WAINIHA, Kauai >>
Mark Satz was still traumatized Tuesday, three days after he tied himself to a banyan tree in rushing stormwater in a somewhat foolish — but, he says, successful — effort to fend off 100-foot albizia trees and cascading cars and trucks that threatened to smash into the home he built out of a remote corner of Kauai’s north shore.
As he toured his mud-caked, 6-acre patch of land, Satz, 57, pointed out six busted trucks and cars that landed in his yard but failed to crash into his house.
“I don’t know whose truck that is,” he said. “Never saw that car before …”
At least another two dozen vehicles in the early hours of Sunday morning bounced their way down the two forks of the Wainiha River that mark the boundaries of Satz’s property and ended up in the ocean, he said.
“Some of them were cartwheeling,” Satz said.
Satz, a big-wave surfer, admitted that the experience of bobbing up and down in a surge of stormwater — while tied to a tree for two hours deflecting dangerous debris with anything he could find — shook him.
“What day is it?” he repeatedly asked.
The answer?
It was the day that the extent of the damage to Wainiha and Haena was finally getting revealed to the outside world.
“We’re all in shock,” Satz said just after watching his wife, Adrianna, and their 10-year-old son, Dylan, board an Army Chinook helicopter to get away from their uninhabitable home.
“I’m dead,” Satz said as his family flew away. “I lost everything.”
While life is returning to something resembling normal in nearby Hanalei in the aftermath of last weekend’s storm, Wainiha and Haena remain cut off from the rest of the island while Kuhio Highway remains impassable between Hanalei and Wainiha.
And another storm is on its way.
“We’re out here all alone and we need help,” said Laura Richards, general manager of the Hanalei Colony Resort, which is actually in Haena.
The 52-unit condominium complex is occupied by only a handful of Kauai police and firefighters since tourists began flying out Monday morning in a procession of Army Chinooks, Hawaii Air National Guard Black Hawks and Hawaii County “little bird” helicopters.
Richards hopes her rental units someday soon will be filled with Federal Emergency Management Agency officials offering help — and hope — to those left behind in Haena and Wainiha.
But Richards does not know when that day will come. And she’s certainly heard no assurances that long-term help is on its way.
“We’re cut off,” Richards said. “Everybody’s day is full of confusion and chaos. They’re dazed. A Red Cross station in Hanalei does nothing for us. Where’s FEMA? Where’s the Red Cross?”
No one knows how many people live in Wainiha and Haena because of so many empty vacation rental homes. Estimates range from 200 to 300 residents, but there are untold numbers of homeless people also inhabiting the Kalalau Trail.
All across Wainiha and Haena on Tuesday, people walked in a daze past destroyed homes, flooded properties and cars and trucks that landed in other people’s yards.
“How you doing? You OK?” Satz asked his neighbors.
The answer, more often than not, was a silent nod — or a halfhearted smile.
Residents are grateful for the ongoing efforts to bring in water and food, especially from a volunteer flotilla of residents and neighbors using semirigid, inflatable boats, personal watercraft and private boats.
“Everybody needs help,” said Trevor Kaona, 34, of Kilauea, one of the many volunteers who have made dozens of ocean runs out of Hanalei. “We’re just hoping to do whatever we can. This community’s very strong and everybody’s coming together.”
Gregg Fraser, owner of the Opakapaka Grill and Bar next to the Hanalei Colony Surf, said the storm revealed the true nature of their newly isolated community.
“The storm separated us,” he said, “and it brought us together.”
But now that hunger and thirst have been satisfied, people are openly worrying about what health hazards might lie in the layers of mud left behind after the storm water receded — and especially from the mold forming in the wreckage of people’s homes.
Fraser is already looking ahead to a scary and uncertain financial future for himself and his community.
Before the storm, Fraser said, he served 250 customers at the Opakapaka Grill and Bar on an average day — 70 percent of them tourists.
All of that changed after the storm.
Even with heavily discounted prices, Fraser said, “yesterday I had 20. This is a community that is literally cut off from the rest of the world. We rely on tourists, that’s for sure. Can you imagine closing Waikiki to all visitors? What am I supposed to do?”
Fraser knows what he’s talking about. He’s executive director of the Hawaii Restaurant Association and had been commuting from Oahu to Haena on weekends to tend to his new restaurant until the storm forced him to suddenly recalibrate his business model.
“I have well over half a million invested in this, and I am the biggest employer in Haena, but half of my (40) employees live on the other side,” Fraser said. “That’s 40 paychecks. How long can I afford to pay everybody? How long can I afford to stay open? I have bills to pay like everyone else.”
Fraser leases the restaurant’s building from the Hanalei Colony Resort. But the land beneath the restaurant belongs to Charo, the entertainer and dancer of “cuchi-cuchi” fame.
“She called yesterday and wanted to know, ‘How’s my building?’” Fraser said. “I said it was floating in the ocean.”
Fraser did not laugh — or even smile — as he repeated the conversation.
The toll of last weekend’s storm can be seen around the home that Satz built mostly by hand.
“It’s a triplex with five bedrooms,” Saltz said. “It’s what we call ‘shack tech’ in Wainiha.”
Satz believes his property on Alaeke Road — where the Wainiha River splits in two — symbolizes what happened in Wainiha.
“I saw two homes going down the river, one on this side and one on that side,” he said.
On a 6-acre parcel a few hundred yards away, Satz said, “James Bond” actor Pierce Brosnan’s “little art studio” also was destroyed.
Immediately next door, two seniors in ill health refuse to evacuate and are too frail to board a helicopter anyway, at least without specialized medical assistance, Satz said.
The couple declined to be interviewed by the Honolulu Star-Advertiser.
As Black Hawks and Chinooks repeatedly flew over his property, Satz angrily pointed to the home of his senior neighbors in a futile effort to get the helicopters to land and pick them up.
He grew even angrier when the helicopters instead flew to a slice of open space near the Hanalei Colony Resort to drop off water and pick up evacuees. The Army, Hawaii Air National Guard and Hawaii County officials refer to the patch of grass as “the L.Z.,” or landing zone.
After yelling at the helicopters, Satz then pointed across Alaeke Road to a home that was knocked off its foundation.
Satz said it had been occupied by two homeless men who have not been seen since the storm.
For his part, Satz is staying behind to take care of the families’ dogs, cats and chickens that survived the storm. He vows to one day rebuild — even though he has no flood insurance.
Someday he plans to dig out his dream property and begin the long process of making a new home for his family to live in.
Asked whether he plans to leave, Satz said, “Hell no. No way.”
As he toured tons of broken albizia trees littering his property, strangers’ vehicles and the total destruction to his house, Satz also acknowledged the enormity of the job.
“Where do you start?” he asked.
