Oahu businesses, residents clean up from flood as the downpour continues

The day after heavy flooding on Oahu’s North Shore, residents and businesses began cleaning the caked-on mud and debris from their properties, while trying to salvage their belongings — all before rain struck the island again.

Thunderstorms could be heard islandwide beginning in the afternoon Wednesday, and Hawaiian Electric reported about 7:30 p.m. that 19,590 customers were without power in the Kahala, Kapahulu, Palolo, Waikiki, Manoa and Moiliili areas.

A flash flood warning for Oahu was extended to 12:30 a.m. today. Rain was falling at a rate of 1 to 2 inches per hour, with heavy precipitation over the south shore of Oahu stretching from Daniel K. Inouye International Airport to Waikiki to Hawaii Kai.

Kamehameha Highway remained closed in both directions near Kualoa Ranch due to water over the roadway.

Kauai’s flash flood warning expired with heavy rain ended and flooding no longer expected to pose a threat. A flash flood watch remained in effect, however, through Friday. There had been a flash flood advisory for Maui and Hawaii island earlier in the day.

At 8 p.m. the National Weather Service reported a 24-hour rainfall total of 8.4 inches at Mount Waialeale, nearly 8.3 inches in Kapahi and 7.4 inches at Wailua on Kauai. On Oahu, NWS reported 5.2 inches of rain in Waiahole during the previous 24 hours, and said more than 2 inches fell at Punaluu Pump, Hakipuu Mauka, St. Stephens, Olomana Fire Station and Niu Valley.

The Honolulu Fire Department also suspended its search at 4:14 p.m. Wednesday for a person reportedly swept away in the Waihona Stream in Pearl City on Tuesday.

HFD said it checked with Honolulu police and there had been no weather-related missing persons report filed, according to HFD spokeswoman Louise Kim McCoy. Unless HFD receives further information, the search will not resume.

The state has continued to deal with inclement weather, including in Haleiwa, which had flooded heavily on Tuesday.

It’s not unusual for Kamehameha Highway to be busy going through Haleiwa, but on Wednesday much of the town’s bustle revolved around cleaning up what the torrential downpour had brought to the town on Tuesday.

A handful of workers of the close-knit Gecko Enterprises family, which owns the Haleiwa food court property along Kamehameha Highway, went to work cleaning more than a half foot of mud left by the flooding.

The food court sits next to Opaeula Stream, where the floodwaters brought debris and washed away property, including two dumpsters.

The team worked all day getting the debris out of the water and washing away the mud on the property, which is home to several food trucks.

Using chains and a small excavator, they pulled the first dumpster out of the stream.

“Hey, we got one,” John Naho‘opi‘i, foreman for Gecko, exclaimed. A few hours later the team returned both dumpsters to where they were before the flooding, and most of the property was clear of mud.

Just down the road Sam Deolloqui was air drying a small trailer from which she and her boyfriend operate Island Fresh, which normally serves fruit smoothies and bowls.

Her boyfriend was tending to their home nearby, which was also affected by Tuesday’s flooding, but the damage to the trailer was more or less limited to a thin layer of mud inside. By early Wednesday afternoon, Deolloqui was able to clean most of it out.

“It’s mostly just a lot of mud,” she said. “I don’t know, we got very lucky.”

Two shipping containers had been moved by rising waters, and one knocked the Island Fresh trailer off its jack stands, but it remained upright and didn’t sustain any major damage.

One of the containers was lifted across Kamehameha Highway and knocked over some of the fencing surrounding Risha Ayonon’s home.

The container managed to stop before actually touching her home, but the rushing water knocked out some of the walls on the first floor of their two-story unit while sweeping their belongings into the backyard.

Ayonon lives with her husband and three children, and the first floor of the building served as an entertainment area with a television, the laundry room and as a storage area.

The family was retrieving belongings from the backyard early Wednesday afternoon.

Although the first floor was mostly empty of things, some of which had to be thrown away, Ayonon placed particular importance on the photos that were left on the first floor.

“I was just devastated that there were a few boxes of pictures — I thought I brought all our pictures up,” she said. “Those are all the pictures of me when I was little. I got all the kids’ pictures and stuff … but these are the pictures of me when I was little. … That’s the one thing that I care about, is the pictures.”

Ayonon pointed to a duffel bag full of framed photos caked in mud. In addition to photos, about 10 yearbooks needed cleaning. Ayonon’s daughter and a friend’s daughter were carefully cleaning the photos and yearbook pages of mud to restore them.

Though the flooding cleared out much of the first floor, Ayonon said she was grateful that the damage wasn’t worse.

A group of volunteers from North Shore Christian Fellowship and Revolution Hawaii, a program under the Salvation Army, had helped Ayonon and a handful of others clean the debris in the homes.

Some 40 volunteers had helped the residents of a handful of affected homes in the area.

Danny Angel, a pastor for North Shore Christian Fellowship, helped lead the effort.

“All the debris has covered all the property,” he said. “There’s a solid 2 to 3 feet of debris that’s come up from the river that needs to get hauled out.”

He said thousands of dollars worth of belongings — home appliances like refrigerators being among the most expensive of them — had to be thrown away, but said sentimental items like the Ayonon photos were also damaged.

By sunset a lot had been done to clear the mud and debris and return and retrieve errant property, including the shipping container that made its way onto Ayonon yard.