Hurricane Lala churned towards Hawaiʻi Island Saturday morning, causing strong wind gusts and heavy rains along the island’s windward side.
The National Weather Service has issued a flash flood warning for communities in east Hawaiʻi from North Kohala to Kaʻu. Emergency officials are reporting intense rainfall in those areas, with rain falling at a rate of 2.5 inches per hour in some cases.
Amid stormy conditions, Mayor Kimo Alameda urged residents “to hunker down until this hurricane passes.”
“Hazardous weather conditions will continue to intensify today,” Alameda said in a statement shortly before 1 p.m.
High winds of up to 80 mph in some places have brought down trees and toppled power lines. Several major roads are experiencing closures, including Highways 250, 19 and 11. About 18,700 Hawaiian Electric customers were without power at noon on Saturday, with some of the largest outages clustered in Pāhoa and along the Hāmākua Coast.
In response to the power outages, the Hawaiʻi Department of Water Supply told customers islandwide to restrict water usage to essential needs, like drinking, cooking, and bathing.
The department relies on electricity to pump water up from Hawaiʻi’s underground aquifers. Without power, residents have to rely on what’s stored in the county’s water tanks. In larger communities, like Kona, Hilo and Waimea, that water supply may last less than a day.
Claudia Ziroli lives in Puna, which the Central Pacific Hurricane Center predicted could get up to two feet of rain over the course of the storm.
She said that serious stormy weather started to affect her upper Puna neighborhood by the early hours of Saturday morning, well before Hurricane Lala reached its closest point to Hawaiʻi Island.
“It’s already surpassing the Kona low, as we experienced it here on the Big Island,” she told HPR.
The island’s leeward communities largely saw lighter storm conditions through Saturday morning. But the prospect of possible storm damage was nerve-wracking for some who have already weathered multiple disasters this year.
KayLynne Santana lives on a coffee farm in Hōnaunau that was hit hard by the Kona Lows earlier this year. The farm then sustained serious damages during the May 22nd South Kona earthquake.
Santana told HPR that she had been anxious about what further destruction Hurricane Lala might bring.
“We are so not ready for another storm. We haven’t even finished cleaning up from the Kona low and the earthquake,” she said.
The community organization Vibrant Hawaiʻi partnered with Hawaiʻi County to field requests for assistance after recent major weather events. The organization has opened a form for Hawaiʻi Island residents who experience damages or require assistance as a result of Hurricane Lala. Fill out the form here.
