The sun began to peek out through grey clouds in Hilo on Sunday morning as Hurricane Nolo continued its trek westward away from Hawaiʻi island. Although the storm brought wind and rain over the weekend, it spared the island the catastrophic damage seen during Hurricane Lala just a month ago.
The Big Island didn’t escape unscathed, however. Nolo triggered a landslide and sporadic flooding, and it toppled trees. At various points, strong winds closed Kohala Mountain Road, which connects North Kohala to Waimea, and on the Hāmākua coast, a landslide and downed tree closed a road in ʻŌʻōkala while a flooded road in Wailea was also closed.
Highway 11 was impacted again, too. In storm-scarred Kaʻū, water flowed down the newly expanded gulches and tributaries gouged out by Hurricane Lala floods, spilling out over the roadways onto the highway and causing roads to be closed temporarily overnight.
But the region avoided catastrophic flooding this time. Efforts by residents and county crews to clear flood channels and build up berms along those gulches that redirected some floodwaters away from the town proved successful as it kept waters at bay, away from most homes and businesses.
Hurricane Lala was a fresh memory, Mayor Kimo Alameda told Civil Beat Sunday. “So we’ve done additional preparations. You know, (we’re) more vigilant.”
The county had received nine requests for assistance by Sunday morning. Alameda said most of the requests were related to homes damaged by flooding.
In Nāʻālehu, Hana Hou restaurant was spared. Owner Zane Monteleone had spent the days leading up to Nolo’s arrival installing plywood sheets and placing sandbags around the building.
“We didn’t get any damage,” Monteleone said. “All the work they did did what it was supposed to.”
Crews from the National Guard and the Hawaiʻi Fire Department went door to door in Kaʻū on Saturday urging residents to evacuate. The Kawakami family in Waiʻōhinu heeded the warning. The family had lost a portion of their home during Lala and told Civil Beat on Thursday that they had planned to stay in the house as long as possible this time. They ended up spending the night with a neighbor.
More than 40 people were staying in shelters by Saturday evening, most of them in the Nāʻālehu Elementary School gym.
The county received one emergency call from a 25-year old tourist from China whose car got stuck in floodwaters near Nāʻālehu, Alameda told Civil Beat. An employee of the Department of Public Works who was nearby took her to the Nāʻālehu shelter Saturday night before driving her back to her Kona hotel in the morning.
The county is paying close attention to where water flowed in Nāʻālehu and Pāhala during Hurricane Nolo. Alameda said it provided key information about what flood mitigation efforts are needed in Kaʻū. The county plans to share what it learned with the Army Corps of Engineers and commission a study to ensure future floods flow through flood channels instead of neighborhoods.
“The positive in it is … at least we got a good test run,” Alameda said. “We’re gonna get close to, I don’t like to say solving that problem, but a better understanding of how this water’s flowing, so we can divert it back to the Waiʻōhinu (Flood) Canal.”
