NORTH KOHALA — While some pockets of West Hawaii have felt the effects of Hurricane Lane as it continues to pass by, the west side as a whole has remained relatively unscathed despite earlier predictions of a harsh weather beating.
What started as a Category 4 hurricane had weakened to a tropical storm as of Friday afternoon. The Big Island first started to feel the effects of the hurricane Wednesday in East Hawaii. The rain has not stopped and the east side of the island has endured extreme flooding, power outages and damage, while the west side has had patches of inclement weather.
As of 5 p.m. Friday, Bayfront Highway in Hilo remained closed. Highway 19 was opened to one lane for emergency access from mile markers 0-32. All other state routes were open.
On Friday, Waikoloa, South Kohala, Kailua-Kona and South Kona areas experienced rain with stronger bands of precipitation that occasionally moved through. However, In North Kohala on Akoni Pule Highway was forced to shut down due to a landslide blocking the roadway at mile marker 25.
Also known as Highway 270, Akoni Pule Highway shut down at least twice over the course of Thursday and Friday because of landslides and debris on the road.
Yoav “Pono” Melamed, of North Kohala, felt the impact of one of the landslides Thursday morning when the mud brought with it cascades of water down into his property, located on the makai side of the highway.
“This whole driveway was a gushing river,” Melamed said.
Along the side of his house, Melamed described a gravel path that was now covered in layers of mud. Despite that, he added his house hasn’t been flooded.
“It’s been really close,” Melamed said, “but so far we’ve been lucky.”
At the top Melamed’s driveway were his houseguests Jason Rogers and Nathanael “Boots” Moss. As small streams of water attempted to creep onto the property, they took shovels of mud and rocks to block its path.
Rogers said the stream that hit the driveway Thursday was a concern, but it was for the most part fixed when workers with Hawaii Department of Transportation cleared the slide and helped redirect the water to the mauka side of the road.
Overall, Rogers and Moss thought the conditions in North Kohala weren’t extremely damaging.
“Just a lot of heavy rain,” Moss said. “There really wasn’t much wind.”
The Ka‘u District also experienced some adverse weather and flooding that closed Kaalaiki Road. Police stationed in the area said Friday that Ocean View and South Point had a fair amount of wind.
“This has been the worst weather this week,” said Ann Lorenzo, owner of Annie’s Island Fresh Burgers in Kealakekua, who closed her restaurant after a half-day Wednesday and never opened up shop Thursday based on weather reports.
Lorenzo and her husband, who co-owns and also works in the shop, live in Ocean View, as do a handful of their employees. The commute to South Kona brought with it safety concerns based on forecasts, which is ultimately why the restaurant lost a day and a half of business despite relatively clement skies in Kealakekua.
“It was a bit frustrating,” Lorenzo said. “You go based on what you hear and what you know. But after that, we weren’t going based on the news. We called our team that lives here (for weather information). A lot of the employees wanted to be open.”
Lorenzo added, however, that weather did pick up in Ocean View Thursday night. She and her husband went without power to their home, located roughly three miles mauka of the highway, from around 10:30 p.m. Thursday until 5:30 a.m. Friday.
It started with the rain, she said, and then came the wind.
“My husband put plywood on the windows, and thank God he did, because the wind was so strong.”
On Friday, county and state officials continued to monitor conditions in Kona from the forward operating base at the West Hawaii Civic Center. Merrick Nishimoto, deputy director of Public Works, said crews were out Friday checking the shoreline and other vulnerable areas.
While Friday’s rainfall wasn’t out of the ordinary, Nishimoto said the concern is if the precipitation continues through the weekend.
“With it stalled we got to be aware,” Nishimoto said of the storm, which was moving less than 5 mph past the island as of Friday evening. “If it’s constant rainfall later tonight, tomorrow morning we might be seeing some runoff.”
However, up to this point, Nishimoto said, the west side has been lucky.
Reporter Max Dible contributed to this story.
