{"id":537675,"date":"2026-03-22T00:48:09","date_gmt":"2026-03-22T00:48:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/537675\/"},"modified":"2026-03-22T00:48:09","modified_gmt":"2026-03-22T00:48:09","slug":"hawaiis-worst-flooding-in-20-years-threatens-dam-prompts-evacuations-as-more-rain-looms","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/537675\/","title":{"rendered":"Hawaii’s worst flooding in 20 years threatens dam, prompts evacuations as more rain looms"},"content":{"rendered":"

HONOLULU \u2014 As Hawaii endures its worst flooding<\/a> in more than 20 years, officials are urging people in hard-hit areas to \u201cLEAVE NOW.\u201d 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.<\/p>\n

Muddy floodwaters smothered vast stretches of Oahu\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

Gov. Josh Green said the cost of the storm could top $1 billion, including damage to airports, schools, roads, people\u2019s homes and a Maui hospital in Kula.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is going to have a very serious consequence for us as a state,\u201d Green said at a news conference.<\/p>\n

In a video posted on X,<\/a> Green said that more rain is expected in Oahu and Maui over the weekend, where there will be continued concerns about flooding. “Hawai\u02bbi \u2014 we are still in this,” Green wrote in the caption of the video.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u201cResidents in the Waialua area are strongly urged to LEAVE NOW,\u201d an emergency alert said early Saturday. \u201cThe remaining access road out of Waialua is at high risk of failure if rainfall continues.\u201d<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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\u2019s house, and he\u2019s in there, and he\u2019s screaming for help,\u201d Creasy said.<\/p>\n

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. <\/p>\n

Green said his chief of staff spoke to the White House and received assurances the islands would have federal support.<\/p>\n

\"BrokenDebris carried by the flooded Kaukonahua Stream in Waialua, Hawaii, on Friday. Gov. Josh Green said the cost of the storm could top $1 billion.Mengshin Lin \/ APMost serious flooding since 2004<\/p>\n

No deaths were reported and no one was unaccounted for. More than 200 people have been rescued, officials said. About 10 people were taken to a hospital with hypothermia, he said.<\/p>\n

Crews searched by air and by water for people who had been stranded \u2014 efforts that were hampered by people flying personal drones to get images of the flooding, said Ian Scheuring, a spokesperson for Honolulu.<\/p>\n

The National Guard and Honolulu Fire Department airlifted 72 children and adults who had been attending a spring break youth camp at a retreat on Oahu\u2019s west coast called Our Lady of Kea\u2019au, according to city and camp officials. The camp is on high ground but authorities didn\u2019t want to leave them there, the mayor said.<\/p>\n

Green said the flooding was the state\u2019s most serious since 2004 floods in Manoa inundated homes and a University of Hawaii library.<\/p>\n

Dozens \u2014 if not hundreds \u2014 of homes were damaged Friday but officials haven\u2019t been able to fully assess the destruction, Honolulu Mayor Rick Blangiardi said. Some 5,500 people were under evacuation orders.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s no question that the damage done thus far has been catastrophic,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Officials blamed some of the devastation on the sheer amount of rain that fell in a short amount of time on saturated land. Parts of Oahu received 8 to 12 inches (20 to 30 cm) of rain overnight. Kaala, the island\u2019s highest peak, got nearly 16 inches (40 cm) in the past day, the National Weather Service said.<\/p>\n

More rain was expected: Blangiardi said 6 to 8 inches of rain was forecast to fall on Oahu in the next two to three days.<\/p>\n

Winter storm systems known as \u201cKona lows,\u201d which feature southerly or southwesterly winds that bring in moisture-laden air, were responsible for the deluges in the past two weeks. The intensity and frequency<\/a> of heavy rains in Hawaii have increased amid human-caused global warming, experts say.<\/p>\n

Eyes on an aging dam<\/p>\n

Officials have been closely watching the Wahiawa dam, which has been vulnerable for decades, saying it was \u201cat risk of imminent failure.\u201d<\/p>\n

Water levels in the dam \u2014 about 17 miles northwest of Honolulu, on the island of Oahu \u2014 receded by late Friday but that could change if more rain falls.<\/p>\n

Overnight into Friday, the dam went from 79 feet to 84 feet \u2014 just 6 feet shy of what it can handle, authorities said. After peaking at more than 85 feet, the water level had dropped by early Saturday to 81.5 feet, according to the U.S. Geological Survey<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Waialua resident Carly Meyers told NBC News that she woke up to about a foot of water in her children’s playroom at 1:30 am on Friday. She evacuated to a local high school, which then was evacuated due to the threat of dam failure.<\/p>\n

\u201cSeems like most people on other states aren\u2019t seeing anything about the floods on the news,\u201d Meyers said. \u201cBut most our community is under water.\u201d<\/p>\n

The state has said Wahiawa dam has \u201chigh hazard potential,\u201d and that a failure \u201cwill result in probable loss of human life.\u201d<\/p>\n

The earthen dam was built in 1906 to increase sugar production for the Waialua Agricultural Company, which eventually became a subsidiary of Dole Food Company. It was reconstructed following a collapse in 1921.<\/p>\n

The state has sent Dole four notices of deficiency about the dam since 2009 and five years ago fined the company $20,000 for failing to address safety deficiencies on time, according to records.<\/p>\n

Afterward, Dole proposed to donate the dam, reservoir and ditch system to the state in exchange for the state\u2019s agreement to repair the spillway to meet and maintain dam safety standards.<\/p>\n

The state passed legislation in 2023 authorizing the dam\u2019s acquisition. It also provided $5 million to buy the spillway and $21 million to repair and expand it to comply with dam safety requirements. But the transfer has not been completed. A state board is due to vote on the acquisition next week.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe dam continues to operate as designed with no indications of damage,\u201d Dole said in an emailed statement.<\/p>\n

The state regulates 132 dams across Hawaii<\/a>, most of them built as part of irrigation systems for the sugar cane industry, according to a 2019 infrastructure report by the American Society of Civil Engineers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"HONOLULU \u2014 As Hawaii endures its worst flooding in more than 20 years, officials are urging people in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":537676,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,3,21,19,22,20,25,24],"class_list":["post-537675","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-states","tag-america","tag-news","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/537675","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=537675"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/537675\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/537676"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=537675"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=537675"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=537675"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}