Kauai Dam Breech Causes Flooding

I spent nearly 3 years living in Hawaii. The last year and a half plus on the island of Kauai, in the town of Kilauea on the north shore. I worked in Princeville, a short drive up the north shore. If I were still there, I wouldn’t be able to get to work today. The road would be washed out due to severe flash flooding after a dam burst, yesterday. One person was killed in the flood and at least 7 are missing.

Kauai is home to the wettest spot on earth, Mt. Waialeale, which gets about 450 inches of rain per year, and the north shore gets about 70 to 80 inches per year, so the island infrastructure is built to handle heavy rains. However, this latest storm followed on the heels of several days of steady rain from an earlier storm and dumped 5 plus inches on the north shore in a 12 hour period.

The Kaloko Reservoir Dam burst, leaving a 250-foot hole and sending 300 million gallons of water down the hill towards the ocean. The water rushed over Kuhio Highway, swept away at least two homes and devastated nearly everything in its path.

Links to the story, pictures and videos are here, here, here, here and here.

Families in the tiny town of Kilauea are unable to leave their homes. Some have evacuated to shelters.

"Sounded like a 747 jet crashing here in the valley. All the trees popping and snapping and everything, it was just horrendous -- a horrendous sound and it never quit. And roar of the water was just louder than anything. It just roared and roared and roared until you couldn't hear anything," says John Hawthorne, Kilauea resident.

"Slowly we heard all the trees popping and snapping, and it was literally 200 yards right across. It was about 30 feet high, and we live right by the culvert. It was hitting the bank of the culvert and going about 10 feet over Kuhio Highway," says Androclef Handy, Kilauea resident.

Farther north, officials say the Morita Dam overflowed.

And on the south side of Kauai, emergency officials are keeping a close eye on the Waita Reservoir. Heavy rains filled it to near capacity. If it is breeched, residents of Koloa could be threatened by severe flash flooding.

State transportation director Rod Haraga said teams are first working to shore up Morita Reservoir before working on Kuhio Highway.

The Kauai Fire Department called on the U.S. Coast Guard to help with the search for seven people who may have been swept away when water plunged over the dam. Officials dispatched a C-130 search plane and a helicopter to look for the missing people in the Kilauea Stream, which feeds into Kilauea Bay.

The Coast Guard Cutter Washington has left Honolulu to join the efforts.

I hope the other dams hold and there are no further injuries or deaths. I’ll say an extra prayer for my Hawaiian friends and hope you do the same. I'm confident recovery will happen relatively quickly. As so often happens, the spirit of Ohana (family), in this context the greater family of the community will bring the best out of neighbors. I wish I was there to be a part of it.

UPDATE 3/16 (am): A second body was retrieved. The missing count now stands at 6. Worries about other dams remain as the rain continued, yesterday. The road has now been repaired well enough to allow those who were trapped on the north shore to get through. Besides the human life, all of the mud washed into the ocean threatens to choke off large portions of reef. To get an idea of the scope:

The utility boat left Nawiliwili Harbor in Lihu'e to start the search. Even as far as six miles away from Kilauea Bay, the crew came upon massive amounts of debris that forced them to run as far as 3 1/2 miles offshore to avoid collisions.

The crew tried to set up a search pattern around Kilauea Bay but an entire two-mile stretch "was filled as tight as it could be filled with large trees, huge piles of bamboo, grass, drums, buckets, a bed liner to a truck, large pieces of wood and timber that came from houses, parts of vehicles, the undercarriage of a vehicle," Moreland said. "We were taken aback by how much debris we saw. We just went from debris to debris, searching every clump we could see."

I would post more pictures but I think that's caused my blogger issues, yesterday. Check the links above for photos and video.