(BIVN) – Public schools and state offices on Hawaiʻi island will be closed for a second day on Tuesday, following the severe impacts of Hurricane Lala over the weekend.
Governor Josh Green was able to tour the hard-hit area of Kaʻū on Monday, and made the closure announcement during a press conference held in Hilo afterwards.
The closure includes the Hawaiʻi State Judiciary on the Big Island. All hearings and trials scheduled for Tuesday on Hawaiʻi Island will be rescheduled. In addition, by court order, the deadline for all court filings due Tuesday, August 18, on Hawaiʻi Island will be extended until Wednesday, August 19, the Judiciary says.
During the news conference, officials also confirmed Hurricane Lala was a deadly weather event. The body of a 90-year-old woman was found in Naʻalehu, and officials say she appears to have died in the flood.
TRANSCRIPT OF GOVERNOR GREEN’S REMARKS:
Now, we did today go into Kaʻū and it was an emotional day. As mayor alluded to, we saw hope. You know, people are already beginning to recover, but it’s tough. They still need water. They still need power, like many people in the state. We also saw people already putting their lives back together. I’m flooded with emotion because that’s where I was given the honor to be the doctor when I first came to Hawaiʻi. I literally saw dozens of my old patients and embraced them years after being their doc and now I was their governor. So it was a very, um, it was an emotional time together.
We’re going to do everything possible to help everyone down in Kaʻū. Uh, but there is damage there. What mayor and I saw first and foremost was that it is the flood damage that’s caused the most damage, more than the wind. Without a doubt, wind has affected roofs in some areas. It certainly blew down trees all over the place, but it’s the flood and the mud and the rock that poured through Nāʻālehu, Pāhala, Waiohinu. These communities have a lot of, uh, cleanup to do and they’re going to need a lot of support. That’s one thing we saw.
We saw also, uh, the, the parks, the county parks were pretty devastated. That’s another thing that’s going to take a lot of time.
While we were there, the police did discover the lost soul, the 90-year-old woman, that perished in the flood. So, there does appear to be one fatality directly related to the flood. Her family will be alerted. Nāʻālehu was a very small town. Everyone’s already coming together and grieving.
What we also saw was a lot of houses that survived. We saw that the structures that we were worried about, like the bridges, may not be as bad off as we thought originally. There was an incredible amount of debris on top of them in the first 48 hours. But the county leadership and the state guys, they were all over it. They’re already removing that debris. We were able to, uh, fly with the helicopters – and kudos to the incredible, uh, flight operations that the National Guard gave us – we were able to fly very close and look at those bridges; we could see that they structurally looked pretty sound. They’re of course going to have to do engineering tests to make sure, but we don’t think the community will remain isolated for long. Uh, we are going to continue to be all hands on deck there. Like I said, there’s National Guard, there’s the director of the Department of Transportation, and there’s leadership from the mayor’s team, all in Kaʻū.
We’d like to announce right now that the Big Island will remain closed tomorrow. That means schools will be closed on Big Island, state offices and county offices for at least another day.
You can also expect that the schools down in Nāʻālehu, in Kaʻū, are going to be closed for some time. We’ll get updates from the Department of Education and Keith Hayashi, uh, in the coming hours about that. Uh, there’s a heck of a lot of mud and debris and some of the roads are still blocked off. But the state will be open otherwise, though there are still upwards of 100,000, families that don’t have their power fully restored. A lot of that energy is going to come back, we believe, throughout today and into tomorrow. So we’re going to start getting back.
So schools will be open in all the other counties: Maui, Honolulu, and Kauaʻi. Schools will be open, state offices will be open, county offices will be open.
I will say this, if your school happens to have a partial shutdown or if you hear later today, that its too difficult, we’re going to be understanding. No one’s going to be penalized if they are a public worker and have to take care of their child. They will be given, uh, an accommodation and they’ll be given, personal leave. So, they will not be punished in any way because we are healing. We are recovering.
But again, what we saw today was a lot of people that are bruised. We saw a lot of people that need help. If you are going to support the community, please give to the Red Cross. Please give through the Hawaiʻi Community Foundation. We’ll get resources there. Special mahalos: We have a $3 million, for now – we’re going to probably be able to announce tomorrow – anonymous gift of clothing to the people of Hawaiʻi. Uh, that is special. Uh, we also are going to announce, uh, some major donations from OHA. Chair Kahele is going to be making that announcement in the near future, if he hasn’t already, uh, of major gift cards and support. We’ll also make it clear that if you lost your SNAP cards, you’ll be able to get those replaced and then we’re going to be back online.
So, that’s what I saw today. We saw a lot of people that need our help, need our support, especially in Kaʻū, but the structures are pretty intact and so the damage is not as catastrophic as we had worried. I want to get back to the mayor and then we’ll riff with you guys.
