Hurricane Lane swamps Hawaii
HONOLULU — Hurricane Lane dumped torrential rains that inundated the main town on Hawaii’s Big Island as people elsewhere stocked up on supplies and piled sandbags to shield oceanfront businesses against the increasingly violent surf.
The city of Hilo, population 43,000, was flooded with waist-high water. The National Guard and firefighters rescued six people and a dog from a flooded home, while five California tourists were rescued from another home.
Ben Mitchell, who moved from Washington state to an isolated and rural area of the Big Island eight months ago, said he had never seen so much rain.
“It was like waterfalls coming off my roof,” he said of Thursday’s downpours.
Rain blew into his windows, and his “whole driveway is underwater,” Mitchell said, adding that the rain tapered off yesterday.
As much as 35 inches fell on the island in 48 hours. Crews responded to landslides that shut down roads.
Closures “seem to be changing by the minute,” said Hawaii County Civil Defense spokeswoman Kelly Wooten. “They get cleaned up, and there’s another landslide somewhere else.”
The Category 2 storm was expected to turn west today before reaching the islands and skirting Oahu — the state’s most populated island. Even without making a direct hit, the system threatened to bring huge storm surge, high wind and heavy rain, forecasters said.
In an odd twist, some residents in a shelter on Maui had to flee when a brush fire got too close. A woman got burns on her hands and legs and was flown to Honolulu, Maui County spokesman Rod Antone said.
In Oahu, police warned tourists to leave Honolulu’s world-famous Waikiki Beach ahead of the storm’s arrival, but dozens of people were still swimming and surfing. A canal there is likely to flood, said Ray Alexander of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.