Tropical storm Lala kills 1, sweeps away homes as flooding hits Hawaii

At least one person was killed in a storm-related car crash on Hawaii’s Big Island as Hurricane Lala struck late Saturday night.

Gov. Josh Green confirmed the death, along with 19 roofs ripped off buildings after what he described as an “enormous storm.”

Powerful waves pounded the Big Island’s coast as Lala slowly passed by. Howling winds whipped palm trees and waterways swelled with fast-moving runoff from relentless rain that blew nearly sideways.

Lala was downgraded to a tropical storm as of Sunday morning, according to the National Hurricane Center.

More than 130,000 households were without power Sunday morning across Hawaii’s three largest islands, according to the utility tracker poweroutage.us. At least three hospitals were operating on generator power, Green said.

A search-and-rescue mission including Civil Defense, the National Guard and Coast Guard was launched after flash floods apparently swept several occupied homes off their foundations in the coastal communities of Na’alehu and Wai’ohinu, near the island’s southern tip, Hawaii County Mayor Kimo Alameda said early Sunday.

“What makes this very challenging is that there’s rushing water, there’s debris, and there’s boulders on the road and it’s dark,” Alameda said.

As of 2 a.m. Sunday in Hawaii, Lala was centered about 105 miles (170 kilometers) west-northwest of Kailua-Kona and about 100 miles (160 kilometers) south of Honolulu, with tropical-storm-force winds extending as much as 175 miles (280 km) from its center.

Lala was sustaining top winds of 70 mph (110 kph) and moving northwest at about 15 mph (24 kmh). Forecasters expect it to regain hurricane strength midweek once it’s well west of the island chain.

By the time Lala’s completely gone, some higher-altitude places on the Big Island, dominated by the towering Mauna Kea volcano, will have been hit with as much as 35 inches (89 centimeters) of rain, forecasters said, enough to loosen steep slopes where some of the 210,000 islanders live off the grid in improvised housing.