Thunder, lightning and torrential rain battered Molokaʻi early Sunday morning. Kalamaʻula homesteader Nani Kahinu checked outside her family’s home at 3 a.m.
“Our yard was flooded. It was up to our steps. The car was already in the water. The mower was in the water. So that's when I knew that, OK, we are in trouble,” Kahinu said.
This is not the first time their property flooded, but she said the water rose faster than it has before.
“Where we're standing, I think, was about to maybe my knee, but as we move farther in, then it got up to my right below my hip. So it was, it was pretty deep,” she told HPR.
They immediately sprang into action clearing the culverts. Community members stopped by to help. Kahinu said they’re lucky the water didn’t come into their house.
Others on Molokaʻi have been trying to salvage their belongings from flooded homes, and some of them had to evacuate.
Lehua Kauka is the president of the Kalamaʻula Homesteaders Association on Molokaʻi. She and other volunteers helped open a community hub with donated food and cleaning supplies Monday morning.
“Right now, we do have people coming in,” she said from the makeshift hub at Kiowea Park in central Molokaʻi. “As they come in, we are asking what is needed. And from what we've seen right there — squeegees. They just trying to get the mud out of their homes right now.”
Some residents have had roofs leaking or caving in from heavy rain.
“We have noticed that a lot of things that was being requested or that is needed on our island has been tarps, squeegee mops, cleaning supplies, gloves, even containers, so that they can store a lot of their items that is still good,” Kauka said.
With Molokaʻi stores affected by recent power outages and storm conditions, Maui residents collected donation items for Molokaʻi from Costco and Walmart, in coordination with local organizations. Molokaʻi came to help Lahaina after the 2023 wildfires, and in an outpouring of support, the Maui community said it's time to return the favor.
Molokaʻi resident and Hoʻaka Mana nonprofit founder Kanoelani Davis coordinated a boat to pick up supplies Monday from Lahaina’s Māla Wharf.
“We had a long group of people that were waiting for us,” said Davis, full of gratitude. “They had donations from food to tarps to toiletries to dry goods, and we were able to bring that supplies back to Molokaʻi.”
Those items were distributed in Kalamaʻula, as well as at a hub in Kilohana in East Molokaʻi, where residents are isolated because of road conditions.
Kamehameha V Highway remains nearly impassable with boulders and mud. Large sections of the roadway have washed away. Sinkholes are opening up in Kaunakakai and elsewhere.
Davis said the island’s conditions are like they’ve never seen before.
“I can tell you right now that we're seeing roads erode in front of our eyes,” she said. “We're starting to see rivers run that we've never seen in 20 years run the way they have run. A lot of the old folks have said that they've never seen boulders and the runoff that they've seen today, never happen like that in all of their lifetime.”
She said there’s a lack of information about how people are doing on the island because of the wide range of geographic locations where people have been impacted, and the ways the storm affected them differently.
“It's hard for us to tell what's happening on each side,” Davis said. “We really rely on social media. We really rely on the people to tell us what's happening in their area, and photographs.”
Residents like the Kahinu ʻohana have a long cleanup ahead of them. They used a stand-up paddleboard to retrieve debris in their flooded yard.
“We had propane tanks, gas tanks floating, trying to pick that stuff up. So scoop net and a stand-up paddleboard. That is the necessity for a flooded homestead,” she laughed.
They lost outdoor appliances to the flood, including their fridges and freezer, which they rely on to store locally grown produce for their business.
“Now, we have no washer, no dryer, so just figuring out how to clean up a mess without essential appliances.”
When Third River on the west side of Kaunakakai flooded about a mile away, that overloads nearby culverts that Kahinu said were only designed for mauka runoff in their Kalamaʻula area.
She said despite their own efforts to prepare for the storm and keep culverts clear, she hopes the state, county and Department of Hawaiian Home Lands will come up with a longer-term plan to fix the drainage issues and mitigate flooding in their area.
“That's our biggest problem that we've been bringing to light for years,” she said.
But Kahinu said other Molokaʻi residents fared worse in the flooding than her ʻohana did, and overall, she’s full of gratitude.
“Yes, it's heartbreaking, but the fact that we're alive, we've lost no limbs, no lives. It's replaceable things. We have such a great community. We're OK.”
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