GoKawiilHONOLULU — As Hawaii endures its worst flooding in more than 20 years, officials are urging people in hard-hit areas to “LEAVE NOW.” The warning early Saturday came after heavy rains fell on soil already saturated by downpours from a winter storm a week ago. Still more rain was expected during the weekend, officials said.
Muddy floodwaters smothered vast stretches of Oahu’s North Shore, a community world-renowned for its big-wave surfing. Raging waters lifted homes and cars and prompted evacuation orders for 5,500 people north of Honolulu. Authorities cautioned that a 120-year-old dam could fail. The National Weather Service issued a flash flood warning early Saturday with light to moderate showers expected to turn heavy in some places.
Gov. Josh Green said the cost of the storm could top $1 billion, including damage to airports, schools, roads, people’s homes and a Maui hospital in Kula.
“This is going to have a very serious consequence for us as a state,” Green said at a news conference.
In a video posted on X, Green said that more rain is expected in Oahu and Maui over the weekend, where there will be continued concerns about flooding. "Hawaiʻi — we are still in this," Green wrote in the caption of the video.
Most of the state was under a flood watch, with Haleiwa and Waialua in northern Oahu under a flash flood warning, according to the National Weather Service.
“Residents in the Waialua area are strongly urged to LEAVE NOW,” an emergency alert said early Saturday. “The remaining access road out of Waialua is at high risk of failure if rainfall continues.”
Sirens eventually warned residents in the area to leave. Yet Sienna Creasy told NBC News that she woke up to screams from her neighbors in Waialua hours before any alarms went off.
Creasy moved to higher ground, where she said she had a "bird's eye view of the chaos" and could hear someone next door calling out for help. She tracked down his address and posted it to social media. "I posted it to every message board I could find, because his house was floating down into our neighbor’s house, and he’s in there, and he’s screaming for help,” Creasy said.
Locals with construction equipment loaded people into the buckets of their tractors, while those with no where to go drove aimlessly through floodwater, Creasy said.
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