Powerful storm pounds Maui and Hawaiʻi Island as officials warn everyone to get off the roads

A dangerous storm tore across Maui and Hawaiʻi Island with enough force to collapse a home into a swollen stream, topple more than 100 trees, shut down roads, and push local leaders into full emergency mode as they warned residents and visitors that this was not the time to be out driving around to “see what’s happening.”

In her KHON2 report, Jill Kuramoto captured the scale of the damage through one of the most unsettling images of the night: a house along Iao Valley Stream giving way to rushing water. The homeowner, Tom Bashaw, told her he moved in back in 2020 and that the house had been built about 65 feet from the stream, a distance that once seemed safe enough that he never imagined flooding would become a real threat.

That image alone said a lot about the storm, but it was hardly the only sign that conditions had turned serious. Kuramoto’s report showed a weather event that was not just inconvenient or messy, but deeply disruptive, the kind of island-wide emergency that scrambles routines, strands travelers, and reminds people very quickly that nature does not care about plans, schedules, or confidence.

A House Falls, Streams Rise, And Roads Begin To Fail

Kuramoto described heavy rain and flooding stretching from Upcountry to West and South Maui, and the footage matched the language. On Honoapiilani Highway, rocks and waterfalls were spilling onto the roadway, which is the kind of phrase that sounds dramatic until you remember that on an island road, with limited alternatives, that kind of hazard can turn a normal trip into a trap in minutes.

In Wailuku, she said, the dog park had become a muddy lake. In South Maui, sections of road leading into Kihei were already damaged and crumbling. And in Iao Valley, the stream had become what she called a raging river, strong enough to chew away ground and pull part of a home down with it.

That sort of damage is not just visually shocking. It changes how emergency officials have to think, because once pavement starts breaking apart and streams start acting like bulldozers, even roads that look passable can become dangerous with almost no warning.

That was clearly part of the message local leaders were trying to get across. This was not a “drive carefully and you’ll probably be fine” type of storm. It was a “stay put unless you absolutely have no other choice” situation.

Maui’s Mayor Says The Storm Is Doing Things The Island Does Not Normally See

Kuramoto spoke with Maui County Mayor Richard Bissen, and his comments carried the kind of urgency that usually comes only when officials know the public may still be underestimating what is unfolding.

“There’s things happening that we don’t normally see,” Bissen told KHON2, adding that it was “all hands on deck” because the impacts were countywide. That is a striking admission coming from an island community that is no stranger to rough weather and difficult terrain.

Bissen’s strongest warning was also his simplest. As Kuramoto reported, he stressed that people should not drive unless they absolutely had to. He did not leave much room for interpretation there, and honestly, he should not have needed to. When roads are washing out, rocks are spilling onto highways, and emergency crews are stretched across multiple districts, unnecessary traffic becomes more than an annoyance. It becomes one more risk that responders may have to rescue.

One of the more frustrating details in Kuramoto’s report was Bissen’s account of visitors who ignored those warnings and ended up stranded in Hana after trees blocked the road back to town. He said more than a dozen people, and possibly closer to 20, were trapped because they could not get through.

That detail matters because it shows how quickly a scenic drive can become a logistical problem in Hawaiʻi. Roads there are beautiful, but they are also vulnerable, winding, narrow, and often bordered by terrain that can turn hostile in bad weather. Tourists sometimes treat storm warnings like suggestions, but islands do not give you endless detours and backup routes. When one road goes bad, the consequences can pile up fast.

Winds On Haleakalā Reached A Jaw-Dropping 133 Miles Per Hour

If the flooding images were the emotional core of Kuramoto’s report, the wind numbers were the part that made you stop and read twice. Mayor Bissen told KHON2 that overnight instruments at Haleakalā recorded gusts reaching 133 miles per hour.

That is a staggering number by any standard, and it helps explain why the storm was producing such widespread disruption rather than isolated problems. At those wind speeds, debris becomes airborne, trees become hazards, and anything structurally vulnerable is suddenly at risk.

It also explains why shelters had opened across Maui and why road closures had become necessary in places like Lahaina and Olowalu. Rising water is dangerous on its own, but combine it with debris, unstable ground, and extreme wind, and you get a situation where even short-distance travel can become reckless.

The truth is that people often think of storms in separate categories – flooding, wind, road damage, falling trees – when in reality the worst events are dangerous because all of those things are happening at once. Kuramoto’s report made that especially clear. Nothing here sounded isolated. Everything was feeding everything else.

Hawaiʻi Island Was Fighting Its Own Emergency At The Same Time

While Maui was dealing with washed-out roads and collapsing stream banks, Kuramoto also reported that Hawaiʻi Island was getting hammered by the same storm in different ways, with crews working overnight as high winds and heavy rain swept across the island.

Hawaiʻi County’s Civil Defense, she noted, was at Level One full activation, which is not the kind of posture officials take unless the threat is broad and serious. Mayor Kimo Alameda told KHON2 that the west side was seeing high winds while the south side was dealing with both flooding and high winds, a combination that made the impacts island-wide rather than confined to a single problem zone.

According to the report, officials said more than 100 trees had already fallen, bringing down power and telephone lines and forcing multiple road closures, especially in Kaʻū. That detail may not be as cinematic as a house collapsing into a stream, but from a public-safety standpoint it is huge. Fallen trees and downed utility lines can slow emergency response, isolate neighborhoods, and leave people without reliable communication just when they need information the most.

Kuramoto said county crews, state crews, and Hawaiian Electric were all working together to clear debris and restore power, but Alameda made clear that the storm’s effects were being felt all over. He said motorists should limit travel and announced that county facilities would be closed again.

That is often one of the clearest signs officials are taking a storm seriously: when government offices themselves shut down because normal operations no longer make sense under the conditions.

The Message From Both Islands Was The Same: Stop Treating This Like A Normal Storm

One thing Kuramoto’s report did especially well was show that officials on both islands, despite facing somewhat different impacts, had landed on the same bottom-line message. Stay home. Stay informed. Stay safe.

That repetition is important because people tend to become numb to storm language, especially in places where weather alerts are frequent. But the combination of details in this report – a house falling into Iao Valley Stream, roadway failures in South Maui, visitors stranded in Hana, 133-mile-per-hour gusts atop Haleakalā, more than 100 fallen trees on Hawaiʻi Island, power and phone disruptions, full emergency activation – makes it very hard to argue this was overblown.

If anything, the greater risk is that people hear “storm warning” and picture a familiar inconvenience, when what officials were describing was closer to a system-wide strain event. Roads were becoming unreliable. Infrastructure was taking hits. Emergency crews were being spread thin. And travelers who thought they could outsmart the forecast were learning the hard way that island geography does not forgive bad timing.

That is what makes storms like this so dangerous. Not just the wind, or the rain, or the flooding, but the false sense that one more drive, one more errand, or one more sightseeing detour will probably be fine.

Kuramoto’s reporting made the reality plain. This storm was already proving otherwise, and with conditions expected to linger, the smartest thing people on Maui and Hawaiʻi Island could do was exactly what their mayors were asking: get off the roads, stay where it is safe, and let emergency crews do their work.