Hurricane Lala never made landfall. At noon on Aug. 16, more than 250,900 Hawaiian Electric customers were without power. The storm also damaged more than 60 transmission lines across Oʻahu, Maui and Hawaiʻi Island.

As of Aug. 24, about 4,600 customers on Hawaiʻi Island remained without power, concentrated in some of the hardest-hit communities in Kaʻū, Puna and Kohala.

Civil Beat reported last week that only two shelters on Hawaiʻi Island are built to withstand Category 3 hurricane-force winds: the Hilo High School gym and the Robert N. Herkes Gymnasium in Pāhala. No projects are underway to harden the others.

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On Oʻahu, the emergency manager said in March that 20 of 25 shelter sites had been retrofitted only to Category 1 standards. Honolulu estimates it can shelter about 100,000 people, roughly half the capacity needed for a Category 5 storm.

Herkes Gym held during the storm. Rescued residents from flooding in Nāʻālehu and Waiʻōhinu were taken there early on August 16. By the afternoon, it was one of only two Hawaiʻi Island shelters still open.

Surviving the hurricane winds is half the job. A shelter needs to keep the lights on, provide refrigeration, and support medical equipment. Maui offered an example of what this looks like.

After days of Upcountry outages, the Eddie Tam Memorial Center served as a shelter and a charging station. The next day, sheltering ended, but the center stayed open for charging devices and connecting to the internet over Starlink. An energy-resilient shelter can become a community power and communications hub when the grid fails.

Our Hilo neighborhood lost power for two days. Our rooftop solar and batteries kept our lights and appliances on, so we were lucky. We lost water anyway after the County’s pumps lost power.

Kaimukī Middle School offers an example. A $500,000 project would have added battery storage and islanding to the school’s existing solar system and would have run the campus off-grid for four hours. FEMA contributed $375,000 through its BRIC program but canceled the program in 2025.

A federal court has ordered the program restored, but it’s unclear whether the Kaimukī project will be funded. Four hours will help, but a major hurricane will demand more.

Many of our schools are candidates for shelters. The Department of Education owns most of the state’s public buildings, and many campuses already have rooftop solar. Schools are in the communities they serve and have many of the amenities needed for a shelter — kitchens, bathrooms, parking, and protected spaces. The addition of batteries and switchgear at some of these schools would allow them to provide power for days.

Disaster-proofing is a prerequisite. Resilient shelters need to withstand hurricane winds and avoid floods. Retrofitting and hardening are costly and time-consuming work. In 2018, a state official told Civil Beat it would take over 300 years to assess and retrofit every shelter needed by the state. Civil Beat’s reporting indicates that the state cannot say how far it’s gotten.

Solar and storage can provide a school with operational benefits and support energy needs during an outage. Electric school buses can add even more storage capacity where bidirectional charging exists, but any bus plan would require state funding. Generators would cover needs during an extended outage.

Federal incentives still exist for storage. As of mid-2026, storage is covered by Section 48E, and public agencies can apply for direct payment instead of a deduction. The credit phase-out doesn’t start before 2032. Commercial solar must be in service by Dec. 31, 2027, to claim the credit, so any school solar should start now.

State funding will be necessary to create resilient shelters. Act 175, the supplemental budget signed in June, puts roughly $446 million into public school improvements, but most has been allocated, and it’s unclear how much would be available for the required investments.

The 2027 Legislature should consider a dedicated line for storage and islanding infrastructure at refuge schools. The Department of Education should include resilience in its repair and modernization work.

Priority must be made for resilient shelters in locations where risk is highest, and the grid is weakest. Kaʻū and Puna are clear examples. Since a wind rating alone is insufficient for long-duration shelters, HIEMA’s assessments should measure energy capacity too. House Resolution 142 asked HIEMA to identify hurricane-resilient shelters and to develop a plan to close gaps. The Legislature should fund it.

Lala stayed offshore, but it still damaged hundreds of homes and killed two people in Kaʻū, including May Doi, a 93-year old retired Nāʻālehu Elementary School teacher. UH climatologists say warming ocean water raises the odds of stronger hurricanes reaching Hawaiʻi. Let’s create energy-resilient shelters before the next one instead of counting on the wind to miss us.