In Hawaii, “There Is No Reason To Believe Anyone Is Safe…”

Friday morning, Hurricane Lane was 150 miles south of Honolulu, weakening slightly, down from a Cat-5 to a Cat-2 ‘cane. 

Trodding north at 5mph as the Islands braced for impact, already under the throes of heavy rains, as The New York Times reports: “outer bands have already unleashed torrential rain, surging floodwaters and road-clogging landslides on the state’s Big Island.”

The State of Hawaii is under a State of Emergency. 

Forecasters at the National Weather Service offered little comfort: “There is no reason to believe that anyone is safe in the warning area.”

CBS News called the flooding on the Big Island “catastrophic,” with roads closed and landslides reported and already almost 30-inches of rain. 

In Maui, the rain will be bittersweet, as a brush fire swept through Lahaina last night and into the morning, “spreading quickly and had jumped over a highway. By early Friday morning, local time, the wind was picking up, but the rain had yet to begin. Maui Electric reported about 4,000 customers had lost power.”

“I’m sure they wish it would rain so they could get rid of that fire,” said Victoria Monroe, a tourist from Orange County, Calif., who was staying at a hotel in view of the fire. “It was at the top of the hill and it went all the way down toward the ocean. I thought it was a volcano erupting.”

With the Hurricane moving so slowly, FEMA director Brock Long warned that Hurricane Lane would be a “marathon event,” with torrential rains imminent.  According to the Times, “Lingering hurricanes can be a problem, as Texans learned last year when Hurricane Harvey stalled over the state, causing devastating flooding and billions of dollars of damage. The storm dropped more than 30 inches of rain in two days and nearly 50 inches over four days in some places. A report released by Harris County, which includes Houston, found that Harvey’s rainfall exceeded every known flooding event in American history since 1899.”

We’ve gotten a handful of hopeful reports from surfers hunkered down on the North and South Shores of Oahu, the North Shore of Kauai, and Maui, all parties optimistic and well-prepared. Stab‘s thoughts are with everyone in Hawaii dealing with the storm.