On Friday, some people on Kauaʻi were thinking about the 25th anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attack and the 34th year since the devastating Category 4 Hurricane ‘Iniki struck, and others were too focused on providing help to people impacted by Hurricane Lowell.
Savannah Gibson, Kauai Community Disaster Program Manager for the American Red Cross, spent the day connecting with people on the North Shore, asking what their needs were, and assuring them that they would provide help.
Residents and visitors were dealing with pressing needs — including power, Internet, food, water and gas — four days after Category 2 Hurricane Lowell”s outer bands struck on Labor Day evening.
“I’ve been so focused on the hurricane that I haven’t had time to think about 9/11,” said the 24-year-old Gibson.
But hours after talking with people and handing out supplies, Gibson got reflective about the somer occasion on the drive back to Līhu‘e.
The terrorist attacks claimed 2,977 lives at the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and near Shanksville, Penn. The attacks also led to 5,000 to 9,000 deaths related to illnesses related to hazardous air quality and toxic exposure.
Kaua‘i County officials held a moment of silence during their morning briefing for 9/11 and the impacts of Hurricane ‘Iniki that devastated the island, leaving seven dead and destroying 1,421 homes.
For those county leaders who lived through the monster storm in 1992 and have now been serving in Lowell, they can see the stark differences and similarities.
The storms were similar in that they had island-wide impact. And while Lowell has caused devastating damage, it is far less than what ‘Iniki left in her wake.
“I don’t see all the roofs or houses torn apart like I did after ‘Iniki,” said Elton Ushio, administrator of the Kauaʻi Emergency Management Agency.
As of Friday, 57 homes were reported to have sustained major damage and at least seven destroyed in Lowell. Ushio said he has also been made aware of potential damage to a cemetery in Kekaha.
Lowell hit Kaua‘i and Ni‘ihau on Monday, bringing storm surge that severely damaged coastal areas along the south and west shores. Winds reaching 70 mph or more brought down trees island wide, blocking roads and damaging power lines, causing more than 90% of the entire island to be without power.
In the aftermath of Lowell, Ushio noticed power lines were down, but trees still had their leaves, unlike in ʻIniki, where the trees were bare down to their branches.
Kaua‘i County Mayor Derek Kawakami said the Garden Island has “dodged a lot of bullets” over the past 34 years since ‘Iniki. But this Super El Niño year has been busy.
Lowell was a “reminder of what Mother Nature is all about when she decides to come kick it on through,” Kawakami said.
The mayor was 15 when Hurricane ‘Iniki hit. He had just gotten his driver’s license: “I remember it photographically.”
At the time, Kawakami’s family owned and operated the Big Save Grocery Store in Līhu‘e. The mayor recalled taking Harry Kim, who was the county’s civil defense administrator at the time, to the grocery store to pull perishables off the shelves and get them to community members in a shelter.
“I can tell you, the first day after Hurricane Lowell came and went, as soon as I started hitting the road, I almost started getting flashbacks of that 15-year-old self seeing the island flattened,” Kawakami said on Friday. “But fortunately, Hurricane Lowell wasn’t as damaging as Hurricane Iniki.”
While Lowell battered most of Kauaʻi, leaving many residents still without power, water and Internet — and scrambling for food and gas — the damage has not been as catastrophic.
Reports of power failure and storm surge on Monday were rolling into the emergency operation center.
“As our damage assessments, air and ground surveys proceeded, it became apparent that impacts were still significant even though it wasn’t quite an ‘Iniki,” Ushio said.
Kawakami said impacts of the surge from Monday’s storm seemed more like a tsunami effect in localized areas, describing large boulders on the highway in Kekaha and a few homes in Po‘ipū by Baby Beach that were literally lifted from their foundations.
“It was really weird, and it’s really hard to predict where these surges are going to happen,” he said.
While there were long lines at grocery stores and gas stations, Kawakami said he hadn’t heard of any fuel shortages as of Friday morning.
“Just driving around, sometimes we’ll drive past a gas station that’s closed, and on our way back, we’ll see it open,” the mayor recalled. “Those little things are major victories for us.”
As of Saturday morning, Kaua‘i Island Utility Cooperative reported about 75% of the island now has power, with 9,027 customers yet to restored.
“KIUC has worked lockstep with our other emergency operations and our EOC partners,” Ushio said.
The utility cooperative has been working with the county’s Public Works and Roads Departments and the Hawai‘i Department of Transportation to clear highways to allow access on Kaua‘i rural roads that were littered with trees snapped during the storm.
Interent access through Hawaiian Telecom and Spectrum is at 50% to 60% restoration.
The county Department Water is also reporting 97% restoration to its services. On Friday, the county department reported water systems were operating on 22 powered generators islandwide.
Kaua‘i County took another hit on Thursday night with its main complex building caught fire, resulting in lost workspace for several county departments as well as critical information technology office space with the servers.
“Some of the systems did get offline, but we are operating as best we can on backups,” Ushio said.
The county has dedicated emergency backup phone lines for both Kauai police dispatch, non-emergency lines, and our Kauai Emergency Management Agency because the main line is down.
As things evolve in the recovery efforts after Lowell, the county created https://www.kauairecovers.org in an effort to streamline services in a more user-friendly and efficient way.
“We’re capturing more of what the community wants to see and hear and feel and be able to interact with,” Kawakami said about the website, adding it’s a place where someone can put their name down to help or to be helped.
It’s also where the public can report damages.
