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Hurricane Lane Live Updates: New Threat as Wind Drives 2 Fires on Maui
Hurricane Lane Stalls and Weakens but Threats Still Loom
(about 4 hours later)
Hawaii on Friday was enduring a long and dangerous brush with Hurricane Lane, the Category 2 storm whose outer bands have already unleashed torrential rain, surging floodwaters and road-clogging landslides on the state’s Big Island.
As Hurricane Lane inched toward Hawaii on Friday, its outer bands bringing landslides, floods and power failures to parts of the archipelago, the mayor of Maui found himself hoping for the last thing he expected to want this weekend: rain.
A new threat also emerged: Officials said two brush fires had broken out in West Maui, prompting the evacuation of at least 100 homes and one hurricane shelter, and leaving a woman with burns. The cause of the fires was not known, but officials said wind gusts had caused one to quickly spread to 300 acres. By midmorning, the rain had not yet picked up enough to douse the flames.
Three fires had broken out in West Maui, he said, possibly caused by downed power lines and likely stoked by the whipping winds. By the afternoon, two fires were completely contained but still burning, and the third, affecting about 1,500 acres, was about 40 percent contained.
“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 with a 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.”
“We were expecting flooding, high winds, big surf — we weren’t expecting very little rain, heavy winds and a big fire,” the mayor, Alan Arakawa, said. “We’re hoping for just enough rain to put out the fires, not enough rain to have mudslides after that.”
The storm was weakening on Friday but was still expected to pass dangerously close to the Hawaiian Islands, including Oahu, on Friday night. The island of Oahu and Maui County were under hurricane warnings, and Kauai County was under a hurricane watch. The Island of Hawaii had been downgraded to a tropical storm warning.
The hurricane was moving north at only 2 miles per hour by Friday afternoon, with maximum sustained winds of 85 miles per hour. The National Weather Service downgraded it to a Category 1, but warned residents and visitors to gird themselves for a lengthy storm that could keep dumping rain on parts of the state until next week.
“There is no reason to believe that anyone is safe in the warning area,” forecasters with the National Weather Service said.
Maj. Gen. Arthur J. Logan, director of the Hawaii Emergency Management Agency, said that the storm appeared to have stalled.
Because the storm was lumbering north at two miles an hour, forecasters said heavy rains were likely to continue into next week, with further inundation coming from storm surge and rising waters.
“While we still have a hurricane approaching, I think weather-wise, the storm is diminishing,” he said in a phone interview. No deaths had been reported in the storm as of Friday.
Here’s the latest:
“The real threat to the state is still the torrential rains, the storm surge and the high surf that’s coming into the shore,” General Logan said. “Those are the things we’re worried about.”
• Hurricane Lane has weakened to a Category 2 storm, with maximum sustained winds of about 105 miles an hour. It was about 170 miles south of Honolulu on Friday morning. Tropical storm conditions had already begun on the islands of Hawaii, Maui and Oahu on Friday morning; Maui and Oahu were expected to experience hurricane conditions later on Friday.
Still, officials expected the slow-moving storm to begin breaking up by about midnight local time.
• The American Red Cross said 1,500 people spent Thursday night in shelters on the islands.
Between the storm’s lumbering speed and Hawaii’s countless microclimates, it was difficult to predict what might come next. Forecasters warned that the storm was still dangerous, and island residents and visitors, surrounded by thousands of miles of ocean, were mostly stuck to watch and wait.
• More than 30 inches of rain were recorded at one gauge on the Big Island, according to the National Weather Service, which said some areas could expect as many as 40 inches.
“You go to higher ground, hunker down with stored water and canned food, because there’s nowhere else to escape,” said Ron Matayoshi, a volunteer at the McKinley High School emergency evacuation center in urban Honolulu.
• The authorities evacuated people in Lahaina, in West Maui, after a brush fire ignited and spread quickly on Friday.
Gov. David Ige said he had received a phone call on Friday morning from President Trump, who pledged the support of federal agencies to help the state.
• Five tourists from California were rescued from a flooded vacation home in Hilo on Thursday, according to The Associated Press.
Forecasters expected the hurricane to keep moving north before making a westward turn on Saturday, and it was expected to past close to the central islands by Friday night.
The first brush fire in Lahaina spread quickly, turning the sky a deep orange overnight and forcing the evacuation of more than 100 homes in the area, as well as the Lahaina Intermediate School, where 26 evacuees had taken shelter. Maui Electric reported about 4,000 customers had lost power. A second fire also emerged, prompting the authorities to evacuate homes in the Kaanapali area, north of Lahaina, though they did not say how many.
The Island of Oahu and Maui County were under hurricane warnings, and Kauai County was under a tropical storm watch. The notice for the Island of Hawaii had been downgraded to a tropical storm warning.
Officials in Maui said there were about 500 evacuees at the Lahaina Civic Center, and some 400 more at other shelters in Maui.
Alison Nugent, an assistant professor of atmospheric sciences at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, said the storm was losing strength as the wind shear, which typically weakens hurricanes before they get to Hawaii, finally showed up.
The cause of the fires was not immediately known, but they left local officials wishing slow-moving Hurricane Lane would hurry up and dump some rain.
But even a weak hurricane could be unpredictable and destructive, Professor Nugent explained, because of the way storms interact with Hawaii’s mountainous and varied topography. Wind can speed up as it flows down a mountainside or through the gaps between the islands. And moist air produces more rain when it hits the side of a mountain.
“We’re hoping that the rain that we’re supposed to get comes down so we can put out the fire,” said Alan Arakawa, the mayor of Maui County, in an interview with KHON, a local television station. He urged evacuees to go to the Lahaina Civic Center.
“On one side you may see lots of rain; on the other side you may see lots of wind,” Professor Nugent said. “It’s so localized, valley to valley, neighborhood to neighborhood, house to house just in terms of what the impacts may be.”
Mr. Arakawa said the first fire had burned about 300 acres as of 6 a.m. local time. “This is one of the worst fires we’ve ever had in the Lahaina area,” he said.
Hurricane Lane’s speed means that it is likely to dump large amounts of rain. Lingering hurricanes can cause devastating flooding and billions of dollars of damage, as Texans learned last year when Hurricane Harvey stalled over the state.
By 8:30 a.m., Ms. Monroe, the tourist, could see both fires. Smoke filled the air under gray clouds and the power was out, she said.
Professor Nugent said she had considered fleeing the state, but by the time she looked at ticket prices earlier this week, flights were too expensive. On Friday, airports were open but there were delays and cancellations across the state. American Airlines canceled flights in and out of Kahului. Hawaiian Airlines said that some West Coast to Maui flights were delayed and that some inter-island flights were canceled.
Ms. Monroe was sheltering in her hotel room. It made for an inauspicious end to her trip away from home in Trabuco Canyon, Calif., near where the Holy Fire began. “I feel like I have some bad luck,” Ms. Monroe said.
Nearly all of Hawaii’s commodities come through a harbor in Honolulu, which has been closed by the United States Coast Guard, General Logan said. But he said locals need not worry about running out of food and supplies: Full containers were ready to be moved and ships were on call to be deployed when the harbor reopens.
The fact that Lane is moving slowly, about two miles an hour, means that it is likely to dump large amounts of rain.
“I feel very confident we’ll keep the supply chain moving,” General Logan said.
In June, our reporter Kendra Pierre-Louis looked at a study published in the journal Nature that focused on what is known as translation speed, which measures how quickly a storm is moving over an area, say, from Miami to the Florida Panhandle. Between 1949 and 2016, tropical cyclone translation speeds declined 10 percent worldwide, the study says. The storms, in effect, are sticking around for a longer period of time.
Throughout the day, it was as if different islands of Hawaii were experiencing different storms.
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.
On the Island of Hawaii, torrential rain continued. At one point, Saddle Road, the main east-to-west thoroughfare on the island, was blocked by a landslide. The city of Hilo and other parts of the island’s east side were on their third day of flash-flood alerts, and Rainbow Falls, which is usually a peaceful place, was gushing rivers of brown water. Five tourists from California were rescued from a flooded vacation home in Hilo on Thursday, according to The Associated Press.
Read more about the dangers of lingering hurricanes here.
It all meant that Randy Bruner’s driveway in Pahoa, on Hawaii Island, looked like a rushing creek. “When it’s pouring down rain, there’s a river running through where I live,” Mr. Bruner said.
First came an errant alert that a ballistic missile was headed for Hawaii. Then 50 inches of rain were recorded in one day on Kauai, flooding parts of the island. Next a slow-motion eruption of the Kilauea volcano ravaged parts of the Big Island. Now the state is facing its latest potential calamity: Hurricane Lane.
On Maui, the fires left one woman burned and in need of an air evacuation to Oahu. Officials said more than 900 people were taking shelter in the county, although at one point, a hurricane shelter had to be evacuated because of flames in the area.
On Thursday, we spoke with residents on the Big Island who were dealing with the deluge, and those to the north as they prepared for their own lashing of strong winds, heavy rain, rough surf and rising water.
Victoria Monroe, a tourist from Orange County, Calif., was sheltering in place at the Marriott’s Maui Ocean Club in Lahaina, with a view of two of the fires.
For many of the islands’ residents, it was hard to believe that a hurricane would make a direct hit when they have been spared so many times in the past. Still, some people prepared with a sense of urgency.
“It was at the top of the hill and it went all the way down toward the ocean,” Ms. Monroe said of one fire. “I thought it was a volcano erupting.”
“I’m normally not a person that makes sure my gas tanks are full and everything is all settled and organized, but I totally organized and brought everything in, and my chickens are in the garage,” said Heather Nelson, 39, who works in event production and lives in Volcano, Hawaii.
Her vacation was alternating between hellish and picturesque. “It’s still really pretty out here,” she said, hours before an alert in her hotel instructed people to go inside because of “dust storms.”
On the Big Island, in Kalapana, Suzette Ridolfi, a teacher who evacuated her home as Kilauea was spewing lava, said “the volcano was way more scary.”
And on the Island of Kauai, residents were still waiting for the winds to pick up, anxious that the storm could lead to a repeat of the flooding that devastated part of the island in April. Those floods breached a major highway in four places, closing it to all but local resident traffic. Tourists were banned.
“With the volcano there was no rest,” she said. “It was intense, intense, intense and the intensity never slowed down a bit. And, with the hurricane passing, there’s big rains and heavy rains and we get really scared for a few minutes, but then it stops and it’s peaceful, it’s calm.”
“We’ve been through so many disasters that you have to love it or leave it,” said Teri Tico, a lawyer who lives on the beach in Haena but left ahead of the storm.
Read more about the multiple threats Hawaii has faced this year here.
Mike Kuntz, a Haena resident who is staying put, said he had to console his daughter as the storm approached. “I want to get out of here,” he recalled her saying, “but I have nowhere to go.”
The five California tourists rescued from a vacation home on Thursday were a minuscule slice of the 270,000 tourists estimated to be on Hawaii.
The state had a record year for tourism in 2017, according to George Szigeti, the president and chief executive of the Hawaii Tourism Authority, who said things had continued at a steady clip in 2018 despite the drumbeat of bad news.
“It’s been a very active year,” Mr. Szigeti said, “but I would tell you, Hawaii is a very resilient destination.”
Tourists who wanted to cut vacations short early may have found it difficult to do so, Mr. Szigeti said, because so many flights were already full.
Doug Okada, the general manager of the Aston Waikiki Sunset, a towering hotel in Honolulu, said his 330 units were full this week, since it was high season. Some visitors had canceled incoming stays, but others had extended them because they did not want to fly out during the storm.
“We just have to do our best to get through this,” said Mr. Okada, who was urging guests to shelter in place. “Some guests have never been in a hurricane situation, so it’s a thrilling experience. I’m glad they are positive, but they’ve been warned not to go out in dangerous conditions.”
