HONOLULU (KHON2) — Several roadways on Hawaii Island reopened after flooding and debris prompted shutdowns on Saturday.
National Weather Service rainfall totals showed over 19 inches of rain fell in one area of Kohala between midnight and 10 a.m. on Saturday. Residents in Hawi told KHON2 that the downpours were immense.
“Epic amount of rain that we’ve never seen down here before, it was, it was massive,” Steve Kaiser said. “We’ve seen rain, heavy rain where we’ve had debris down there, but it’s never taken out that road like that.”
That road leads down to Kawaihae Boat Harbor, where a local canoe club was planning to host a long-distance race with 92 different crews from across the Islands.
Waimea resident Naka Nathaniel tried to dive down to the boat harbor around 6 a.m.
“The roads were just all blocked and we just couldn’t get down and so we ended up having to unfortunately cancel the race,” Nathaniel said. “Fortunately, we were able to get the canoes out of the way, we’re just kind of hoping that, you know, just a little bit of debris cleanup and we can kind of get things reset.”
The Transportation Department said all highways were reopened by 11:30 a.m. and residents added that Saturday afternoon was as sunny as ever.
Sen. Tim Richards said the sheer volume of rain is highly unusual.
“This amount of rainfall, this amount of flooding this quickly, because it was very severe, intense,” Sen. Richards said. “I’m not sure we can say we have normal weather patterns anymore.”
“There was just so much rain, I mean, this is an area that on the charts, it says we get like seven to 10 inches a year, and yeah, we got more than that in just a short amount of time,” Nathaniel said.
The Hawaii High School Rodeo finals also took place at Parker Ranch on Saturday morning.
“But we had no arena, we just had a lake,” Sen. Richards said, “and so they had to pump the water out of the arena.”
The finals went on after three hours of work from bucket brigades and Sen. Richards said Hawaii Island is through the worst of the impacts.
“We’re past all of that right now, it’s just clean up and go back to it. Obviously, there’s still a lot of stuff that needs to get cleaned up, shout out to DOT for getting on it,” Sen. Richards said.