When the flood waters receded, the scale of damage was revealed. Photo: YouTube//Screenshot
Residents of Oahu’s North Shore were allowed back into their community on Saturday afternoon after they scrambled to evacuate under a catastrophic flood warning that was issued early on Friday morning. The damage they returned to is devastating.
According to reports, the evacuation orders were lifted for Waialua and Haleiwa as the rain eased and the flood waters began to recede. Thousands of people are affected by the damage, though, and it will take a long time to get back to anywhere close to normal on the North Shore.
Honolulu Mayor Rick Blangiardi assessed the damage from above in a Honolulu Fire Department helicopter.
“Like everybody and anybody, I’m grateful that so far everybody’s alive, but I recognize the fact that a lot of homes have been destroyed,” Honolulu Mayor Rick Blangiardi told Hawaii News Now. “A lot of people’s lives are going to be upended from the standpoint of the challenge of what they’re going to have to do going forward, and we’re just all going to have to dig in.”
First responders were busy over the course of the last few days — they conducted nearly 250 rescues as a result of the storm. Although the evacuation orders have been lifted, residents aren’t out of the woods just yet.
“We have a lot of concern at this level, because everything is so saturated and the rivers are so full, it doesn’t take much to bring that flooding back,” Blangiardi continued. “So I’m not breathing a sigh of relief yet right now, but I’m feeling deeply challenged on the road ahead.”
The North Shore, however, is a community minded place. Neighbors look out for one another, and they’re coming together like never before.
“I don’t think I’ve ever been more proud of my community in my life,” Sean Quinlan, a Democratic member of the Hawaii House of Representatives, told reporters. “This is even worse than it was four years ago. All I see is people helping people, but it does beg the question, why is it only the community up here? I’m anticipating that the state is going to declare a disaster, which means that we’ll have access to FEMA monies, but because of how FEMA has been operating in the last couple of years, it may be some time before we get that money, so we’re going to have to spend state dollars in order to recover from this.”
