The first known fatality on the Big Island from Hurricane Lala was a 98-year-old former school teacher at N\u0101\u02bb\u0101lehu Elementary school, according to two residents of the small, tight-knit rural town of N\u0101\u02bb\u0101lehu in the Ka\u02bb\u016b District.<\/p>\n
Big Island Now is not identifying the victim until it is known if her family has been notified.<\/p>\n
Noelle Taylor, who lives across from the elementary school, said the former teacher lived by herself and was tiny, under 100 pounds.<\/p>\n
Hawai\u02bbi County temporary fire chief Daniel Volpe said during a press conference on Monda that his department was informed about this woman as a \u201cpossible missing person.\u201d <\/p>\n
He said fire crews began a search, but the access was difficult. The fire crews that were staged in the Wai\u02bb\u014dhinu region and other crews were able to make their way to assist police working around that area. <\/p>\n
But Volpe said: \u201cNo luck\u201d in that first search for the woman.<\/p>\n
In the chaos of destructive emergencies, especially when communications is a major problem with cell towers, Internet and power unavailable, people often are reported missing, only to be found safe and sound.<\/p>\n
Volpe said the crews also were not sure if she was missing, or if \u201cshe was accounted for with friends, with neighbors, or whether she was somewhere else.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hawai\u02bbi County Police Chief Reed Mahuna said his department activated a missing person investigation.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt wasn\u2019t clear to us whether she may have been picked up or if she was, in fact, still in the area,\u201d Mahuna said. \u201cBut crews were in the area.\u201d<\/p>\n
It is not clear when the missing person report came in, but during a noon press conference on Sunday county officials said there were no missing people at the time.<\/p>\n
At one point, Volpe said, \u201cWe did pull back. We did allow this afternoon, National Guard \u2026 some specialized rescue people were able to come in. She was located while we were there.\u201d<\/p>\n
Police and an ambulance responded, Volpe said.<\/p>\n
\u201cUnfortunately, by the time she was located, she was found deceased,\u201d Volpe said. \u201cSo our sympathy and our compassion goes out to the families.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mahuna said the police will continue an investigation to determine the circumstances and cause of the woman\u2019s death.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe don\u2019t believe it is anything other than a result of the disaster at this time,\u201d Mahuna said. \u201cBut we will investigate it fully to make sure that that\u2019s the case.\u201d<\/p>\n
Volpe said personnel have been going house-to-house in hard hit areas to search for anyone who may have been trapped or needs help, and will continue to do so until the areas are cleared.<\/p>\n
While the county feels fortunate that so far there has been only one death related to the hurricane, Hawai\u02bbi County Mayor Kimo Alameda said: \u201cAny loss is devastating.\u201d<\/p>\n
Green added: \u201cN\u0101\u02bbalehu is a very small town. Everyone\u2019s already coming together and grieving.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The first known fatality on the Big Island from Hurricane Lala was a 98-year-old former school teacher at…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":817449,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[47],"tags":[30384,192,217368,345678,1584,346820,4252,79],"class_list":["post-817448","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-big-island","tag-environment","tag-hawaii-county","tag-hurricane-lala","tag-missing-person","tag-naalehu-elementary","tag-natural-disaster","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/817448","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=817448"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/817448\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/817449"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=817448"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=817448"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=817448"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}