|
Heavy island Troy and Rebecca Richardson just got married five weeks ago. When they returned to their Lahaina home yesterday afternoon, the wedding picture was floating in the living room.
downpours soak
many wallets
Record-breaking rain causes
damage throughout the stateRainfall levels near normal for January
By Gary T. Kubota and Rod Thompson
gkubota@starbulletin.com
rthompson@starbulletin.comTroy Richardson, standing in two feet of water in his rented home on Wainee Street in Lahaina, estimated the flood caused at least $25,000 in damage to personal belongings.
"It was an overwhelming sense of loss. It was like watching TV, but it was me in it," Thompson said.
Heavy rain flooded parts of Maui County and the Big Island and set 16-hour rainfall records for Jan. 29 in Kahului, Hilo and Honolulu. They caused more than an estimated $1.8 million in damage to houses and personal belongings on Lanai, Molokai and Maui.
On the Big Island, the heavy rain caused light damage.
The rain isn't over yet. There will still be showers on all islands today, said lead forecaster Hans Rosendal of the National Weather Service in Honolulu. But Rosendal said Hawaii's weather should be back to normal, with a lot of sunshine, by Friday.
A flood watch was canceled at 8 a.m. this morning for Maui, Molokai, Lanai and the Big Island.
Maui Civil Defense official Allan DeLima said all the roads in Maui County were open this morning.
According to an automated rain-gauge report, Pahala, Big Island, showed the heaviest rain among all islands with a reading of 17.26 inches over a 24-hour period, up to 8 p.m. last night.
Rainfall set Jan. 29 records from midnight Monday to 4 p.m. yesterday in three areas. Kahului Airport recorded 2.26 inches of rain, passing the previous record of 0.91 inches set in 1962.
At the Hilo Airport, 8.57 inches of rain were recorded, wiping out the previous record of 1.27 inches of rain in 1957. The Honolulu Airport recorded 2.02 inches of rain, terminating the previous record of 0.43 inches in 1997.
On the Big Island, a county helicopter plucked two stranded women from the roof of their truck after it got stuck in a swollen stream north of Hilo yesterday, the Fire Department said.
Firefighter Chris Wong said fire rescue personnel received a call at 9:26 a.m. from the husband of one of the women after his wife called from the stranded truck with a cell phone.
Rescuers arrived at the scene, an unpaved road above Kapehu Camp near Laupahoehoe, and found the truck in about five feet of water, Wong said. The stream, which is normally dry or has only a trickle, was roughly 30 feet wide, he said.
The women normally drive the back road through former sugar lands now used for pasture to get to their homes, he said.
Rescuers threw lines to the women who tied them around their waists while police tied them to their cars in case the women were swept off the truck.
|
A Fire Department helicopter arrived with a rescuer dangling from a cable. He helped the women get into a safety harness and they were lifted one at a time to the shore, Wong said.The waters were too strong to try to retrieve the truck, and it was left in midstream until waters subsided, he said.
Civil Defense said the Hawaii Belt Road in Kau was closed from Pahala to Naalehu throughout the day. Some 52 workers in Naalehu, unable to return to their homes in Pahala, took shelter at Sacred Heart Church in Naalehu. Six, apparently unable to travel the opposite direction, took shelter at Kau High in Pahala.
Pahala Elementary, Kau High, and Naalehu Elementary schools were to be closed today because of road conditions, officials said.
The University of Hawaii at Hilo closed at 4 p.m. and a decision was to be made early this morning on whether to open today, said Vice Chancellor John Whittaker.
Numerous secondary rural roads were closed in the Hilo, Puna, and Kau areas, as well as the road to the summit of Mauna Kea above Hale Pohaku.
|
On Maui, the floodwaters covered the parking lot and flooded the basement of the Lahaina Hongwanji Mission that contained two freezers. Mission official Sam Kadotani said he and other church officials planned to review the damage today.Maui Civil Defense official Allan DeLima said about three to four feet of water washed into nine to 10 luxury homes near the Manele Golf Course on Lanai.
DeLima said the damage was estimated at $200,000 to $300,000 for each luxury home. No one was injured, but about eight to nine people staying at the homes were evacuated to the Manele Bay Hotel.
DeLima said there were also reports of flood damage to a house in the Kapaakea area in Central Molokai and a Napili home in West Maui.
Along Lahainaluna Road in West Maui, water rushed down like a stream around some residences and gushed across James Lebrand's back yard, spilling into the neighboring property of Matsuko Kubo.
"It looks like a lake," Lebrand said.
Lebrand said he believes one of the problems is that the county has continued to pave Lahainaluna Road raising its height to the point where the water spills into driveways mauka of his property.
County Public Works Director David Goode said his department is reviewing the problem.
Goode said the problem is that Lahainaluna Road has no drainage system. He said scraping the road and filling it in with a lower elevation would be costly and he wasn't sure it would solve the flooding problem.
Star-Bulletin writer Rosemarie Bernardo contributed to this report.
Heavy downpours in the past few days may push January's rainfall to about normal for the month in most areas of the state, says hydrologist Kevin Kodama at the National Weather Service. Rainfall levels near
normal for JanuaryBy Helen Altonn
haltonn@starbulletin.comAlso, it might end the longest period on record at the Honolulu Board of Water Supply for lower-than-normal rainfall.
Until Monday night's heavy drenching, Kodama said it appeared that January rainfall would be below normal in a lot of locations.
He said he hasn't had time to develop comparative data at the rain gauges. "But it's safe to say that with the rains over the past day, we pretty much have gone to near or about normal in the majority of areas of the state."
The first half of the month started off fairly dry so it looked like Hawaii was headed for a dry month, he said. That began to change with wetter conditions the last week and a half, he said.
"We needed it the last four or five years," said Chester Lao, Honolulu Board of Water Supply hydrologist-geologist.
He said this has been the longest period on record in 100 years for lower-than-normal rainfall. There were some dry periods lasting about three years, but none that approached five years, he said.
Water levels will recover if it continues raining and water isn't being taken from the system, he said. "That's a good sign."
He noted, however, that climatologists are predicting an El Nino coming up, "which isn't a good sign."
Past El Ninos have brought dry conditions to Hawaii.