Parts of Hawaii flooded after torrential rains
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 waisthigh 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 the rain had tapered off Friday.
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 other 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.
A man posted a video on Instagram showing flames several stories high starting to envelop parked cars. Josh Galinato said he was trying to sleep when he smelled smoke in his apartment in the tourist town of Lahaina.
“I opened up my front door, and I just saw the fire spreading and coming downhill,” Galinato said. He and neighbors honked horns to alert others to the danger.
Joseph Azam, who is vacationing in Maui with family and friends, hopes rain from the hurricane arrives before the flames do.
“Trying to figure which comes first, the fire or the rain,” said Azam, who’s from Oakland, California, and is staying at a hotel. “We’re praying the rain arrives soon.”
About 100 miles away 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.
“The canal has flooded in the past, and I believe it’s safe to say based on the forecast of rainfall it’s likely to flood again, the impacts of which we aren’t prepared to say at this time,” Alexander said.
Officials received $345 million last summer to initiate a flood risk management project, with construction of detention basins, a flood wall and pumping station beginning in 2020 and expected to be completed in 2023, he said.