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Dole Cannery furniture store flooded 3 times in 2 weeks

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Three floods beginning Aug. 24 inundated a high-end furniture store and design center in the Dole Cannery mall in Iwilei, co-owner Bryan Kitashima said.

“It’s like war,” said Kitashima, who owns MESH by Shari Saiki and Shari Saiki Design Center. “We gotta go fight it again. It’s just so much anxiety.”

“It started last Monday (Aug. 24),” Kitashima said. “Half the showroom had taken on water, and included the whole backroom. Wednesday (Aug. 26) it really let go; 100 percent of the showroom was flooded and the adjacent warehouse was flooded as well.”

They vacuumed, cleaned, got all of the water out and opened for business. But Thursday was no better. “It just kept coming down. It was pretty much ‘Groundhog Day,’ ” he said, referring to the movie in which a man keeps reliving a single bad day.

Honolulu businesses were drying out Friday from their second or third bout of flooding in two weeks and feared yet another round of downpours when another flash flood warning was briefly in effect.

An upper-level trough coupled with moisture from Tropical Storm Ignacio caused rain to move slowly over Oahu, flooding various parts of the island Thursday. Last week’s heavy rains also caused flash flooding.

The city said its storm drain system was beyond capacity, which caused flooding, especially in Kalihi, downtown Honolulu, Iwilei and Liliha.

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