飓风吹倒了夏威夷的牛油果树，一个小岛用掉在地上的果子办了场比赛，救下了自己的电台

This September, Hurricane Lowell reached Hawaii.

The island hit hardest was a small one called Kauaʻi.

After the wind stopped, people stepped outside and found fallen trees everywhere.

A great many of them were avocado trees.

The timing landed at exactly the worst possible moment.

Hawaii's avocados happen to start ripening in September.

Which is to say, the trees were blown over at the point when they were carrying the most fruit.

Overnight, thousands of avocados appeared on the ground.

Here it is worth explaining what makes Hawaii's avocados different.

There are roughly two hundred varieties here.

They ripen at different times, and they differ in size and in taste.

So Hawaii's avocados never became a real commercial crop.

This is not something grown to be sold.

It is more like something neighbours give to one another.

And now there was suddenly more of it than anyone could possibly eat.

Left out, it rots; thrown away, it is a waste.

Everyone on the island understood that all this could not simply be allowed to disappear.

What happened next was photographed by a lot of people and posted online.

At the roadside, in shop doorways, beside petrol stations, one box appeared after another.

In buckets, in boxes, in little carts — all of it avocados.

The words written on them varied, but the meaning was always one thing: free, help yourself.

One local said it seemed like every neighbourhood had a bin of free avocados sitting out.

But in that same week, there was something more urgent going on.

Kauaʻi has a community radio station.

During the hurricane, many places lost power, and phones had no signal.

At a time like that, all people have is the radio.

The station tells everyone which roads are passable, whether the water is safe, and where to pick up food.

But on the ninth of September, the station itself asked for help.

It said its fuel was nearly gone and the generator would not run much longer.

With no fuel, the station would have to stop.

And once the station stops, nobody can hear anything at all.

So that hurricane really did two things.

It made everyone desperate for information, and it very nearly silenced the people giving it.

At that point, somebody had an idea.

The thing this island has most of right now is avocados — so use avocados to buy the fuel.

On the afternoon of the seventeenth, they held a guacamole contest behind a small restaurant.

There were twenty-five batches of guacamole, all made by local people.

The organisers had assumed a hundred people showing up would be a good turnout.

Close to two hundred came.

They had hoped to take in two thousand five hundred dollars.

They ended up with more than five thousand — twice what they had hoped for.

The station did not go off the air.

It is still talking.

Look at the whole thing from beginning to end and it becomes very clear.

The hurricane knocked over the trees, the trees dropped their fruit, the fruit raised the money, the money bought the fuel, and the fuel kept the station talking.

And what the station was talking about was what to do after the hurricane.

The thing the hurricane broke turned out to be the thing that fixed it.

If one day a box of unwanted fruit appeared outside your door, would you take it home?