People attend disaster center on Kauai
More than 50 people signed up on Friday on Kauai for emergency disaster relief or assistance. It's been 10 days since the devastating dam break that killed seven residents there.
The Disaster Assistance Recovery Center drew many people who had many things ripped away from them -- family, property, peace of mind.
Street level, where three structures and seven people were swept away, a driveway leads to nowhere.
It's quiet now, so different from March 14.
"It just kept getting louder, louder, and louder, and we started hearing the cracking of the trees as the water came through," says Terry Wells, Kilauea resident. "I wasn't thinking of a dam breaking. I was just thinking a flash flood from sudden rain swell, but we were really shocked when we woke up and got outside, it was light, and saw what had really happened."
Carole and Terry Wells lost hundreds of trees on their mahogany farm.
"This is my granddaughter, and it was her magical forest, two weeks ago," says Carole, looking at a picture of her granddaughter in their mahogany farm. "This is where she was standing. She said, 'grandma, what happened to my forest?'"
But something more tragic -- they lost their next door neighbors, Aurora Fehring, her husband, toddler, and four others.
"I mean, we have a two-year-old granddaughter and we think, oh my God, if we lost them, you know, our trees are nothing compared to losing family and friends," says Carole.
All along the path of the flood, you see piles of trees, also of personal affects. A few distances away lies a lauhala mat, and here what looks like a piece of furniture.
More than 50 people who suffered losses from the flood check in at Kilauea Assistance Center. Lives in this town are permanently altered. As is even the landscape -- top soil and earth are torn away, exposing bedrock, polished clean by the force of the flood.
A flood that dug a cliff so deep, there's now a rushing waterfall where before there was only a small pond.
On Saturday, the disaster center moves to Kalaheo's Neighborhood Center, open from 10 to 4.
The Disaster Assistance Recovery Center drew many people who had many things ripped away from them -- family, property, peace of mind.
Street level, where three structures and seven people were swept away, a driveway leads to nowhere.
It's quiet now, so different from March 14.
"It just kept getting louder, louder, and louder, and we started hearing the cracking of the trees as the water came through," says Terry Wells, Kilauea resident. "I wasn't thinking of a dam breaking. I was just thinking a flash flood from sudden rain swell, but we were really shocked when we woke up and got outside, it was light, and saw what had really happened."
Carole and Terry Wells lost hundreds of trees on their mahogany farm.
"This is my granddaughter, and it was her magical forest, two weeks ago," says Carole, looking at a picture of her granddaughter in their mahogany farm. "This is where she was standing. She said, 'grandma, what happened to my forest?'"
But something more tragic -- they lost their next door neighbors, Aurora Fehring, her husband, toddler, and four others.
"I mean, we have a two-year-old granddaughter and we think, oh my God, if we lost them, you know, our trees are nothing compared to losing family and friends," says Carole.
All along the path of the flood, you see piles of trees, also of personal affects. A few distances away lies a lauhala mat, and here what looks like a piece of furniture.
More than 50 people who suffered losses from the flood check in at Kilauea Assistance Center. Lives in this town are permanently altered. As is even the landscape -- top soil and earth are torn away, exposing bedrock, polished clean by the force of the flood.
A flood that dug a cliff so deep, there's now a rushing waterfall where before there was only a small pond.
On Saturday, the disaster center moves to Kalaheo's Neighborhood Center, open from 10 to 4.
posted by ams at 11:21 AM
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