Friends and family across Hawaii have been telling Archie Kalepa that they want to show support for survivors of the Maui wildfires but don’t feel like they’re invited to the Valley Isle.

So Kalepa hopes that thousands of people from every island feel welcomed and turn out at 8 a.m. Jan. 20 — with as many as possible blowing conch shells — to show unity for fire survivors during a 4.5-mile march from Lahaina Bypass Road to Launiupoko Beach Park.

With the Ho‘uulu Lahaina Unity Gathering, organized by Kalepa’s Lele Aloha nonprofit group, which he created after the Aug. 8 wildfires, now everyone should consider themselves officially invited to Lahaina to show their support, Kalepa told the Honolulu Star- Advertiser on Thursday.

“This is a kahea (call) asking you to be here, to be on this island, in Lahaina, to help us heal,” he said.

Kalepa hopes for a huge turnout because “that kind of mana gives you strength.”

He served as a captain on at least 12 deep-sea voyaging canoes and said that four voyaging canoes — Hokule‘a, Hikianalia, Makali‘i and Mo’okiha o Pi’ilani — will be moored off of Launiupoko Beach Park, on the south end of Lahaina town, on Jan. 20.

Kalepa was born and raised in Lahaina, a descendant of nine generations of Hawaiians going back to the konohiki, or traditional caretakers of their communities.

Kalepa, 60, retired after 32 years as a Maui lifeguard, lifeguard captain and head of Maui County Ocean Safety, and rode giant waves as a famed waterman.

Since the wildfires he continues to play new roles running his nonprofit and — especially — as one of five unpaid advisers to Mayor Richard Bissen to figure out how best to help the multiple, diverse needs of fire survivors, including the 3,000 families still living in hotels who hope to eventually relocate into more comfortable, long-term housing.

Kalepa initially told the mayor that “better people than me” should advise Bissen, but eventually was convinced that he would be part of a diverse group representing Maui’s varied ethnic groups and interests.

“What I’ve learned through all of this is that no one’s to blame, no government agency — whether it be from the federal, state, Red Cross — no one’s to blame,” he said. “One of the dangerous things is social media being misinformed or spinning a story. And so we have to maintain as best as we can being properly informed with the right, accurate information.”

But meeting Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays as a group — and constantly serving as a conduit between traumatized and emotional survivors and county efforts — can be overwhelming.

“Honestly, it’s a lot of pressure, something that I don’t wish upon anybody,” Kalepa said.

But he called the advisory board that Bissen assembled “a very good board that is really, really trying their very, very best.”

With so many people worried about their futures, Kalepa said that “words matter.”

Especially while trying to convey accurate information in public gatherings from official sources, Kalepa said he understands that everyone interprets what he says differently through their own lenses and concerns.

“You have to be conscious of your words because everything matters. Everything matters,” Kalepa said. “That’s how fragile our community is. We are a strong community, but we also have to recognize that we are all human. We all need help.”

Kalepa gets support every day by talking to his father, Dallas Kalepa, 86, who lives in Mililani with Archie’s mother, June, 86.

Nearly every night, he also talks to Nainoa Thompson, master navigator and CEO of the Polynesian Voyaging Society.

Kalepa called his father and Thompson his “guiding lights.”

Otherwise, Kalepa relies on his decades riding big waves, overseeing Maui County Ocean Safety and sailing thousands of miles without Western instruments relying on the stars, the ocean and nature to guide him and his crew safely.

“You have to be calm in the chaos,” he said.

Kalepa was in Lake Tahoe when the fires broke out and landed at the closest airport: Hilo.

He and nine others — fishermen and lifeguards — then organized a supply run via boat and personal watercraft to Lahaina’s Mala Wharf.

It was a scene that horrified Kalepa, who compared it to the U.S. bombing of Hiroshima that helped end World War II.

Listing boats were still smoking. And Kalepa struggled to identify landmarks because most of them were gone.

Once on land, Kalepa turned his Lahaina home on Hawaiian home lands into one of Maui’s first distribution hubs to disperse food, water and other badly needed supplies.

Now, nearly five months after the wildfires that killed at least 100 people, Kalepa looks further ahead.

He uses the metaphor of a sailing captain using years of experience and training to know whether to sail into a storm or around it to restore Lahaina, its water supply and native vegetation to the way they were before Western contact.

If done correctly, Kalepa hopes that a reborn Lahaina based on the old ways will serve as an example for the rest of Hawaii as a model of sustainability and dealing with sea rise and climate change.

At the University of Hawaii’s midyear commencement ceremony on Dec. 16 at the Stan Sheriff Center, Kalepa previewed the message that he plans to deliver in Lahaina to what he hopes will be thousands of people Jan. 20 at Launiupoko Beach.

“In Lahaina, in Hawaii, we have been sailing in a different kind of storm for the last 150 years,” Kalepa told the graduates and their friends and families. “This has been the storm of Westernization, industrialism and colonialism. This is the storm that reached its horrific peak on Aug. 8 in overwhelming flames and destruction, leaving a sea of ash and grief in its wake. …

“The decades of rerouting Lahaina’s life-giving water to feed industry instead of aina, that left crisp grasses and arid lands, literally tinder that fed the flames,” he said. “The impossible cost of living that compressed thousands of families into homes that no longer exist. These issues have come to the surface, showing themselves in their urgency, in the ash of Lahaina, in the wake of this storm.”

What happened in the Maui wildfires was unpre­cedented, Kalepa told the Star-Advertiser.

But he relies on his cultural values and traditions — and decades of experience on the ocean — to guide his way to help Maui through a storm of uncertainty.

Because once out to sea, Kalepa said, “You’re looking to the horizon. And when you look behind you, there’s no land.”