe. I left everything. I went back to the back of the gallery. I got about 11 parking spaces back there. And I'm trying to decide in my mind which way I should go. And I probably made the right decision because I decided to get on the motorcycle rather than the car. I had my car parked there as well. So I jumped on the motorcycle. And that's the part where I knew I was in deep shit. The winds were howling 80 miles an hour or so. In the back of the building, it was swirling flames. I mean, the flames were literally swirling around my feet. Around the, it could feel the fire on the back of my neck. I mean, it was that intense. The heat was insane. But I took the bike and I decided to take the bike and I took it out the front street. When I got to the front street, both directions were already a dead stop. There was no one moving anywhere. Dick and Seen was closed up. Lahaina Luna was closed up. I had one person. I couldn't go to the right anywhere. I was going to go to Kana Pali side. And you couldn't move one centimeter. So I decided to go left and someone let me out on the road. And immediately I got up on the motorcycle, I got the motorcycle up on the sidewalks. And there was no one walking, of course, because it was really crazy. And it was, you could see the flames up behind you and the rear rear moves. So I got up on the sidewalk, I started going. The craziest part was there was a guy in front of me like he was in a trance. He was on a bike, a regular bike. And he was, and you could see him and he was going. And I was beeping at him like, can you just move over a little bit so I can get to Harley by you? He had no part of it. He was just going in a full-on trance. I don't know if he made it or he didn't make it out of there. But it was, I finally went off the curb. And Harleys are pretty hard to come up and down curbs. But when you're scared out of your mind, I guess you can jump some curbs. So I jumped off the curb, jumped back up on the curb, went up the sidewalk. And it was so, so intense. You could just see flames everywhere. This was probably 4.30 in the afternoon. So it was becoming pretty radical at that time. And I just decided I'm going to make it out of there. And there's that point in your life and it's happened a couple of times, I guess, in everybody's life, where you know you're in the real deal. It's either you're going to get out or you're going to not go out. It was that tight. Had I not took the Harley, I'm 100% sure, had I not took the Harley and I took the car, I would have had it been swimming. And I knew some of the people that didn't make it that didn't try to swim for it. And so it was a good thing I made the right decision on the motorcycle rather than the car. But so to end the story, I got on Front Street. I went up the sidewalks. I drove all the way up to 505. And what was really weird and tell you how intense it really was for people that they were in kind of a trance is I got in, once I got past 505, I got into the wrong lane and there was literally no one in the wrong lane. No one coming towards Lahaina. So to myself, I'm thinking, well, if I went out there and I'm in the bike, why wouldn't everybody follow me? Cause it was dead stop. I mean, every road, there was nowhere to take a left to take a left anywhere. Everything was completely clogged. I mean, clogged log where you couldn't move an inch. And I got into the left lane and I'm thinking to myself, my God, why is no one following me? I think it's just, it was so, so intense that people were just like the guy on the bike. I think they weren't thinking. So I just, I took that all the way till I got to the, I got to the main highway. And you've heard people talk about there being barricades, right? I'm sure you've, you heard there was barricades. Well, I got to where the front street ends and goes off to Kihei and it was a barricade. And there was a police officer there, but I was in kind of a bit of a shock and I knew what was behind me. So I didn't stop at the barricade. I just got to the right lane and with the motorcycle, I was able to just go on the side and I took it up to Wailea. Ended up staying at one of my artists' place for the night. Then they were waking me up into middle of the night and they said, no, that's on fire. I'm feeling, I'm not getting out of bed, man. I'm too tired. I said, if you see fires, if you see flames, wake me back up, but I'm getting some sleep. It was, it was, it was a wild night. But I mean- Bill, did you lose, did you lose your house? Yeah, I sure did. As a matter of fact, that's the hardest part too. I just finished it. I just pretty much finished my penthouse up there ahead. I built 3,500 bottles of wine. I didn't get my wine yet. I was just going through my last permit to go ahead and fill up my wine cellar and I had pool tables and hot tubs. And I had a pretty, pretty, because I was starting to spend a lot of time on Maui. So I built a really, really, really nice place on top of the gallery up on the third floor because I had three floors, two floors that were regular and then one floor that I was building into a place to stay when I was up there. But yeah, the whole thing built for the top. So Bill, you know, you're, I mean, I want everybody to see the Bill Weiland galleries in Lahaina. I mean, your store was absolutely beautiful, located right on front street where everybody knows- Yeah, there's, I actually had 31 artists there. Yeah, and you- So it was, but 31 artists, it was one of the bigger galleries in the state. You would always promote so many artists, so many of their artwork. And, you know, in your store, I mean, you have so many beautiful paintings and sculptures even. I remember going into your store and just being so amazed because I'm just assuming there's gonna be just paintings, but you had so many sculptures as well, right? Yeah, I probably had as much sculpture as I did paintings. I had an incredible amount of glass inside there. I had bronze, I had stainless steel. So yeah, my range of different art in that store because it was so big, the range was as deep as anybody in the art industry. I mean, that was definitely the biggest gallery I built. You know, the only one that was close to it is the one that was in Waikiki on the corner where everybody thought I owned the building. That was the honor building down there. And I had my name up in front of that thing. And I'd have friends come into town and say, wow, do you own that whole building? Also, it was as I had to sign on the corner of the building. It looked like I owned the building. But yeah, that was also a really big store. Bill, I remember your Waikiki store. I mean, it did look like that was the Weiland building. Exactly, I had a lot of people feel that way. So I, yeah. Now Bill, after the fire, you went back to recover the sculptures or just to see what was left. Tell me about that. Yeah, what happened is two days later, we were trying to get things back for the people. I had friends that had water and generators and we were having a really, really hard time getting in to try to get anybody to get into Lahaina at the time. I had a mission. I wanted to find my artist, whatever I could and just kind of say goodbye to my store and try to find whatever I could. There would be some bronzes, some stainless steel, hopefully some glass, something as a momentum of what happened. I had a friend of mine that, one of the artists that had a truck with the big fire department stick around it. So we talked away and long story short, we talked away into about four roadblocks. And we did end up all the way at the top of the hill, where the bypass is. And we walked in to Lahaina after the fire. So it was still a smoldering. It was a point where it was literally right after the fire. So there was only a couple of people that actually were down there and it was pretty much media. It was the only ones they were down there because no one had made it back down there yet. And when we walked through there, I found some interesting stuff like the basketball player, the Arasumo basketball player, which was stainless steel about five foot tall. And you've seen it coming out of the ashes. I sent you some pictures of that. But yeah, we've found some Scott Hansons. We've found some, even found the Dennis Mathis and one of Dennis's metal pieces we found. But we found, we found Arina's work. We found some of the big dogs. You've seen some of the pictures with five foot dogs where the dogs are coming out of the ash because all three floors were ash. So the only thing that was sticking up was some of the bigger bronzes you could see it. And I knew where everything was at because I had them, they were laying exactly where they were. The only thing I didn't find was I didn't find the safe. So maybe someone kidnapped the safe. So Bill, you know, I mean, and then you also took pictures of Front Street. I mean, describe the feeling of you when you were back there, really taking those pictures and then how did it make you feel if you could describe it? Well, that was the heart wrenching thing about the whole thing. Cause, you know, it was, you know, there was so many businesses that was hard cause when I walked by Fleetwood, Fleetwood sign was still up there. You know, Fleetwood's building was completely down but, you know, it was all gutted but Fleetwood sign. So I got some really interesting pictures of that. What I knew was going to come back and it did come back. I knew when we got down to the banyan tree, I knew for a fact that the banyan tree was going to come back that it was going to live through that. So a lot of everything you could say, there's no coming back to, you know, the hardest part probably is cultural parts of the Lahaina, all the stuff that's been there for, for years to, you know, you get out with your life, you're happy about that, but it was really sad and everybody, cause a lot of the older people, I mean, they've had those in the family for a hundred years. That's why, you know, people say that they don't sell their building. They've had it forever, they're not going to sell it. And now I don't know what they're going to do. They, you know, some of them were, my neighbors were old, you know, some were probably 80, 90 years old. I used to have coffee and talk to them and stuff in the mornings every day. And, you know, they had incredible stories of Lahaina. So that was the hard part to know what happened to other people with me. Of course I, you know, I'm going to roll through it and I'm probably not going to do another gallery, but I got two other really big businesses I'm going back in Maui right now. I'm working on the details this afternoon. So I am probably going to get back to Maui. I won't be doing another store. My friends that do have the galleries, I've talked to them last night, a couple of them, they're trying to find out what they're going to do. You know, and you know, I heard this morning, Cheeseburger Paradise, she's not, they're not coming back. They started their business at Cheeseburger the same time I did 36 years ago. We started at the same time under construction, but I read this morning that they're not coming back. And a lot of the businesses, they'd love to come back, but I think the reality is it's five to 10 years. I'm saying eight years, and I've heard some people say five or six, but I'm thinking it's eight to 10 years before you're going to have anything that even closely looks like Lahaina again. So Bill, I mean, you know when it finally sunk in or you were able to really comprehend that Lahaina is just totally devastated where Lahaina is literally just gone. I mean, I haven't got to that point yet. Oh man, I mean, I still wake up at night like a lot of people do. I'm sure that, you know, that this really happened. You know, you gotta pinch yourself and say, you know, and this is months later and that's still, you know, and I've heard from other people, sometimes it takes longer for other people then hit me as hard at the beginning as it's hit me lately, you know, to wake up in the morning and say, well, you know, I don't have a store there to go to Lahaina. They'll have a reason to flight them away anymore because, you know, my main house has always been Oahu, but I was spending a lot of time on Maui. I love Maui. The people- Now Bill, tell me about your employees. I mean, did they survive and what happened to their houses? Well, that was pretty interesting too. All my employees and their families made it out. Now, a couple of them lost some houses and one of them had a house that they can't move back into right next to Lahaina and it was weird because that whole housing in Hanomo or whatever it's called, it's right next to Lahaina. No, you've probably seen the video of that. There's only a couple of houses that hold subdivision that burnt. They're all a brand new subdivision and there was only a couple of houses that got burnt down but they won't be able to go for 18 months because of the water issues. So they got a house that they can't move into. So that whole West side of Lahaina timing, I don't know when it's gonna, y'all get to a point where anybody can actually go back and do, they're talking about opening the schools but when you walk around out there, I don't know how they're gonna do that in Lahaina. I mean, it's a mess. And Bill, you have both of my books. You actually bought my books for your employees as well. I bought your books for my employees. It's an amazing book and I've enjoyed it and being a tennis player like you, I mean, I get it. And I love the books and love what you do. I've loved all the guests. I watched all your shows. Of course, you send me your shows and I love all the different shows you do and it keeps me pumped up myself. I have a couple of friends that writes some books and stuff and yours are very motivating. So I really enjoy reading. No, thank you, Bill. And Bill, so obviously you know, I talk a lot about mindset and there's the difference that I say between a victim mindset and a victor mindset. And obviously, everyone in Maui, they're like, they're having mental health issues because of this situation, right? Exactly, exactly. Yeah. So I want everyone to, I want to inspire them to choose that victor mindset because you know, anyone, I mean, in that situation, in that type of adversity, it's so common to fall into the victim mindset, right? Well, exactly. Exactly. And I think a lot of people have did that and I think you've got to just put your pants back up and go back and make things work again because adversity is going to hit you all through life. So that's what your book says. That's what any positive book comes and that's what you got to do. And of course, I'm going into more businesses and the old as you can see, and it's not something I'm going to go back in and do some more fun stuff in business because I think that's what you have to do is get over adversity and get it to a positive way. And that's what I'm going to do. And that's what, well, a lot of people are doing in line. I think there's a lot of positive energy on different, maybe moving in different directions that you're used to. And sometimes that's not a terrible thing. Yeah, no, Bill, you're so right. You know, I always say that some people will experience deeper levels of adversities than others. And anytime there's, you know, there's threatenings of life and there's possibilities of death, you cannot get any deeper than that. And choosing the right choice to have that Victor mindset, it's exactly what I just said there. It's about choices. And I want to inspire everyone on Maui that was affected by it to really choose to be positive, to see what they can do to move forward as hard as it is. But I always share with people that happy people focus on what they have and unhappy people focus on things that they don't have. What are your thoughts about that? I'm 100% agreeable. I mean, there's, as the old expression goes, there's a glass that's half empty or half full. I try to keep it full all the time whether it's sitting on the bottom of the glass. I'm still on a positive end because that's how you have to go through life. I think you have to keep a, you're gonna be throwing some things in your life and you just gotta be able to pull up your pants and get over it and say, I'm gonna get over this and I'm gonna succeed and that's what you have to do. And that's what any entrepreneurs or any business or anybody does, I think. And it's hard times for a lot of people but I see, as they're saying, I'm always strong. There's a lot of people that are always strong. I've been back three times and all three times I'm encouraged that I'm always gonna come back stronger than ever. So Bill, in hindsight, what do you think could have been done to make things better? I know the winds were so like strong and fanning the flames, that's the hardest situation in fires but in hindsight, what could have been done to make things better? Well, that's a million dollar question, I guess. I mean, the polls from what I've heard the polls could have been twice as thick and not fell down, but they were rated for a certain amount of wind speed and it was rated half of what they were supposed to but that's just, from what I've read and there's so much out there right now to be a quarterback and look at what I could have did this or that, you really look at, I know the police and the fire department and all those guys, their own houses burned up to save other people's houses. So I think everybody did the best they could with what they were dealt with. I mean, it was so intense if you see where I was in it or as a policeman and you look at it, yeah, I would have did this and this as a quarterback looking after the game's over and looking at your films, but when you're in the middle of it, it's, I wouldn't want to be in some of the positions that some of the people are in and have to deal with what they've dealt with from different aspects of the media, the social media or whatever, because there was a lot of people that did for a lot of people and behind them. I know who some of them are and I'm proud of those guys to be honest, which I mean, I've had a lot of police friends there. I had a lot of firemen friends and some of the upper management, sometimes you wonder, did they make the right decisions? But that's, they did what they did and what they thought was right at the time, I guess. Man, Bill, you know what? You're looking forward to it. Yeah, you know, earlier you mentioned about, you are estimating maybe five to 10 years of, to rebuild. Yeah, my guess was eight years and that's why I, the guy that owned my building, I've tried to get it from a couple of times when he wouldn't sell it to me, but he's younger than me and I want to kick him in the butt, but he immediately started talking to me, Bill, let's do another gallery, let's go in and build another gallery. I looked at him and say, I don't think so. I'm at a point now, eight years later, I'll be lucky to be, someone's gonna be pushing me around in one of those little push cart things. So I don't see myself doing another gallery in Lahaina. You know, I've been offered some galleries over on Oahu and I've actually thought about it because I like being around art and I got my son to give it to anyway. So my son, Brian, who has a gallery in Haleva, me and him built that one together and it's probably the coolest gallery in the United States, the one that me and him built and designed together. So he's the one that kind of nudged me to do the Lahaina thing to begin with. But when I got offered, I said, Brian, I got offered to do the Lahaina. He says, dad, you got to do it, you got to do it. And I'm looking, oh yeah, you just want me to go the, you can take it over later. But yeah, so. So Bill, I mean, seeing what Front Street is like right now, I mean, Front Street, everybody wanted to go to Front Street and then just hearing how people were just jumping into the ocean to just try to get away from the heat and the fire and the smoke and the embers. I mean, Front Street will obviously never be the same. What are your thoughts though? I mean, do you think it should be built a certain way or rebuilt a certain way? Well, I would like to see it built the way it was and go back to the way it was, but there's people talking about they'll never, and I think it was in this morning's read that I read that there probably won't be anything on oceanfront anymore in certain parts of Lahaina that used to be there. I don't, and I'm probably guessing the same thing. I'd like to see redeveloped in a similar fashion to like what I didn't want to see as something that like happened at international marketplace. I mean, they took a brand new kind of sterile look to international marketplace instead of making it which everybody loved, the reason they did it. And I'm hoping Lahaina is not the same way that they don't do that. And you know what I'm saying by that? It's just, it's to me, you don't wanna sterile luck, you wanna Lahaina luck. So if you're gonna come back and build like Lahaina, I mean, of course it's not gonna be exactly but try to get that look and that feel, that cultural look and feel of why people love Lahaina, you know, the way in town that it was. I mean, it's magic, it's magical. And that's why so many people come down and you know, with my new businesses, that's far than I'm saying how much am I gonna get hurt by you know, Lahaina not being there, I'm taking over a couple of big businesses that I'm looking at doing right now. Let's have to see how that one rolls out. So Bill, after that experience, when you're looking at the big picture of life right now, what is your advice to others? Hang on and I think, you know, I'm getting older but I think that you gotta keep your mind going. You gotta keep positive and keep going in the right direction and make time to friends and family and but do work and keep your mind going on things that you really wanna do in life. I'm not ready to throw in completely yet. I'm ready to slow the train down a little bit but I think the younger people, I talked to a couple of my gallery directors that their store burnt down as well. And I talked to them, we had an hour conversation yesterday about what they should do. Should they go to Florida? Should they go to Vegas? Should they go to California? Or should they stick it out in Maui? And I'm saying, well, your heart's in Maui. You know, if you can figure out a way to kind of make it to work in Maui, maybe that's what you gotta go over your heart's at. And that's their hardcore Maui people. I don't see them really leaving. They're not the type that would go to Waikiki, but they're very Maui type. So I- Maui runs deep. Stick with it. Yeah. Yeah, it's way to the heart, man. Bill. Bill, I wanna thank you for taking time and to really share what happened on just escaping the fires. And just so happy that you survived and you're here today. I'm really happy I'm here and it was quite the adventure. I mean, I'll tell you one last thing. It felt like in a Arnold Schwarzenegger movie where he flies on the motorcycle, he flies through the flames. I felt like that. Jeez. Aloha. That was fun. Rusty, always good to talk to you, buddy. Thank you, Bill. And thank you for watching Beyond the Lines on Think Tech Hawaii. For more information, please visit rustycomory.com and my books are available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble. I hope that Bill and I will inspire you to deal with your adversities in a positive way and to enjoy and appreciate every single day in your life. Aloha.