HONOLULU (KHON2) — Thousands on Oahu’s North Shore suffered a blackout in the middle of the day. It included the shops and restaurants in Haleiwa Town, which did their best to take care of the thousands of visitors who stopped by.
Even with no power, Vivian Carusi of Cheeky Beach Haleiwa is making the best of a bad situation.
“I have amazing customers that shop in the dark, so I feel really blessed,” said Vivian Carusi, Cheeky Beach Haleiwa. “Today was supposed to be a hard day, they are cheering me up, and I hope everybody gets their electricity as fast as they can.”
Cheeky Beach was one of the 4,000-plus customers from Haleiwa to Mokuleia to not have power for a few hours in the middle of the day. Many shops and restaurants in Haleiwa Town decided to close. Others did their best to stay open.
“We don’t have any generators here, so we’re still doing just drinks and acai for the regulars, the people that come often,” said PJ Wiggins-Abertt, Crispy Grindz. “But yeah, no power, two hours and running almost.”
“Well, aside from the AC and some of the food situations, I think everyone’s doing pretty good,” said Paul Nolan, a visitor from Minneapolis.
“The line was long, not a ton of seating available, but we got lucky and got in and my kids are fed and everyone’s happy,” said Isis Wills, a visitor from Santa Barbara. “And we’re still shopping.”
“I mean look around, you can see how many people are still here, so it’s pretty cool,” said Paul Nolan, a visitor from Minneapolis.
Businesses tell KHON they suffered from another blackout a couple weeks ago that lasted a couple of hours. What makes today’s one unfortunate – many businesses say Monday is typically their busiest day of the week.
“Could be other day Tuesday right, or Thursday, but no, it has to happen today,” said Carusi. “So hopefully the people will come back after the power is up.”
Hawaiian Electric says power was restored after about three hours. The cause of the outage is under investigation.
For the visitors we talked to, this was just a mild inconvenience in the middle of their trip to paradise.
“The ocean, the turtles, the water, the white sand, everybody’s nice, the people, the food is excellent,” said Wills.
“Make my customers that come from the mainland, tourists, happy because they are here,” said Carusi. “We need to make, feel the aloha with power or no power, we are powerful to make our day better.”