World News
One dead and homes swept away as Hurricane Lala grazes Hawaii
By Staff Writer | 17 August 2026
The storm passed within 30 miles of the Big Island without making landfall, yet dropped up to 89 centimetres of rain, cut power to more than 200,000 customers and set off flash floods that carried houses from their foundations. A search and rescue operation is under way.
Hawaii is contending with flash floods and mudslides after Hurricane Lala skirted the Big Island overnight into Sunday, leaving one person dead in a road accident at South Point and sweeping homes from their foundations in the coastal communities of Naalehu and Waiohinu. The storm's eyewall passed within 30 miles of the island's southern tip without making landfall, Hawaii County said.
Forecasters at the US National Weather Service office in Honolulu said they had reports of two homes carried away in the rainfall, and the county launched a search and rescue operation for anyone whose home may have been destroyed in the floods.
What makes this very challenging is that there's rushing water, there's debris, there's boulders on the road, and it's dark
Kimo Alameda, Mayor of Hawaii County
A near miss that still flooded the island
Lala reached hurricane strength on Saturday afternoon with winds of 91 miles per hour, and the Big Island was placed under a hurricane warning, its first direct landfall threat in 155 years. By Sunday afternoon the National Hurricane Center's advisory put the winds near 65 miles per hour, and the system was moving west, south of the islands, as a tropical storm.
The rain did the damage that the wind did not. Totals of up to 35 inches, about 89 centimetres, were recorded in places, and the National Hurricane Center said Lala would produce additional rainfall of four to eight inches across the Big Island and windward Maui. Tropical storm warnings remain in effect for all eight of Hawaii's main islands.
Power cuts spread as the storm passed: an outage tracker put the number of customers without electricity at about 219,000 on Sunday morning, and three hospitals moved to generator power, according to Governor Josh Green. The Big Island's two main airports, Hilo International and Ellison Onizuka Kona, closed for a time before reopening, and the governor said 190 flights had been postponed. Some residents of Maui were left without water supply on Saturday.
The first hurricane threat in a generation
About 180 members of the Hawaii National Guard have been deployed for the response. Officials warned that the danger has not passed while the rain bands continue to cross the islands, with saturated slopes raising the risk of further mudslides.
The last hurricane to strike Hawaii was Iniki in 1992, a category four storm that made landfall on the southern coast of Kauai, killed six people and caused three billion dollars of damage. Lala spared the islands a landfall; what it delivered anyway is a measure of how little margin an island chain has when a storm of this size passes close.