Muddy March

 March started with buckets of rain. I was in the preschool helping the Green Apple class one morning with their art project when I started hearing the rain slap the roof. Rain storms in Hawaii are different because sometimes it pours like this for just a couple of minutes before letting up. However, after a few minutes, the rain did not stop but continued to pour. We looked outside and could see the water levels getting higher on the street. We immediately sent an emergency call out to the parents to come get their children. We watched from the classroom windows as the street slowly disappeared. I have never seen rain like this in my whole life. I was with Jansen and she was super stressed about her and Sam's place in Laie. They live in a flood zone. Sam was watching his house cameras and could see the water level slowly rising. He has 2 tiny houses on his property and we could see the water levels up to the middle of the door. 

We decided to meet Sam at his house to see if we could save anything. We couldn't even get all the way down the road because the water levels were so high. We had to Kayak the rest of the way into the property. As were kayaking in we saw dead rats floating by. We also passed cars that were submerged up to the windows and garages that we waist-high in water. Once we got to Sam's house the damage was done. We couldn't open the door because the water was up to the door knob. We didn't want to risk more damage. Sam lost pretty much everything that day. But instead of complaining he went and helped other people. I thought that was pretty cool. The rain didn't end up stopping for three days. It wasn't till the water level went down that we were able to clean the place up. During the flood dogs, pigs, and cats died because they were drowning. As we were cleaning we found a rotting pig in the yard. It stunk so bad. We spent the whole day throwing away everything. Furniture, clothes, storage items, power tools, washer dryer. It was all insane. During the flood people were surfing in the street and playing in the huge puddles. The ocean is all brown because of the runoff from the mountains and roads are covered in inches of mud. It's going to be a long time before this place looks more normal. I feel bad for the weddings that were happening that day, the visitors that couldn't spend one second outside, and for all the things people lost. I guess one thing you learn is life is that things don't last forever. We went hiking a week later and the waterfalls were going off!