Power returned for us in the middle of the night. After days without electricity, running Beat of Hawaii on a generator, unsuccessfully looking for gas, and getting ready to throw out everything in refrigerators and freezers, the power suddenly came on.
That makes us fortunate, but not typical. More Kauai electric customers still don’t have power Thursday morning than do, and some KIUC technicians we’ve talked with have told people to be prepared for outages that could last a week or longer. Nobody we’ve spoken with really knows.
Governor Green was on Kauai yesterday and has now deployed 300 National Guard members to help.
We’ve reported Hawaii travel news from Kauai for nearly 20 years, long before Hurricane Lowell arrived and long after most of the people writing about it from elsewhere will have moved on. We know these roads, beaches, businesses and neighborhoods because we live here.
This week we’ve driven them, photographed and filmed them, talked with utility crews, visitors, residents and business owners, and relied on plenty of coconut wireless too. We’ve also lived through the same outages, shortages and communication failures ourselves.
What we’re seeing now is an island recovering very unevenly. That’s hard to capture in an airport reopening, a resort statement, or a storm-damage photo gallery, and it has everything to do with whether visitors should be coming to Kauai right now.
Power came back for us in the middle of the night.
Governor Josh Green came to Kauai Wednesday and put customer electricity restoration front and center. He also said the cost of recovering from Lowell would exceed $400 million. From what we’ve seen around the island, we wouldn’t be surprised if the eventual cost is far higher.
Then sometime overnight electricity returned for BOH, even with downed lines still lying in a nearby street. The timing after the governor’s visit certainly got our pointed attention. KIUC had been concentrating on getting the island’s larger transmission and distribution system functioning, and suddenly this little corner of Kauai was alive again. So what changed?
That immediately resolved much of our situation. Until then, every hour became a calculation of how much generator fuel remained and how long we could keep food cold and the internet on. Tens of thousands of other Kauai households and businesses woke up Thursday still making those calculations and dealing with no water.
Gas and groceries became part of the emergency.
The gas lines we saw Wednesday were beyond anything we can remember on Kauai. Our lead photo shows the gas line in Kalaheo. At station after station, vehicles stretched enormous distances, with residents trying to find fuel for generators mixed in with visitors who needed gas too. Demand far exceeded what some stations seemed able to handle. We are awaiting more reports from this morning, but heard that at least one South Shore gas station had shorter lines and available gas.
We couldn’t get fuel ourselves. A friend eventually brought over a couple more gallons, which we hoped would let us limp along for a few more days. By then we were making plans to dispose of the contents of refrigerators and freezers if the power didn’t return. Most people we know are in the same boat as of today.
Food shopping has been just as haphazard. Some stores are open, and others aren’t; posted hours don’t necessarily tell you what you’ll find when you arrive, even at Costco, and stores without electricity have reportedly been letting a few people enter at a time with flashlights. People are trying to keep households functioning while basic systems come back completely piecemeal.
Visitors are part of that equation too. Kauai absolutely needs tourism, and many island families and businesses depend on it exclusively. But this week, visitors and residents have been drawing from the same constrained supply of gasoline, groceries and other necessities. We don’t know how long that will last, but right now a normal visitor load adds demand to an island that is still struggling to supply the people already here.
Kauai’s communications networks aren’t back either.
Spectrum has become a huge part of life on Kauai over the past decades, growing from an internet option to internet, phone, wireless, and other services people depend on every day. From everything we’re hearing around the island, Spectrum remains broadly unavailable, with little useful information about when service will return.
BOH’s fiber optic internet never went down, and Starlink has also proven popular and resilient. Cellular voice has generally worked for us, but mobile data has ranged from poor to mostly nonexistent. Visitors depend on that connectivity for directions, airline information, reservations, and communicating with accommodations, while residents are trying to get restoration information and conduct everyday business. But to be honest, having an internet connection via generator didn’t make the rest of the island function normally around us by any means.
Kauai visitors are telling us two very different stories.
Eduardo came to Kauai with his wife for their 30th anniversary and is still trying to get home. During the worst of Lowell, he told us they found themselves “holding on to each other for dear life in between a shower stall.” When daylight came and they saw what had happened around them, their six-day vacation had become something neither had expected. He told us they aren’t coming back anytime soon.
Rolf sees things very differently. He identified Poipu Shores near Brennecke’s as his property and accused BOH and other media of focusing on the worst destruction and causing unnecessary cancellations. “Power will be restored, many roads and resorts are open, and many more will re-open after days,” he wrote, adding that his property and the Grand Hyatt were spared.
We’re glad they were spared. We know perfectly well that much of Kauai escaped serious physical damage. We also know from living here this week that an undamaged building is not the same thing as a fully functioning destination. Not even close.
Elen made the longer-term case for visitors returning, arguing that Kauai households and businesses depend on tourism and that disaster coverage can hurt an island long after conditions improve. “The island shall recover and will need your support more than it did before,” she wrote.
Steve and Susan, regular visitors to Kauai, were expected to arrive on Monday but canceled their trip on Sunday night before Lowell hit. As Steve wrote: I’ve been seeing posts and videos of Kauai. The last thing Kauai needs right now is tourists running around. We are keeping you and the people there in our thoughts.”
We agree with the long-term point. The question is when visitors go from adding pressure to helping the recovery. Thursday morning, with most electric customers still without power and fuel and food supplies strained in places, we don’t think Kauai is there yet. We’ll be the first to happily share that news when it arrives.
Coming to Kauai requires far more homework than usual.
Anyone with a trip in the next few days needs to investigate the trip they actually booked, not “Kauai” in the usual abstract sense. Call the exact hotel or vacation rental and ask whether it has electricity, working communications, and the services you expect both on property and nearby.
Check the specific activities, restaurants, and beaches you planned to use rather than assuming everything is either open or closed. And even then, it can change so quickly that no one can tell you when the gas station is open, has gas, and has a line you can actually get through. After watching two-mile-long lines yesterday that required police assistance, we say that with on-the-ground experience.
We’ve already heard from travelers whose vacation rentals canceled as they were leaving for Kauai, while others turned around on their way to mainland airports. At the same time, that doesn’t mean plenty of properties came through Lowell without serious damage.
Extended flexible travel policies through September 20.
Alaska and Hawaiian have extended their Lihue flexible travel policy again, this time covering tickets purchased by September 5 for original travel to or from LIH from September 6 through September 20. Those travelers can move their trip through September 23 without a fare difference in the same cabin, cancel for a future travel credit, or change the trip to Honolulu, Maui, Kona, or Hilo at no additional cost for travel through September 23.
That gives people with Kauai trips over the next ten days a meaningful choice: come as planned, postpone, or switch islands based on the vacation they had in mind.
We’ll keep you updated from our location on Kauai.
There is already an enormous amount being written about Kauai by people who aren’t based on Kauai. Some of it is useful, some of it isn’t, and much of it looks remarkably similar.
We’re not a news team sent here for a hurricane. Kauai was our beat before Lowell and will be our beat after the national attention moves on to somewhere else. The beaches we photographed after the storm are the same beaches we go to and have known for years, the roads with downed lines are roads we drive every day, and the businesses struggling to reopen are places where we shop and people we know personally.
Conditions are changing too fast for Thursday morning’s answer to hold for long. We’ll keep telling you what we’re actually seeing, hearing, and living as Kauai works to get back on its feet.
Photo Credit: © Beat of Hawaii.
By Rob and Jeff, Beat of Hawaii.
Some of the most meaningful parts of Hawaii are the ones visitors walk right past without knowing they are there. We’ve spent nearly 20 years finding them firsthand for BOH as full-time Hawaii residents reporting on travel, culture, and island life, and telling you what they mean for your trip. Join us →
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We were on Kauai for 3.5 weeks and left Saturday on our scheduled flight. We were in Princeville during LaLa. The next day everything was pretty much normal. The last 2 weeks were at the Point at Poipu. We saw families with young children checking into the resort 2 days before we left. We were amazed! God bless you and we plan to return next year
We’ve been coming to Hawaii for over 60 years, and anytime we hear about hardships and destructive storms our hearts ache for all the Hawaiian people. We of course have return trips already planned and on the calendar for the future. In the meantime our heartfelt aloha and prayers are with all of our extended Hawaiian ohana.
We live in Poipu and our power and internet was restored a few hours ago. We feel incredibly lucky that our place didn’t have any damage to the structure or inside- plenty of debris outside to be cleaned. The wind and rain was extreme, but not too much worse than a bad winter storm. But the storm surge was just devastating, so anything along the shoreline was severely impacted. Living in a resort area, I think visitors should give the island a few weeks to recover and then visitors will be a welcome to help aid in the economic recovery.
On the positive side, the collective effort to open all the roads was a great success, even out to Haena. The state/county parked a a water buffalo with potable water at the HCR in Wainiha. That means a truck could pull a trailer from Lihue. According to the KIUC power outage map (I prefer power “outrage” map), 55% of their customer accounts have power. That is down from less than 10% 24 hours ago. Maybe those were the long hanging fruit – including where you live – IDK. We don’t expect power for another week, and without power, the water pumps from Hanalei do not operate. Kilauea has the same issue – needs power to supply water.
North side is still without power. At least in the Kilauea area.
And not to be too snarky but how about using some of those “hotel fees” to help the island get back on it’s feet?
Mahalo for your reporting! We have friends in Kekaha and seeing the videos of the boulders on that highway is just wild. They were fairly fortunate in only losing a fence and a bunch of trees – our hearts are with the residents who fared much worse (and those that are ok, just traumatized).
Letting people know when it might be ok to visit is a great service. Take care!
Rob and Jeff, As usual, excellent reporting. Glad to know electricity came back and more importantly, that you are ok. I found it unbelievable that someone suggested tourists should come because his building and the Hyatt are open while others who are already there know exactly what that would mean. They are trying to get home! Obviously, it’s not even safe to drive or walk on streets with power lines being down in addition to unsafe ocean conditions. Sometimes hard to ignore selfish comments ….Aloha!
Was this hurricane as bad as the one in the 90’s? We visited in 1998 and
everything was put back together. Good luck to all. I love Kauai Coffee
and was pleased to read that it was saved from closing a few months
ago. 👏👏