The City and County of Honolulu will resume normal government operations on Wednesday after closing non-essential city offices and services on Tuesday because of Hurricane Lowell. Mayor Rick Blangiardi said Oahu appears to have been spared the worst of the storm overnight, even as crews kept clearing sand and debris from roads and sidewalks at Ala Moana Regional Park.
The timing matters because the shutdown was lifted only after the city got through the night with less damage than feared. At 8 a.m., the tropical storm warning for Oahu was canceled as Lowell pulled north of the main island chain, but a high surf warning remains in effect for the south-facing shores of all isles through 6 p.m. today, a reminder that the storm’s reach is not finished.
Blangiardi thanked residents for paying attention to the warnings and said they helped the city get through a long night safely. He said the city’s work on Oahu is not completely finished, but its attention is already turning to Kauai and Niihau, where he said the storm hit hardest and where people are waking up to damage and a very different situation.
That is where the sharpest contrast in the story lies. Oahu was spared the worst impacts, yet the storm still forced city closures, left Ala Moana Regional Park closed until further notice, and pushed Honolulu to send 20 people to Kauai to help with cleanup and recovery. City officials have not given a detailed estimate of how long that recovery will take, but they are already looking at what resources can be sent to support Kauai County.
For Honolulu residents, Wednesday brings a return to normal government operations. For Kauai, the work is just beginning, and the next measure of this storm will be how quickly help reaches the places that took the brunt of it.
