Under the Sun Cynthia Oi

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As to rainy weather, it's not whether, but when

WHETHER the weather be fine or whether the weather be not, we'll weather the weather, whatever the weather, whether we like it or not."

So Johnny the printer would unfailingly recite whenever the word "weather" was uttered, drawing moans and groans from everyone in the old Star-Bulletin backshop and good-natured rebukes for the person who forgot to use "climate conditions" in his presence.

The saying sure does describe what islanders have been through the past six weeks or so.

Boy, did it rain. No one -- not the weather wizards nor longtime residents -- could recall another time when Hawaii had experienced the amount and the stretch of dousing we've had since mid-February.

When rain falls like that, when heavy clouds create gloomy, dispiriting, constant twilight, it's easy to understand how primitive humans came to see the whims of nature as omens from their gods. In fact, the duration was compared to the biblical narrative of Noah's ark.

Even though meteorologists could explain what was happening in the atmosphere -- pointing to low-pressure cells, fixed jet streams, ocean temperatures and the like -- they couldn't say why these conditions prevailed. Some people talked about El Nino and La Nina, global warming and celestial aberrations while others shrugged it off with a fatalistic view that "stuff happens."

It does. The deluge began with a fatal strike on Kauai, and though there was no other loss of life through the storms, the flooding streams, channels and reservoirs and pollution of raw sewage flowing from broken pipes and overwhelmed treatment plants exposed a depth of weaknesses, some of which we never knew existed.

Vegetation that's supposed to restrain the soil on hillsides let go. Stone and concrete ducts failed to restrain the waters or were plugged with captured debris, creating unexpected lakes. Reservoirs, hidden from sight and largely from mind as plantation agriculture dried up, poured themselves into prominence. Freeway underpasses were transformed into muddy, impassable pools, craggy ridges melted into houses, concrete driveways and asphalt roads pressed over seemingly solid ground fell away.

The torrential rain has been described as a 100-year event, one not likely to occur again in that span of time. But taking that as fact would be to roll the dice. That's just a guess. Not preparing for another flood, not planning for the next time would be irresponsible. Not reconsidering the effects of pushing and shoving the environment into forms that we desire would be madness.

A single 48-million-gallon spill of sewage into the Ala Wai canal might be dismissed as a rare incident. Not so another. Not so the hundreds of smaller slips -- a million gallons here, 250,000 gallons there -- that befall the islands almost every week.

The tourism industry can't be happy with the "don't go in the water" images flashed on CNN and the front pages of newspapers across the country. For every visitor who accepted the situation without complaint, there were probably scores disappointed with the fouled shorelines. Their tales of a wastewatered Waikiki won't encourage the folks back home to fly out here.

In the aftermath, mosquitoes, mold, mud removal, chancy reservoirs, potholed roads, increasingly fragile sewer lines and other issues have to be dealt with.

As blue skies reappear and the sun dries the puddles, carpenters saw and swing hammers again. Birds rebuild battered nests, farmers plow under sodden crops and tourists paddle again in waters restored to turquoise. Soon, we'll put this behind us, maybe even forget how dreadful these weeks were.

We weathered the weather, but it isn't as if we had a choice. For all our inventiveness and slick technological advances, no one has yet figured a way to control atmospheric happenings. We can cut the odds of widespread destruction, but only if we pay attention when nature speaks.