LISTEN TO THE RAIN
A SPECIAL REPORT
Hard-hit residents cope with long slog back
The day after more than six inches of mud rushed into her Kaaawa home in torrential showers on March 2, Dawn Nozawa showed an Oahu Civil Defense worker the mess and was confident she could get it cleaned up in a week.
He laughed, then told her she'd be lucky if the work was finished by Christmas. A month of painting, scrubbing and bleaching later, she's starting to believe him.
Three weeks after the flood, she found a cake of mud under the tiles in her boys' room. She's had to pull a whole section of the flooring out. The cleanup also is starting to eat away at the family's finances. They had to throw out beds, clothes, a washing machine and dryer -- along with irreplaceable heirlooms. Their refrigerator was the last to quit.
"When is this going to stop?" Nozawa asked on a recent weekday. "Everywhere I turn, there's help and it's so great. But I know it's going to hit us financially."
THE NOZAWAS are one family of dozens statewide left dealing with the grueling, costly aftermath of more than a month of heavy rain. On top of the physical and financial strains, there are the emotional ones: having to face the mess, explaining the disaster to children.
Some storm victims will never be able to sit calmly through a hard thunderstorm again. They will watch rain clouds with trepidation and rush home whenever it pours.
Others will have nightmares, perhaps for months.
And many of those whose homes were flooded by muddy water or battered by landslides in the series of storms that hit the state starting Feb. 19 face thousands of dollars in costs and countless weeks of work ahead.
A handful have lost their homes entirely.
"It just really starts to grind on you," Nozawa said recently, on a particularly frustrating afternoon for the longtime Kaaawa resident, who operates a petting zoo on her farm.
A few days earlier, a Federal Emergency Management Agency worker had told her the house where her husband grew up would have to be inspected for structural integrity.
The mud underneath, the worker had said, might have dried and undermined the home's foundation. The couple does not have flood insurance, and Nozawa estimates the damage to her home and farm has already topped $70,000. Two animals were lost in seven heavy showers, the first of which flooded their home.
Subsequent rains flooded their petting zoo, and there was little they could do for the animals. "My llamas were standing belly-deep in water," she said. "My poor sheep, my poor pigs, all the silt would end up in their pens."
Two days after floodwaters from Makiki Stream broke a retaining wall and poured into Ray Lalosin's Fern Street home, the Oahu Civil Defense volunteer realized what had happened -- how close he had come to death -- and broke down in tears. "Thank God I'm alive," he told himself.
Lalosin had rushed home from Ala Moana Center on March 31 when he got a call from his brother, saying Makiki Stream was high and threatening to overflow.
Lalosin lives in a studio behind his brother's home, where his 15-year-old nephew was alone when the flooding started. The teenager made it out of the house with the help of his father, who had also sped home that afternoon.
While Lalosin was trying to get into his home through floodwaters, the retaining wall keeping the stream at bay broke. "Just as I was opening my door, I heard a loud explosion," he said.
"I still cannot forget that sound."
When the wall broke, cement tiles shot out at Lalosin and hit him in the back, leaving him scratched and bruised. Then, a wave of muddy water filled with debris slammed him.
For a moment he was pinned up against his screen door. He managed to break the screen to get through and opened the front door, letting nearly two feet of water into his living room.
Once he had closed the door, he called 911.
Then, he watched the stream, waiting for the waters to recede enough so that he could go outside and check on his neighbors. Three nearby homes had been gutted.
Two weeks after the flood, spurred by rain that also caused a devastating mudslide in Maunalaha Valley and left Kahala Mall under nearly a foot of water, one neighbor is still unable to return, and a second moved back in a few days ago.
The retaining wall behind Lalosin's home was rebuilt last week with the help of some volunteers.
While it was gone, Lalosin barely got any sleep. He kept worrying about the possibility of a repeat. "Hopefully, it's a 100-year flood, because I don't want to go through this again in my lifetime," he said recently, after a shopping trip to pick up more cleaning supplies. "We were in shock for a couple of days. It was another state of mind."
The residents of Maunalaha Valley, near Round Top Drive, know all about shock, fear and lost sleep.
The tight-knit community sustained a series of landslides spurred by heavy rain, which have threatened to cut off the only road in. One large landslide created a new canyon right in front of Leinaala Lopes' home.
"We're so scared and nervous," Lopes said, exhaustion peering through her determined voice. "It's really stressful, especially to listen to the river."
Just the other day, Lopes said, she was shopping in town when she saw clouds settling over Tantalus. She froze, then cut short her trip, jumped in her car and rushed home.
WHEN IT RAINED, IT POURED
154 The number of times Fire Department personnel on Oahu had to pump floodwaters out of homes or other private property in March. That compares with 105 such "water evacuations" for all of 2005.
Source: City and County of Honolulu
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