South Kihei Road on Maui became a “raging river.”
Leo Javi said he’s never seen anything like what happened Friday night in his nine years
living in the area. He was lucky, he said. Despite
losing power for 48 hours, his health and belongings were OK.
But the condos in the building next door? Water poured into the parking lot and swept several vehicles down the road.
“It was pounding and pounding like a river coming down from the sky for four straight hours non-stop,” Javi said. “I’ve never seen so much water.”
The powerful Kona-low storm that drenched the state over the weekend hit Maui County the hardest. According to Maui Emergency Management Agency Administrator Kono Davis, the county has never seen a storm like it.
Kula, located north of
Kihei, saw nearly 50 inches of rainfall in the seven-day period ending Monday at
8 a.m., data from the National Weather Service showed, while Kihei saw more than seven inches. Only three other rain gauges on Maui saw
single-digit rainfall in that time period: Pukalini with 9.85 inches, Haiku with 8.54 inches and the EMI
Baseyard with 6.45 inches. In Lahaina, nearly 20 inches of rain fell.
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Molokai and Lanai also saw heavy rainfall, with almost 19 inches and 15 inches recorded on each island, respectively. According to Maui Emergency Management Agency Administrator Kono Davis, east Molokai was still cut off from the rest of the
island due to flooding and landslides on Monday. East Maui, including Kihei, was cut off until Sunday, he said, when officials were able to safely open one lane in certain areas.
Emergency evacuation shelters across the county were used by, at its peak, 351 people, Davis said, noting that it’s hard to know how many people evacuated to homes of loved ones in drier areas.
Monday was the first day the county officially switched its efforts from response to recovery because of the ongoing rain, he said, though efforts to recover in certain areas began as soon as it was safe to do so.
“Response and the recovery mesh together as far as cleaning up areas,” Maui County spokesperson Laksmi Abraham added. “We’ve got to get through the weather first before we can really start getting into those areas and figure out what exactly we’re dealing with.”
Davis said it was too early to know the extent of damage across the island, but noted that parts of South
Kihei Road had eroded from being inundated with water. Most transportation was cut off or reduced from South and North Kihei road to Wailea.
As of Monday, North
Kihei resident Andrew Shoemaker and his family were still without power after three days.
“Luckily, we still had
water,” he said.
Shoemaker spoke
with the Honolulu Star-Advertiser while he was doing laundry and charging devices at a friend’s house. Since Friday, he’s cooked using a grill or camp stove and tried to keep his kids entertained while they sheltered in place.
“Kids are stuck and you’ve got no power and it’s just raining,” he said. “Yeah, this is a long spring break.”
Shoemaker noted that while this is the worst he’s seen Kihei flooded, it wasn’t the first time. A large storm in February 2025 also brought mud and debris into the roads in the same areas, he said.
Kihei was an urban development built on top of a wetland, Abraham said, which makes it a difficult and unique situation.
Development has stripped the area of places for water to absorb, Abraham said, which causes water to flood areas because it has nowhere else to go.
“It’s just something that we’ve inherited in our community,” she said. “We’re going to continue to see this issue and its just something we’re going to have to navigate every time we have storms or water coming into that area from flooding.”
Abraham said the county has worked to mitigate flooding in the area, but updating the existing infrastructure is difficult and expensive. Public works has installed drainage areas and is hoping to install more retention basins soon.
The storm was also unprecedented, Abraham added. Up the mountain from Kihei, Kula received 49.57 inches of rain and
had waterfalls flowing in places that typically remained dry.
“If you can imagine the sheer amount of water that was coming down the mountain and just dealing with the whole situation of being a wetland, you’re not going to win that fight,” Abraham said. “The repercussions of the storm that we’re dealing with right now is unlike anything we’ve ever navigated before.”
For now, Davis said the county is prioritizing getting critical infrastructure, like drainage ways, back to operating capacity ahead of the upcoming storm this weekend. While this storm isn’t expected to be as intense, the ground remains highly saturated and already compromised infrastructure is more vulnerable to damage.
“It’s going to be interesting because we’ve never faced this before, where we’ve had such a huge impact storm with another storm following,” Davis said.
Davis encouraged residents to prepare and remain vigilant as the forecast develops over the next few days.
“We need everybody to be part of the solution before it happens, during as well as after,” he said.