Storm Lala’s after effects are now seeing the light of day, and it’s devastating. Photos: YouTube//Screenshot
Tropical storm Lala was downgraded from a hurricane to a tropical storm on Sunday, but it still left a serious mark on Hawaii’s Big Island. Over a hundred homes and a handful of bridges were damaged over the weekend, and now that the brunt of it has passed, crews are finding out just how much damage Lala did.
At the time of this writing, officials are still making sure that no one died as a result of the deluge.
“We’re praying that there are essentially no fatalities,” Josh Green, Hawaii’s governor, said. “The question is a difficult one to answer in some ways.”
Although the storm has largely passed, authorities are warning that the cleanup efforts can lead to injuries or even fatalities as well.
“Many casualties often happen after the disaster,” Randy Collins, Hawaii’s emergency management director, told reporters. “As people are cleaning things up, they’re working with heavy equipment, chainsaws, generators. They’re working around downed power lines and so forth. That’s when the casualties come.”
Lala is already estimated to have caused hundreds of millions in damages across the state, with parts of the southeast highway on the Big Island collapsing. According to the New York Times, that has blocked access to Pahala, a town with the only hospital in the area.
“It’s complete and utter devastation,” Jeanne Kapela, a Hawaii State Representative, told Honolulu Civil Beat. “Families have lost their homes; the entire community is impacted.”
While the Big Island was hit the hardest, the other islands didn’t come away unscathed, either. On Oahu, there were more than 600 emergency responses by 12:00 p.m. on Sunday afternoon. Roofs were blown from houses, power lines were blown over, and at least one swimmer required rescuing.
Lala was helped along by the immensely strong El Niño that has formed. NOAA is predicting a high chance of a weather event so powerful it will “exceed the strength of previous El Niño events dating back to 1950” by the time November hits.
