Hawaii residents began to clean up after tropical storm Lala blew past the Big Island, leaving more than 100,000 without power and damaging at least 100 homes and bridges.
Lala was downgraded to a tropical storm by the time it grazed the islands, but it brought heavy rains and winds to the Big Island. Hawaii’s total rainfall over 48 hours topped 3.5ft in some areas, according to AccuWeather. The rising floodwaters damaged or swept away about 100 homes in the area, along with six bridges.
Kimo Alameda, Hawaii county’s mayor, said that in some areas of the Big Island “it’s devastation”.
The storm knocked out power to as many as 111,000 customers, according to Hawaiian Electric. Utility crews were working to restore power but warned that those in rural areas may face outages that extend into weeks. Helicopters and drones were in use to assess damages to remote, mountainous areas.
Josh Green, Hawaii’s governor, said officials were still investigating whether there had been any storm-related deaths.
“We’re praying that there are essentially no fatalities. The question is a difficult one to answer in some ways,” Green said.
Randy Collins, Hawaii’s emergency management director, also warned that there were still dangers to face even though the storm had passed.
“Many casualties often happen after the disaster,” Collins 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.”
Green, the Hawaii governor, estimated the storm caused hundreds of millions of dollars in damage statewide, with more than 100 homes and several bridges damaged on the Big Island.
Parts of a major highway in the Big Island’s south-east collapsed overnight, the New York Times reported, blocking road access to the town of Pahala that has the region’s only hospital.
“It’s complete and utter devastation,” Jeanne Kapela told Honolulu Civil Beat. “Families have lost their homes; the entire community is impacted,” the US representative said.
On the island of Oahu, the Honolulu fire department had received more than 600 weather-related responses by noon local time Sunday, including 147 reports of downed trees. There were also roofs blown off, downed power lines and one swimmer who had to be rescued, a city statement said.
Lala was downgraded from a hurricane to a tropical storm in the early hours of Sunday, but the National Hurricane Center warned that it could become a hurricane again by Wednesday.
Hawaii was last hit by a “major” hurricane – meaning category 3, 4, or 5 on the Saffir-Simpson scale – in 1992, when Hurricane Iniki caused at least six deaths and billions of dollars in damage.
The islands were menaced by Hurricane Fausto last month, before the storm weakened and skirted north of the island chain.
Lala comes as a powerful El Niño has formed in the central equatorial Pacific Ocean.
Temperatures are already so high that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa) predicts a 69% chance of a “historic event that would exceed the strength of previous El Niño events dating back to 1950” when it peaks between October and December.
El Niño, a natural climate pattern when sea surface temperatures in the central and eastern Pacific Ocean become unusually warm, tends to promote hurricane activity in the Pacific while suppressing it in the Atlantic.
The human-caused climate crisis can amplify El Niño’s effects because a warmer ocean and atmosphere increase the availability of energy and moisture for extreme weather events, such as heatwaves and heavy rainfall.
