Kauai’s north shore cut off by mudslide

A massive landslide in Hanalei, blocking the only access for vehicular traffic in and out of Kauai’s north shore, topped the myriad problems resulting from thunderstorms, heavy rainfall and flooding that have stretched across the islands, hitting Kauai and Oahu particularly hard at daybreak Thursday.

State transportation officials foresee that Kuhio Highway, at Hanalei Hill approaching the Hanalei Bridge, will remain closed through at least Tuesday until they can safely assess the amount of damage, conduct debris removal and stabilize the slopes, Kauai Emergency Management Agency said in a news release.

The mudslide wiped clean a wide swath of the vegetation from the cliffside just below the roadway of the upper portion of the highway straight down to a lower section of the highway, landing in a hill of mud completely blocking the road.

The police and fire stations, across the road from where the landslide began, were temporarily evacuated as a precautionwhile engineers evaluated the highway, said Kauai County spokeswoman Kim Tamaoka. They returned to their stations but are using alternate routes.

Many doubted the road would open in five days, prompting some to leave the area.

Midday Thursday, Janice Smolenski, owner of North Shore Cab, said, “People are boating to Hanalei if they can find friends with boats. People are trying to get out if they can.”

Smolenski had been witnessing an exodus of visitors and some residents.

“My last customers (residents for nearly 45 years) were probably leaving for a while,” she said. “They don’t want to get stuck with more rain coming and the electricity, mud, flooding, saturated lawn, not to mention you’re isolated from the rest of the island unless you can boat out.”

First responders will continue to be able to get to the community by boat and helicopter for emergency calls, the county said. Food is available at stores and food pantries in the areas affected, and the county is working on coordinating a system to bring in more food and medical supplies for the community as needed.

Kauai Island Utility Cooperative members from Hanalei to Haena have been told to prepare for extended periods without power if outages should occur while the highway remains closed.

Kauai’s north shore community sprang into action to help one another Thursday.

Professional surfer Laird Hamilton, who lives in Hanalei but on the Princeville side of the landslide, was busy Thursday helping people get onto boats and launching the boats from his property.

“We’ve had some practice,” he said, given “the slides, floodings, hurricanes. We’ve had a lot of natural disasters. Everybody kind of goes into ‘natural disaster mode.’ We’ve developed processes to get people what they need, where they want to go.”

He said some people need to catch a plane, others need medicine, and taro farmers need to get their crops to market.

Those who work beyond the landslide area but live outside also will be affected.

Chipper Wichman, president of the National Tropical Botanical Garden, which includes Limahuli Garden and Preserve in Haena, said some workers live on the Prince­ville-Kilauea-Kapaa side of the slide, which will make it difficult for them to get to work, but he does have a core group of employees who live in the area who can maintain the gardens.

It’s similar to the April 2018 landslide in Wainiha that shut down the same highway.

Staff beyond the landslide took “Jet Skis and boats,” Wichman said, adding that it’s a 15-minute ride from a boat ramp at Anini Beach to the ramp at Hanalei Black Pot Park.

“Our community has been through so much since 2018, and it looked like it was returning to normalcy,” he said. “Many of our staff are vaccinated. We feel like we turned a point, but this is a massive slide. I just heard they are beginning to evacuate the police and fire stations because the slide is across from the parking lot of the police and fire stations.

“Oh my God, it almost took out the road on the top as well as the bottom,” he said.

Wichman said he expects the work will take months, since after the 2018 landslide “we lived under convoy for 14 months” (until June 2019), when only residents and designated workers were allowed to go past Hanalei and regular traffic was not allowed due to the work involved.

“They closed the road except for certain times of day,” and convoys were “led by National Guard or construction workers. This is not dissimilar to the landslide at Wainiha.”

He predicts a lot of work ahead for the Department of Transportation to ensure it is safe to pass.

“It’s just so unfortunate to have to now endure this. The businesses in Hanalei have barely been hanging on.”

Hanalei Taro, a family-run farm, is continuing to harvest, cook and provide food as much as possible, said Lindsey Haraguchi-Naka­yama, a fifth-generation farmer.

They have online orders for boxes of fresh produce going out by FedEx.

“With the landslide, that does pose a problem,” she said. “We’re looking at options to canoe or use a small boat,” she said with a laugh. “It’s such a massive landslide that part of it is in the river as well, so small boats and Zodiacs can’t come up the river.”

She said the flooding since Tuesday possibly could continue and that the Hanalei River will get backed up and flood quicker and a lot heavier.

The flooding can wash out newly planted huli or plant material (piece of the stem and some of the corm) used to replant the taro, and it may be necessary to collect the huli after a flood since it may not have gotten firmly rooted.

Also, when a high tide coincides with floodwaters coming down, “it’s going to backwash with salt water,” Haraguchi-Nakayama said. The salinity can hurt the growth of the newly planted huli.

On Feb. 19 the Hanalei River had risen to over 16 feet, overflowing its banks, and coming down so swiftly that a taro corm landed in an orange tree. “You can hear the roar of the rapids. It’s almost deafening,” she said.

So they have had to harvest the wetland taro before the optimal harvest time of 16 months.

Haraguchi-Nakayama said that the family, who lost their family farmhouse to the 2018 flood, was not going to worry about their own problems.

“Our concern is community first,” she said.

Instead, they are sending to families who have suffered from the flooding on Oahu and elsewhere a farm fresh box of kulolo, taro mochi cake, poi and Hanalei taro burgers.

The Department of Land and Natural Resources closed some Kauai parks, including Polihale and Haena state parks and the Na Pali Coast State Wilderness Park, due to heavy rainfall, flash flooding and landslides. There is ponding on the entrance road to Polihale, and canal irrigation ditches have overflowed.

The Kalalau Trail on the Na Pali Coast has been closed for a week due to the threat of flash flooding. Haena State Park was closed due to the landslide.

The heavy rain is expected to continue. A flash flood watch is in effect statewide until 6 p.m. today.

A low-pressure system to the west will lift to the northeast as a front approaches tonight through Saturday for Kauai and possibly Oahu, with a wet tradewind pattern with the front moving through.

Plenty of moisture is expected over windward and mauka areas into the weekend, said Alex Gibbs, National Weather Service forecaster.

From Maui County to Hawaii island, a more widespread rainfall might be seen as late as Saturday night.

Sunday should bring drier, brisk tradewinds and cooler temperatures through Monday statewide.

Heavy showers and storms were just off the coast of Oahu and northward off its southeast from 3 a.m. to daybreak Thursday.