Lala is moving out into the open Pacific Ocean. There was a lot of wind and flooding, but as far as I’ve heard no injuries or deaths. In our neighborhood, property damage seems to have been minimal. Our storm preparations seemed to be adequate.
We got over twenty inches of rain in two days. For a guy who grew up in the deserts of Southern California, that’s wet.
roads
There were a lot of road closures on the island, including the main highway between here and the nearest town. Some were due to flooding, but most involved down trees. Our road — which has no bypass of any kind — stayed clear though there was rather a lot of debris floating down the stream that most of the road had become. The next road down, one of only two that connect to our road, had multiple down trees most of which were leaning on the cables carrying internet fiber and phone service up the mountain. Joulee the Free Salvage Tesla didn’t have nearly enough ground clearance to clear the debris. Timmy the Titan, with his tent-on-racks, was too tall to get under the fallen trees. Our neighbor had a Ford Ranger, 4WD with enough ground clearance but not too high. He was able to get to town, but didn’t recommend the trip.
I cleared some big tree limbs that had fallen on the drive mauka from us. I didn’t see the folks that live down the drive, but I trust that they’ll be appreciative when they try to leave. I could hear them chain-sawing other areas on their property.
The drive makai from us (on which we have an easement so we can drive in to the studio area) was also blocked by a couple of trees, and our neighbor with the loader and our other makai neighbor were out early clearing it. They then went and joined other neighborhood volunteers clearing the road down to the highway. There are so many road problems on the island that it will probably be weeks before the county is able to get crews out here to our tiny, rural roads, so neighborhood cooperation is paramount.
I didn’t get photos of the trees blocking the roads. When I was there, it was scary enough just driving without also trying to be a photographer. I have no desire to be one of those people who make a disaster worse by being a spectator.
power
Looking at the island-wide HELCO (electric utility) outage map is like looking at HELCO’s service area map. Basically, all population centers have power outages. Much of our neighborhood is beyond the reach of HELCO, and thus we all have off-grid solar and most of us have generator backup. In the village, even the hospital was apparently without power — I suspect a failure (or underprovision) of their backup generators.
phones/internet
Cell phone service is mostly out around the island. Even where there’s phone service, data is often unavailable. Likely that’s because the big cable providers, Spectrum Wireless and Hawaiian Telcom, are mostly down and unable to provide backhaul for the cellular networks. I suspect that’s a combination of last-mile damage and power outages.
As mentioned, I have satellite backup and it connects to my existing compound-wide network which means that there’s WiFi in the front yard and garage (thanks to my $3 thrift store router) and in the pasture and studio area thanks to a long fiber-optic cable I ran along the gulch fence mainly to connect the solar plant to the net. What didn’t occur to me is what a useful resource this would be for my neighbors. There basically was no way to communicate amongst ourselves except our GMRS radios — which were a godsend for coordinating neighborhood activities but they didn’t allow concerned distant friends and family to check on their loved ones.
Our across-the-street neighbor came over and said “I hear you have internet; can I check my email?” I showed her how to hook up her phone. Since we all have WiFi calling enabled, her phone immediately began screaming with a barrage of notifications. She hung out at our house for a few hours reassuring her concerned loved ones. That happened again when I was clearing the makai road with two more neighbors, one whose wife was in the hospital post-op and anxiously awaiting a ride home (which had to wait for the highway to be cleared). So Starlink served a serious humanitarian mission here, though I dislike supporting them. They even, later in the day, announced that they were making the service free for every Starlink user on the island this month to help with hurricane relief.
Depending on whom you ask, there hasn’t been a hurricane that made landfall on this island ever, or at least within the last 100 years. As far as I know, Lala missed by a mere 20 miles, but it was certainly the worst storm of recent times. So far, I haven’t heard of any serious injuries or deaths, though I suspect there will be some reports as power and communications are restored. In any case, a big shout out is owed to Hawai’i County emergency services and the many formal and informal volunteers (such as CERT) and just ordinary folks who take the time to plan and prepare for disasters. This could have been bad, but so far it appears the damage was manageable. Bear in mind, though, that even a “manageable” disaster can leave some folks homeless or jobless or isolated from friends and support.
—2p