News of Friday’s violent tragedy in Paris hit more than a few folks pretty hard in Hawaii.

“I’m totally devastated,” said Kilohana Silve, a former 30-year Paris resident who, from afar, still leads a hula halau there that she started 20 years ago.

The alakai, or student leader, of Halau Hula o Manoa in Paris is her daughter, Vanessa Leilani Thill.

“Happily, she’s at home safe with my grandson, Kalani, who is almost 9 months old,” Silve said.

Silve said that while she made contact with a few Paris friends Friday afternoon, she was worried about many others. She said she was waiting for the sun to rise in France before checking on those.

In the meantime the Honolulu woman remains “in shock, disbelief and feeling tremendous sadness” for the city she grew to love, starting when she traveled to Paris to study art history in 1972.

“I’m holding out hope solutions can be found to stop this kind of violence,” she said. “Paris is an exciting place to discover many cultures. They are alive in a city like Paris. But to see people who commit violence in the name of a particular religious belief is hurtful and insulting to everyone.”

Meanwhile seven students from the University of Hawaii at Manoa’s Study Abroad program were all safe and accounted for following the attack, said Dan Meisenzahl, university spokesman.

The students are enrolled in programs just north of Paris at the University of Paris-Sorbonne; and Universite Catholique de Lille, Institut d’Economie Scientifique et de Gestion School of Management, Paris campus.

Honolulu writer Don Wallace was worried about close friends Dominique and Patrick Renesson, who, as it turns out, were frantic because their youngest son, Alex, 24, was having an evening out in the popular Bastille district (Paris 11) with friends.

He finally called from a movie theater where the audience was being advised by police to stay inside because the streets were not secure, Wallace said.

Meanwhile their middle son, Tom, and his wife, Celia, were in a cafe in the same district at the time of the attacks and were also told not to go outside, he said.

Their eldest son, Adrien, and his wife, Jessica, live in the 10th district, also the target of attacks, but they were safely at home with their newborn baby.

Wallace, author of “The French House,” said Dominique was upset that these districts — both popular with young people for more affordable living and nights out — were under fire, because the streets at night are always lively and crowded.

Francois Miller, a Honolulu man who holds both American and French citizenship, said he was horrified when he saw what was happening in the city where he spends two or three months of the year.

Miller’s 96-year-old mother lives in France, though safely outside of Paris. But he was planning to call her nevertheless.

“She’s probably worried about where I am,” he said, adding that at her age it’s not always clear to her where he is.

Miller, a French-language interpreter in Honolulu, said it’s too early to say how this attack might affect Paris in the long term.

After the deadly shooting in January at Charlie Hebdo, a satirical weekly in Paris, he called friends in Paris who urged him to return to the city because they felt it would quickly return to normal. Miller took their advice, arriving for a two-month stay in late January.

“This time I don’t know. It’s too early to tell how it will affect the city,” he said.

But Phil Sammer, co-president of the Alliance Francaise of Hawai‘i, said he was sure creating some economic pain was one of the goals of the coordinated attack. Tourism, he said, would certainly endure a setback.

“I think they wanted to hit them in the pocketbook,” said Sammer, who is general manager of the Ilima Hotel in Waikiki. “I hate to say that, but I’m sure it was part of the overall plan.”

Sammer, who earned a master’s degree in French at UH in 1971 and then went on to study at the University of Paris, said the attack will hobble the City of Light.

“It’s going to scare the hell out of a lot of people,” he said.

However, he said, Paris will rebound as it has done before.

“It’s just hard to believe these things can happen so easily these days.”