Destructive winds from Hurricane Lala took out transmission lines across the state.
According to Hawaiian Electric, about 117,000 customers were left without power Monday morning due to the impacts of the storm.
In order to cope with the outages, HECO announced that it would be receiving reinforcements from utility companies on the continent — something that has never been done before, according to HECO spokesperson Darren Pai.
Pai spoke with HPR to deliver power recovery updates across the islands.
Interview Highlights
On Hawaiʻi Island’s recovery status
DARREN PAI: Here on Hawaiʻi Island, we know that the storm has caused significant damage in some rural areas. And so in those cases, customers may be without power for an extended period of time, especially those where there are issues with just having access to those areas. … The good news, really good news, is that the power plants on each of the islands have weathered the storm well. So there's no issue with power generation. Really, the problems lie with the grid, the actual lines and the poles that, you know, take power from those generating stations to the customers. … So that's one of our top priorities here on Hawaiʻi Island, is to get those transmission lines back in service.
On Maui County’s recovery status
PAI: In terms of the number of customers impacted, it is proportionally smaller on Maui compared to Oʻahu and Hawaiʻi Island. Can't really speculate as to exactly why that is. You know, the storm, I'm not sure exactly how close the storm came to Maui County and to Maui itself. But, you know, our crews have been making a lot of progress on Maui and so they're continuing to work on it. On all of these islands, the challenge is going to be, you know, when you've got rural areas that are difficult to access or when we need to deal with lines and poles that are located up in the mountains or in valleys or these lines that cross ravines, those are the problematic ones and those are the repairs that take a lot more time.
On Oʻahu's recovery status
PAI: For Oʻahu, we understand that's where the majority of the population lives, that's where the majority of the, you know, where we've got more industry. And so, we are fully aware that we need to make sure that we commit the proper resources there. We are going through the same restoration strategy that I've been describing, making sure that we completed the damage assessment, that's still an ongoing process, and then repairing the transmission lines and working our way through from the transmission lines down to the individual neighborhoods. We are working in specific areas where you see a lot of our bucket trucks and our crews, you know, out in your neighborhoods. If something can be fixed quickly and easily, we will go ahead and do that and try and get customers restored. If you don't see our crews in your neighborhood and you're still without power, we want you to know we are still working on solving your problem.
On receiving reinforcements from the continent
PAI: One of the important parts of this restoration process is to constantly have crews out in the field. And in order to do that, you need fresh bodies. So we have partnerships with other utilities in other states, and we have, you know, more utility workers coming in. They're expected in the next couple of days, and they're going, (there are) reinforcement’s coming, they're going to supplement the crews that we have here. We'll integrate them into the work, and that will allow us to keep rotating out fresh crews, so we will always be able to have people out in the field, you know, working on getting the lights back on.
HPR will be providing storm updates on hawaiipublicradio.org as they come in. You can also find updates on Facebook and Instagram.
This story aired on The Conversation on Aug. 17, 2026. The Conversation airs weekdays at 11 a.m. Jinwook Lee adapted this story for the web.
