Hawaii’s recovery efforts begin as Hurricane Lala downgraded, moves west

HONOLULU - Clean-up efforts were underway on Aug 16 as Hurricane Lala, which was downgraded to a tropical storm, rolled past Hawaii’s Big Island and dumped heavy rain across the US Pacific state.Hawaii Governor Josh Green told a news conference that officials are still investigating whether there had been any storm-related deaths.“We’re praying that there are essentially no fatalities. The question is a difficult one to answer in some ways,” Green said.He added that there was a “terrible car accident” that could have been storm-related, and “we often have a person found every couple days that may be houseless on the street, who may have passed away”.Hawaii Emergency Management Director Randy Collins warned there were still dangers to face in coming hours even though the storm had passed.“Many casualties often happen after the disaster,” Collins told reporters. “As people are cleaning things up, they’re working with heavy equipment, chainsaws, generators. They’re working around downed power lines and so forth. That’s when the casualties come.”Lala was downgraded from a hurricane to a tropical storm early on Aug 16, according to the National Hurricane Center (NHC).The NHC said at 8pm local time on Aug 16 that Lala “weakens as it continues westward away from the main Hawaiian islands”.The storm’s outer bands were still lashing the Big Island and Maui with heavy rainfall and, while little change was expected over the next day, the centre warned that Lala “could become a hurricane again by Wednesday (Aug 19)”.Lala had strengthened into a Category 1 hurricane on Aug 15, generating winds of up to 120kmh.Aside from the Big Island, tropical storm warnings were issued for the state’s seven other major islands: Maui, Molokai, Kahoolawe, Lanai, Oahu, Kauai and Niihau.However, its “tropical storm warning for Kauai County, including the islands of Kauai and Niihau, has been discontinued,” the NHC said.It said “there are no coastal watches or warnings in effect” by the evening of Aug 16.A maximum storm total of 76cm to 89cm of rainfall had been expected over the windward Big Island.El NinoLala did not make landfall, but Hawaii was still reckoning with the damage it brought.The New York Times reported that parts of a major highway in the Big Island’s south-east collapsed overnight, blocking road access to the town of Pahala that has the region’s only hospital.The state was last hit by a “major” hurricane – meaning Category 3, 4, or 5 on the Saffir-Simpson scale – in 1992, when Hurricane Iniki caused at least six deaths and billions of dollars in damage.Hawaii was menaced by Hurricane Fausto in July, before the storm weakened and skirted north of the island chain.The storm comes as a powerful El Nino has formed in the central equatorial Pacific Ocean.Temperatures are already so high that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration now predicts a 69 per cent chance of a “historic event that would exceed the strength of previous El Nino events dating back to 1950“ when it peaks between October and December.El Nino, a natural climate pattern when sea surface temperatures in the central and eastern Pacific Ocean become unusually warm, tends to promote hurricane activity in the Pacific while suppressing it in the Atlantic.Human-caused climate change can amplify El Nino’s impacts because a warmer ocean and atmosphere increase the availability of energy and moisture for extreme weather events, such as heat waves and heavy rainfall. AFP