NORTH KOHALA — Some pockets of West Hawaii have felt the effects of Hurricane Lane.
On Friday, Waikoloa, South Kohala, Kailua-Kona and South Kona areas experienced rain with stronger bands of precipitation that occasionally moved through.
In North Kohala, however, Akoni Pule Highway (Highway 270) was forced to shut down because of a landslide at mile marker 25. The highway was shut down at least twice during the course of Thursday and Friday because of landslides and debris on the road.
Yoav “Pono” Melamed of North Kohala felt the impact of one of the landslides Thursday morning when the mud brought with it cascades of water onto his property on the makai side of the highway.
“This whole driveway was a gushing river,” Melamed said.
Along the side of his house, Melamed described a gravel path that was now covered in layers of mud. Despite that, he added his house hasn’t been flooded.
“It’s been really close,” Melamed said, “but so far we’ve been lucky.”
At the top Melamed’s driveway were his houseguests Jason Rogers and Nathanael “Boots” Moss. As small streams of water attempted to creep onto the property, they took shovels of mud and rocks to block its path.
Rogers said the stream that hit the driveway Thursday was a concern, but it was for the most part fixed when state Department of Transportation workers cleared the landslide and helped redirect the water to the mauka side of the road.
Overall, Rogers and Moss thought the conditions in North Kohala weren’t extremely damaging.
“Just a lot of heavy rain,” Moss said. “There really wasn’t much wind.”
The Ka‘u District also experienced some adverse weather and flooding that closed Kaalaiki Road. Police stationed in the area said Friday that Ocean View and South Point had a fair amount of wind.
“This has been the worst weather this week,” said Ann Lorenzo, owner of Annie’s Island Fresh Burgers in Kealakekua, who closed her restaurant after a half day Wednesday and didn’t open Thursday based on weather reports.
Lorenzo and her husband, who co-owns and also works in the shop, live in Ocean View, as do a handful of their employees. The commute to South Kona brought with it safety concerns based on forecasts, which is ultimately why the restaurant lost a day and a half of business despite relatively clement skies in Kealakekua.
“It was a bit frustrating,” Lorenzo said.
Lorenzo added, however, that the weather did pick up Thursday night in Ocean View. She and her husband went without power at their home, roughly 3 miles mauka of the highway, from about 10:30 p.m. Thursday until 5:30 a.m. Friday.
It started with the rain, she said, and then came the wind.
“My husband put plywood on the windows, and thank God he did because the wind was so strong.”
On Friday, county and state officials continued to monitor conditions in Kona from the forward operating base at the West Hawaii Civic Center. Merrick Nishimoto, deputy director of Public Works, said crews were out Friday checking the shoreline and other vulnerable areas.
While Friday’s rainfall wasn’t out of the ordinary, Nishimoto said the concern is if the precipitation continues through the weekend.
“With it stalled we got to be aware,” he said about the storm, which was moving less than 5 mph past the island as of Friday evening. “If it’s constant rainfall later tonight, tomorrow morning we might be seeing some runoff.”
West Hawaii Today reporter Max Dible contributed to this story.
Email Tiffany DeMasters at tdemasters@westhawaiitoday.com.
