• First Hawaiian Bank establishes Puna relief fund

A Hilo factory producing ice going to ongoing storm relief efforts has been vandalized, prompting the owner to shut down operations.

The Hawaii Tribune-Herald reported that the Banyon Drive factory was vandalized late Tuesday night or early Wednesday.

Jon Bockrath, owner of Alii Ice, told the newspaper that he is shutting down operations and laying off his 13 employees "until someone is incarcerated for this."

"It was malicious damage," Bockrath told the Tribune-Herald. "They didn’t get into my facility. They destroyed a couple of my $45,000 vehicles. They did this damage here (pointing to a shattered glass door)." So as of right now, nothing is going out of this plant until that individual is in prison."

Police were at the ice factory investigating Wednesday.

Bockrath said the factory produces 40,000 pounds of ice daily. Asked how much of the ice was going to ongoing relief efforts, Bockrath replied "all of it."

"Not directly to Civil Defense or Lions Club or those people, who we are supplementing, but all of it was going to the people in Hilo or in lower Puna," he told the newspaper.