After Honolulu experienced heavy rainfalls last week along with floods, some of the power has finally been restored to downtown areas. However, many residents and businesses will still be out of power according to a statement from Hawaii Electric:
"Hawaiian Electric crews worked throughout the night to restore service to customers in downtown Honolulu and Chinatown and were able to repair one of three transformers damaged by flooding. As a result, power was restored this morning to six buildings, including the State Capitol, state office and city municipal buildings, district court, Central Pacific Bank and First Hawaiian Bank,"
Over the past week, there has been relentless rain in the area that brought it to the point where parts of the state were facing flooding that is significant and life-threatening. According to the National Weather Service (NWS), some of the areas were already faced with a foot of rain within a 2-day span.
There was a vast amount of water that pooled in low-lying roads causing drivers to navigate across the flooded roads and the state wasn't able to handle that much water coming down all at once. No state would be able to handle that properly.
The Fire Department Had To Step In
Dealing with that much water, it was only natural that Honolulu Fire Department (HFD) went to assist individuals. Within the span of Monday to Tuesday morning, the HFD responded to 90 storm-related incidents.
According to a press release from the department, a lot of the calls were made for houses that were flooded. However, they also got reports for downed trees, downed power lines, and roofs that were blown off.
Responders rescued 10 people - five of which were boys - from water in streams.
Last Monday was recorded as the second wettest day in Honolulu history according to the NWS. After all, on Monday it managed to get 8 inches of rain which broke the previous record of the wettest day in December.
Honolulu's Rainfall Problems Are Being Solved
Because of all this, Gov. David Ige declared a state of emergency on Monday from all the heavy rain. He declared that because it was "anticipated to continue more flooding damage to public and private property."
He continued on Twitter to say that declaring this allows funds from the government to be used "to support state and county efforts in providing quick and efficient relief of suffering, damage, and losses caused by flooding and other effects of heavy rains."
It came at a good time because the constant heavy rainfall left some communities saturated from all this.
A Silver Lining In All This
Despite the damages that this rain has put Honolulu and Hawaiian residents in, the large amount of rainfall has some silver lining to it as Hawaii was experiencing a drought.
As of November 30th, over half of the state, 56%, had some level of drought and Oahu was under a severe drought. An updated report on the drought situation is to be expected in the near future.
NWS also said that the flooding threats also came after parts of Hawaii were given blizzard warnings over the last weekend. A lot of that was on Big Island as the area's mountain summits experienced winter weather and high winds.
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