Power Restored on Moloka‘i’s East End and in Kaluakoi

Molokaʻi Olivia impacts. PC: Maui Electric Company.

7:50 a.m. 9.14.18

Maui Electric is opening a customer care center today, Sept. 14, from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., at the Kilohana Community Center for East End Molokai customers who experienced an extended outage after Tropical Storm Olivia made landfall over Maui County. Company representatives will be on hand to answer questions.

12 a.m. 9.14.18

Power has been restored to the remaining 700 customers on the East End of Molokaʻi and Kaluakoi affected by storm impacts from Tropical Storm Olivia.  The remaining customers were brought back online at around 11 p.m. on Thursday.

“We appreciate everyone’s patience as we worked to safely restore power as quickly as possible after this devastating storm,” said Sharon Suzuki, president of Maui Electric.

About 400 customers in the East End experienced a power outage on Wednesday after Tropical Storm Olivia caused severe flooding in the area that initially delayed access for crews to begin damage assessments and repairs in certain areas. As crews were addressing multiple outages on the island, including on the West End and Kalaupapa, once access was cleared in the East End, crews began restoration efforts on several spans of downed power lines and damaged poles in the area Wednesday evening.

Molokaʻi Olivia impacts. PC: Maui Electric Company.

Additional workers from Maui were also flown in by helicopter Thursday morning to accelerate assessments and repairs. As the crews made progress throughout the day, with the ground still saturated, more trees – including a large kiawe tree along Kamehameha V Highway – toppled and brought down additional poles and power lines.

This repair work did take time as crews needed to remove the downed trees from the area, reset new poles and restring the downed power lines in several different areas to fully restore customers in the East End.

Crews also completed repairs to damaged electrical equipment earlier Thursday evening to restore about 300 customers in the Kaluakoi area of Moloka‘i after gusty winds and heavy rains from Tropical Storm Olivia left them without power.