Local News

Two deaths linked Hurricane Lowell

HONOLULU -- Hurricane Lowell’s intense winds and storm surge that battered Hawaii’s western islands this week are suspected in the deaths of at least two people.

On the island of Kauai, the storm damaged oceanfront resorts, knocked out power and ripped apart roads, while on Lanai, a cargo port that supplies much of the food and fuel to the island’s 3,300 residents was inoperable, the state’s governor said.

It will likely take two weeks to repair Lanai’s harbor, state Transportation Department officials said. Planning was underway on other options to get supplies to the island.

Lowell brushed by the islands in the overnight hours Tuesday with damaging winds that extended well beyond the hurricane’s center, which stayed offshore.

While it has been a relatively quiet Atlantic hurricane season, there have been four hurricanes in the Pacific since the beginning of August. A new tropical storm formed on Thursday.

In Hawaii, first responders on Kauai’s south end found the body of a 74-year-old man on Wednesday near the shoreline. Authorities believe his death was related to the storm surge, police said.

Hawaii Gov. Josh Green said another man was killed on Oahu when a large tree fell on his tent Monday during the storm. The man was homeless and living in a park, he said.

Hawaii’s governor asks Trump to declare a disaster

The Democratic governor on Wednesday asked President Donald Trump to issue a major disaster declaration to expedite federal help for Kauai and Maui counties.

"We cannot wait for every damaged road, utility pole, harbor and public facility to be assigned a dollar value before asking the federal government to act," Green said in making the request.

Lowell knocked out power to many of Kauai’s 73,000 residents on Tuesday but electricity was being restored, with the Kauai Island Utility Cooperative saying the following day that power was back on at three hospitals. Across the island, just under 16,000 customers were without power Thursday, according to poweroutage.us.

Images of the destruction showed that the storm blew out windows of ground floor apartments, downed power lines and tossed lava rocks onto roadways.

The governor said the overall destruction to Hawaii’s infrastructure, businesses and homes may be comparable to that of Hurricane Iniki -- a Category 4 storm that walloped Kauai in 1992 and caused $3 billion in damage.

Lowell has since been downgraded to a tropical storm and was moving westward over open water.

A new storm forms in the Pacific

Tropical Storm Norbert formed Thursday in the Pacific but wasn’t threatening land, forecasters said.

The storm was about 685 miles southwest of the southern tip of the Baja California peninsula of Mexico, the Miami-based National Hurricane Center said. It had maximum sustained winds of 40 mph and was moving west.

There were no coastal watches or warnings in effect, the center said. Some gradual strengthening was forecast over the coming days.