As recovery from Hurricane Lala continues, some Oʻahu neighborhoods are still hurting from lingering damages to infrastructure.
As of Thursday morning, Hawaiian Electric said that it’s restored power to “essentially all” customers on Oʻahu and Maui, though the Tantalus neighborhood continues to be one of the last areas where the electricity is still out, and downed trees and collapsed roads are still an issue.
Courtney Monahan lives in the area and said some residents weren’t able to leave their homes for two days because downed trees blocked the roads.
“From midway up Round Top Drive to midway down the Tantalus (Drive) side, there are all of those houses and people who live there were essentially trapped for two-and-a-half days, until Monday night at about 6 p.m.,” Monahan said Wednesday.
She added, “There was an older gentleman who needed to get down to do blood work, to have chemotherapy, and we had to kind of help him crawl through trees so his son could pick him up to take him.”
She said there’s power only on some parts of Round Top Drive and that the outage continues on Tantalus Drive.
Some large eucalyptus trees planted in the area fell, blocking the road. One landed on and destroyed a pickup truck. Fallen trees also reportedly damaged nearby power lines and may have contributed to the extended outage in the area.
The City and County of Honolulu in a Wednesday news release also said a section of Tantalus Drive around the 4.5-mile marker has been closed off to vehicles and pedestrians because a retaining wall collapsed. About 120 feet of road was damaged, and at its most severe extends about 9 feet into the road, according to the release.
Monahan said neighbors initially responded to help cut trees and support neighbors without water or electricity.
She added that many residents in the Tantalus area have rain catchment systems that usually rely on electricity to function, so the outage could be impacting their access to water.
HECO announced Thursday that it was ahead of schedule in its effort to restore electricity to its customers, and in Tantalus temporary power lines could restore power for residents as early as today.
