Hawaii recovering from big storm, flood threats remain

HONOLULU — A slow-moving storm that knocked retired power, swamped dozens of homes and sent creeks and streams surging had mostly passed implicit Hawaii connected Tuesday, though the menace of flooding lingered successful immoderate already-drenched areas.

Showers were tapering disconnected connected Oahu, wherever Pearl Harbor survivors gathered nether overcast skies for an 80th day event. The land had received betwixt 6 and 10 inches of rainfall since Monday, but isolated bands of rainfall were inactive possible.

A menace of dense rainfall continued for the land of Kauai.

The unusually beardown wintertime tempest clobbered Hawaii for respective days, knocking retired powerfulness to 42,000 radical connected Maui and the Big Island, according to the Hawaiian Electric Company. Outages were besides reported connected different islands, though it wasn’t instantly wide however galore were affected.

On Tuesday, the Honolulu Fire Department reported responding to astir 100 storm-related incidents wrong 24 hours, including 55 flooded homes. Ten radical were besides saved from flash flooding: Five boys ages 9 and 10 were pulled from a raging creek Monday; different 5 radical were aboriginal rescued from a antithetic stream, and 1 was sent to a hospital, the bureau said. The section besides responded to 2 landslides and 4 wind-torn roofs.

Several schools were closed connected Oahu owed to the terrible weather. And wide powerfulness outages were reported connected the island, including successful downtown Honolulu, wherever inferior crews were moving to reconstruct energy aft a substation flooded. Police were directing postulation astatine engaged transverse streets wherever postulation lights were out.

Four shelters had been opened connected Oahu, and usually engaged beaches determination remained mostly bare Tuesday morning.

The tempest strategy was expected to determination retired of Hawaii connected Wednesday, 2 days aft Gov. David Ige issued a authorities of exigency for each the islands.

The Big Island and Maui were mostly wide of the heaviest rainfall by Tuesday morning.

‘A mess’

On Maui, powerfulness outages and flooding were reported successful erstwhile days, with much than a ft of rainfall falling successful immoderate areas.

The relentless rainfall forced 3 couples from the U.S. mainland to postpone their Maui elopements, said Nicole Bonanno, proprietor of Bella Bloom Floral, a wedding florist and boutique successful Wailea.

“The roads, everything are a mess,” she said. “There are tons of trees down.”

Big Island Mayor Mitch Roth had declared an exigency aft dense rainfall and winds pounded the land connected Sunday. A blizzard informing was issued for the island’s highest peak, Mauna Kea.

Snow is not uncommon astatine the acme of Mauna Kea, which is astir 14,000 feet high. However, the past clip determination was a blizzard informing for the acme was successful 2018.

The storm, known arsenic a “Kona low,” is simply a unsocial benignant of low-pressure strategy that tin signifier adjacent Hawaii during the wintertime aft gathering immense amounts of tropical moisture from equatorial regions.

“Kona lows thin to determination dilatory and truthful they tin support dense rainfall and thunder showers focused implicit 1 country for a prolonged magnitude of time, and they tin besides origin beauteous beardown to damaging winds,” said meteorologist Robert Ballard, the National Weather Service’s subject and cognition serviceman successful Hawaii.