Marck Aphay stands on a dirt and trash-strewn lot where his home once stood at Otake Camp. As he rummaged through debris on April 23, he broke down in tears after he found a container with food bowls that he used to feed his seven cats.
“That's what kills me because I have a lot of memories here,” he said. “To come back home to nothing. I built everything in 12 years. I had my life savings here.”
During the second Kona low storm on March 20, Aphay’s home was swept away by the floods before crashing into a bridge downstream.
Otake Camp was one of the hardest hit during the back-to-back Kona lows. Floodwaters left homes and vehicles caked in soupy red mud, and moved houses more than 15 feet away from their foundations.
As residents are still picking up the pieces left by the storm, many are grappling with staying or leaving the plantation-era neighborhood.
Fighting to stay
Otake Camp sits on the edge of Kaukonahua Stream and behind the grocery store called T. Otake and Sons in Waialua.
Aphay was raised at Otake Camp by a family of farmers. It’s a tight-knit community where people can live there if they know the Otake family, according to Aphay.
But living in the plantation-era neighborhood comes at a price, as it is historically prone to flooding.
Aphay said he has experienced five floods in his lifetime and still remembers the flood at Otake Camp from 20 years ago, when Oʻahu experienced the infamous “40 days and 40 nights” of rain.
“I was actually on the farm when it happened. … That happened really fast, too,” he said.
Aphay, who has been living in Otake Camp for more than 30 years, has been fighting to stay in the neighborhood he grew up in.
For nearly three months, Aphay has been living in a food truck that was donated to him. In the truck is a futon and TV. Every morning, he wakes up and helps his neighbors clean up, goes to work, and then comes back to clean up some more.
“It’s rough when it happens to you,” he said. “You can’t sleep at night. Crying every morning. I go through that. The start of my day is the tears that come out.”
There are at least 30 households at Otake Camp and about a handful of homes that are salvageable. But not everyone is living on the property.
The house where Aphay’s truck is parked is rented by Anthony Nery Jr., who has lived at Otake Camp for 31 years.
Nery has been trying to move back in as quickly as possible. He’s been sleeping at his work office, then will come back to Otake Camp to clean up his home.
His house was flooded with a foot and a half of water.
“I tried to scrape the mud out with a flat shovel, but the vinyl flooring was so damaged that we could not even scrape mud,” he said. “So I had to rip all the flooring out.”
He’s still in the process of installing cabinets and sinks. He said the faster he moves, the faster he can get back home and sleep on a bed again.
“I could put a bed in there and sleep in there, but I’m not going to stay here until it’s completely done,” he said.
A longstanding flood problem
Behind Nery’s house, construction equipment has been dredging the narrow stream, widening it from 15 feet to about 70 feet.
Neary said the stream has never been dredged before since he moved to Otake Camp in 1995.
“The units are so behind a lot of the units, and it’s always a danger,” he said. “Anything that’s raining and falling on Mount Kaʻala comes right down to Otake. That’s a lot of water for this river to handle.”
He said widening the stream could help relieve flood issues for future storms.
But Otake residents for years have been calling for flood-mitigating efforts.
A 2002 Honolulu Star-Advertiser article reported that one Otake resident proposed an idea in a letter to the Hawaii governor at the time.
Otake resident Stanley Otake called for the building of a dirt levee (complete with pilings to trap large debris) between Farrington Highway and the area’s cane-haul road.”
Otake at the time estimated that it would cost around $200,000. But Otake’s proposal didn’t go anywhere because it wasn’t “specific enough to be feasible.”
Stream maintenance is another issue. The Kaukonahua Stream has complex ownership, where part of the waterway is owned either by the city, state or private landowners. Each owner is responsible for maintaining their part of the stream.
Council member Matt Weyer said the Honolulu City Council is waiting on the after-action report from the city administration.
“We do need a plan and an approach that meets the needs of everyone,” Weyer said of the ownership of the Kaukonahua Stream. “I think that there are folks who have challenges with possibly fully maintaining their portion of the stream, and of course the impact is limited if say their neighbor is not also meaning the stream.”
Saying goodbye
Marck Aphay was supposed to celebrate his birthday at his house two days before the floods. He was working toward buying his house, but that reality doesn’t seem reachable now.
On June 15, Aphay spoke with HPR again and said he had received money from the Federal Emergency Management Agency. But it’s not enough money to rebuild his home, according to Aphay.
“I’m working on buying a place right now in Māʻili [on Oʻahu's Leeward Coast] because my landlord is not going to rebuild our house. But I’m still there helping people and staying in the same trailer,” he said. “We’re almost there, and I have to make a new goal where I can get money for donations to help me with my new house that I'm trying to purchase because it needs work.”
