HOUSING
Condos at Paniolo Club among hardest-hit in Waikoloa Village
WAIKOLOA VILLAGE » Rebecca Ojeda had just finished refurbishing her Paniolo Club condominium in Waikoloa Village and planned to put it on the market Monday.
"That's all changed," she said yesterday while showing some of the earthquake damage the three-story building that houses her condo and 11 others.
Concrete blocks that support some stairways have cracks big enough to put your hand inside.
Inside the apartments, plaster from the high ceilings has powdered the floor. Sliding glass doors and screens are twisted off their runners.
Freshly painted walls have huge cracks running through them. You can see daylight where the walls used to join the ceiling beams in several rooms.
No one has stayed in the structure known as "the three-story building" since Sunday night, after the Hawaii Fire Department looked the building over and deemed it unsafe. Other buildings in the complex are two stories.
The Paniolo Club buildings are some of the hardest-hit buildings in Waikoloa Village, a subdivision composed largely of condominiums surrounding nearby golf courses.
Yesterday, Hawaii County building inspector Richard Sanford went to each unit in the building and wrote damage estimates for the owners who were on the property. His estimates ranged from $10,000 to $200,000 per unit.
But Sanford told owners that his estimates are "just numbers" for a cursory damage assessment and may not be an accurate reflection of the work needed.
The only thing that's looking good on the building is the roof, which was redone in metal composite to look like the original terra cotta tiles. Other buildings in the complex, many of which don't appear to have the structural damage as Ojeda's building, lost dozens of the tiles in the earthquakes.
Jill Gray lives in one of the less-damaged buildings, but hasn't spent a night there since the quakes.
Even if she wasn't afraid of more earthquake damage, rain last night poured through the gaps in the roof and flooded the kitchen, she said.
"I wouldn't be able to forgive myself if anything happened to my children," she said of daughters Katelyn, 5, and Gracie, 5 months. Gray, her husband, Eric, and the girls stayed in a hotel last night and are trying to decide what to do next, she said.
"I'd rather be in a snowstorm in Idaho than this," said Gray, who has lived on the Big Island a year and a half. "Icy roads are nothing compared to this."
Tom Halley said he was shocked when Sanford wrote $10,000 on his unit's damage estimate.
"I would be really happy if I could get this fixed for $10,000," he said, looking around at the destruction.