Destruction, death leave lasting scars

KILAUEA, Kauai » Much of the Garden Island is recovering from the rain of February and March as the sun dries out the land, roads are repaired and wave action clears an ocean fouled by runoff and debris.

It will be months, however, before the North Shore of Kauai is back to normal, while small pockets of Kilauea, especially those near Wailapa Stream, will never be the same.

Wailapa Stream was a gentle waterway, snaking its way through back yards, orchards and farms along Wailapa Road.

But just after 5 a.m. March 14, the dam of a reservoir many Kilauea residents did not even know was there gave way with the force of nearly a half-billion gallons of water, gathering momentum as it traveled downhill and leaving a 150-yard-wide swath of destruction all the way to Kahili Quarry Beach.

In its path were two homes on Bruce Fehring's property where seven people lived: Fehring's daughter, Aurora; son-in-law, Alan Dingwall; 2-year-old grandson, Rowan Fehring-Dingwall; and friends Christina Macnees, her fiance, Daniel Arroyo, property caretaker Wayne Rotstein, and Macnees and Arroyo's best friend, Timothy Noonan.

They never had a chance. To date, four bodies remain missing.

The dam breach instantly became Kauai's deadliest weather-related calamity, surpassing even 1992's Hurricane Iniki.

"A lot of that debris and the bodies were very quickly swept away," Fehring said last week. "I don't want anyone else to go through this."

He added that he has hiked the half-mile to what used to be a small waterfall and concrete-lined pond to look for evidence of his family's home.

"I can't find any pieces of it," he added.

The concrete pond was ripped away by the force of the water and debris, leaving only rebar in its wake. The land has been stripped to its bedrock in places.

The islands are 4 million years old, Fehring noted. "In some areas, vegetation, lush vegetation, will take 4 million years maybe" to grow back.

His neighbors, while still reeling from the loss of life, are trying to get some semblance of their lives back after the tragedy.

Ben Guevara, Fehring's neighbor, lost a chunk of his home when the debris came through. A 3-foot-wide tree sits in what is left of his pool.

There are no remnants of his koi pond.

And he had carpet cleaners in his home for a week trying to get rid of the damp and mold that are accumulating.

"We are trying to do a little bit" of the cleanup, Guevara said, "but so many government officials are telling us to wait" until it is inspected by disaster officials.

It's the mosquitoes and the stench that really get to Guevara, he said. He and his wife cannot stay in their home.

Meanwhile, claims by Fehring and Guevara to their insurance companies have been denied, saying that the breach was an act of God.

Fehring said, however, it was a "failure of man."

The state attorney general's office is investigating the dam breach, trying to find out whether the state, the owners of the dam or those responsible for its maintenance could have helped cause the breach.

Another Wailapa Stream resident, John Hawthorne, remembers the Anahola Flood in 1991, which killed four people. The March 14 dam breach "was a hundred times worse," he said.

Hawthorne, a plumber and machinist by trade, said he still wakes up every day at 5:20 a.m., when the waters woke him up. He said he and many of his neighbors are in counseling because of the tragedy.

"You can't imagine the noise of all this stuff," he said. "It sounded like a walking artillery barrage."

Fehring and his neighbors were quick to credit the amazing job of emergency personnel involved in the search efforts. But they worry that as time moves on and the rest of the islands clean up, they will be forgotten.

"It's going to take years for this to rectify itself," said Hawthorne.

While many others on Kauai worried about a possible breach elsewhere, state and federal engineers checked the dams across the county and concluded they were safe.

People in Koloa were especially worried, since the Waita Dam mauka of the south shore town is the largest reservoir in the state. But reservoir owner Alexander & Baldwin assured residents at a town hall meeting that all was safe.

Kauai Civil Defense Administrator Mark Marshall said that the flooding that enveloped the whole island was a relatively rare event.

While Lihue Airport received 10 times its average rainfall for the month of March, the National Weather Service has still not pinpointed whether the rain on Kauai was a once-in-50-year or once-in-100-year event, Marshall said.

Either way, he said, he was proud of the response by county, state and federal officials. It was also the first time the Emergency Operations Center was used to its full potential.

The center gives emergency workers a tremendous advantage over the days of Iniki, which killed two Kauai residents and four other people.

With real-time data and links to numerous services not previously available, the center was operational on and off from Feb. 20, when the first flash-flood warning was posted, through the end of March. It had as many as 100 people working through the worst of the flooding, making sure, first of all, that people were safe.

"It's hard for the government to do anything quick," Marshall said, "but in this case we even surprised ourselves."