‘ĪAO VALLEY — Carrie Bashaw loved spending mornings in the nook of her home overlooking the Wailuku River, eating breakfast and doing Sudoku before her husband Tom woke up.

Now, the edge of her property is a sheer drop-off into the rocky riverbed where floodwaters swallowed their home during a Kona low storm a month ago.

The loss of a large swath of their property makes rebuilding complicated for the Bashaws, whose home once stood 80 feet from the edge of the river. Now they’re hoping some of the soil they lost can be returned. 

“There’s a lot of mud and rocks that are being collected down at the causeway,” Carrie Bashaw told Maui County officials at a March 29 meeting. “Can that be brought up and reinforced on the land so that we can then survive?”

Many ‘Īao Valley residents lost portions of their land to the fast-moving, high-flowing river last month. Maui County Mayor Richard Bissen said at that meeting the county was looking at bringing soil runoff back to restore people’s properties.

“There’s a lot of sediment that needs to go someplace,” he said. “It may as well go back up the river.”

Maui County spokesperson Laksmi Abraham said Friday that the Public Works Department is preparing to clean up debris and sediment that was pushed downstream into the Wailuku River basin. 

“County officials plan to meet with residents to learn whether they want sediment returned to their properties and what volumes of sediment they are seeking,” Abraham said.

Bissen said the county is trying to be careful not to repeat what happened in September 2016 when the county removed thousands of tons of rocks that washed downstream during severe flooding in ‘Īao Valley. Some of those rocks were crushed in the landfill, sparking backlash from Native Hawaiian community members who said the pōhaku (rocks) were sacred and held the mana (power) of the warriors who died in the valley during a major battle. Then-Mayor Alan Arakawa came under fire at the time for saying there was “no such thing as sacred rocks.”

“Not going blame anybody. It’s not about that,” Bissen said. “I’m just saying we learned one lesson from that. People get upset about moving stuff around, especially without asking permission.”

The state Department of Land and Natural Resources said Friday that “soil runoff or other deposited materials could be brought to landowners’ properties to restore land lost,” with the owners responsible for the work. Permit requirements are determined on a case-by-case basis, but the department said any work affecting the stream channel would likely require a stream channel alteration permit from the Commission on Water Resource Management as well as additional federal, state and county permits.

Kainoa Horcajo, whose family lives next to the river and lost about 4 to 5 acres of property, said this year’s flood had an even wider reach than the 2016 “100-year-flood” that mainly affected properties along the banks.

“This flood also, because of its intensity and longevity, took away land way away from the river,” Horcajo said. “It flooded the roadway. It made getting into and out of the valley very scary and dangerous for some time because of just the massive amount of water.”

The family’s losses included entire taro patches that were just planted or ready to harvest. The floodwaters stripped away soil and rocks and dropped the grade of their property. But, they consider themselves “lucky” that no one was injured and they didn’t lose their homes.

“We want to, as much as is possible and responsible and allowable, restore the lands,” Horcajo said.

He added that the 2016 incident made clear that “it’s appropriate to, as much as possible, be able to keep the resources within the ahupua‘a” that they came from. He also was supportive of bringing materials back up to the valley to help families return what they lost.

On March 14, when the worst of the storm was passing over Maui, Horcajo spent part of the morning helping the Bashaws at their property across the river.

The couple and their three cats had spent the night before the storm in the container where they kept their tools. At around 5:30 a.m., they heard a loud crash and rushed out to find half of their house was gone. If they hadn’t taken shelter in the container, “we would have been in the river with the bedroom,” Carrie Bashaw said.

In the three hours before the rest of the home fell into the river, the Bashaws and Horcajo tossed belongings into plastic bags and passed them through the windows. Carrie Bashaw’s beloved Sudoku books, her grandmother’s china and a 1972 waffle iron that “still worked gorgeously” were among the things they couldn’t save.

The Bashaws are in their late 70s. This was the house they had planned to spend the rest of their days. They’d bought the property in 2018, hoping to escape urban life on O‘ahu, where Carrie Bashaw grew up as “the only little haole girl” in Wai‘anae. “I had Uncle Henry, who was on the police force, and he said, ‘no one touches blondie,’ and so no one bothered me,” she explained.

‘Īao Valley became their “oasis.” Nestled on a lush 2-acre plot of farm land at the top of Mokuhau Road, the Bashaws spent five years removing 150 invasive African tulip trees and replacing them with dozens of fruit trees and vegetables, including papayas, bananas, mountain apples, guavas, tomatoes, sweet potatoes and herbs. They put homegrown mulberries in their jams and pies, and donated extra eggplants and lettuce to the Maui Food Bank.

They designed the 1,700-square-foot, one-story home themselves, giving every room, including the shower, a view of the river. When it was built in 2020, Horcajo blessed the land, the house and both cat doors. 

Now, the Bashaws, who are staying in a neighbor’s cottage, aren’t sure if they can rebuild. Carrie Bashaw said it depends on the aid they can get from the Federal Emergency Management Agency or insurance — they’re not in a flood zone and weren’t required to have flood insurance — as well as whether they can get some of the lost soil back. A GoFundMe for the couple had raised $105,405 as of Friday. 

“There’s just so many unknowns,” she said.

‘Īao Valley resident Alena Ornellas agrees with returning some of the lost sediment back into the valley if some owners need it, as long as it’s “not detrimental to the ecosystem.” However, she said residents can’t truly be reimbursed for what they lost, like the mamaki tree planted by her late husband.

“Maybe in our American value system, yeah, you can get a value, but in reality, you can’t get reimbursed,” Ornellas said.

Ornellas estimated that a few thousand feet of her family’s farm, where they grow taro along with fruit trees and medicinal plants, washed away. They also lost mountain apple, ‘ohi‘a, coconut and ‘ulu trees, a thick banana patch, the outdoor kitchen and the gathering area where they hosted educational programs and family parties.

“It really changed the dynamics of our family as a whole and what we’re able to even do as a family right now,” Ornellas said. “It’s kind of like we’re starting from scratch again.” 

Before the storm, they hosted students and taught them farming techniques, the history of the valley and family legends. Ornellas said her family has lived there “for about 28 generations that we know of.” Her great-great-grandfather was a fireman who rescued people during flooding in 1916.

Ornellas said the path of the river, which avoided an ancient ahu, or shrine, on their property, was a reminder of the reality of living in ‘Īao.

“The river did exactly what the history books say it does and went around it,” Ornellas said. “So it’s like, were we really on land or were we really in the river? … Because when you’re at the bottom of a valley, it’s almost like the whole place is a river.”

Shane Albritton, a neighbor of the Ornellas ‘ohana, is taking that lesson to heart after the floodwaters barreled through his property. 

During the first Kona low, Albritton, his wife, and their 5-year-old daughter were on O‘ahu preparing to fly to Japan for spring break when a neighbor and St. Anthony School classmate started sending him videos of the flooding. 

“At some point on Saturday night I had to ask him to stop because I was spiraling,” Albritton said. 

When Albritton returned to his home on the Sunday after the storm, at least 50 volunteers had already showed up to clean the yard. 

Albritton was “overwhelmed” by the kindness and the damage. There was a giant sinkhole next to the cottage, three upside-down cars and a boat with gas pouring into the river. Dammed up by invasive java plum trees and cars, the water had forged a path through his neighborhood. 

The family had just started a business growing vetiver, an aromatic clumping grass they hoped to sell as an affordable form of erosion control for homeowners or government agencies. They lost their newly planted grass, but two patches of mature grass were the only parts of the yard that didn’t experience soil loss. 

“It’s made me more motivated to grow enough vetiver to be able to help people that lost a bunch of soil like us,” said Albritton, who estimated the losses at about $130,000.

The Albrittons thought their home had escaped the worst of the damage after floodwaters rose as high as 4 to 6 inches inside. But then they spotted mushrooms growing out of a bathroom wall. Disaster relief experts told them they would likely have to cut out all of the drywall at least a foot above where the water reached. They will be moving out temporarily until they can see how bad the mold is. 

A GoFundMe for the family had raised $11,425 as of Friday, and Albritton said countless friends had donated time and equipment.

Going forward, he plans to rebuild the infrastructure of his yard to allow the river to pass along a stone wall that appears to be from an old ‘auwai (traditional ditch system).

“Now that I’ve seen the way that the water wants to go, I feel like I’m much better equipped to kind of plan out the infrastructure on my property in a way that will allow the water to flow without flooding any of our neighbors and without flooding our house again,” he said. 

In the days after the first storm, Albritton said excavators were brought into the valley to put up a berm along properties ahead of a second storm. However, they disappeared after one day after the Department of Land and Natural Resources was alerted and posted a photo on its Facebook page on March 20 warning against unauthorized use of heavy machinery in streams. 

At the March 29 meeting, county Public Works Director Jordan Molina said there were no plans to bring back the machinery because these were “emergency protective measures that the mayor authorized us to proceed with, knowing that the other storm was coming.”

Bissen said the county acted because it was an emergency, but once the river levels dropped back down to more normal levels, “the rules change.”

Residents said they were glad something was done.

“If they didn’t do that, our whole neighborhood was going to get wiped out,” Albritton said. “It made a huge difference.”

DLNR said after the storm in March, six ‘Īao Valley residents had received emergency authorization to perform emergency channel alterations “necessary to prevent or minimize loss of life or damage to property, including the repair or restoration of structures damaged by a sudden and unforeseen event.”

Any work beyond that, including restoring eroded property or constructing retaining walls, requires a permit.

When asked what can be done in time-sensitive situations, the department said emergency authorizations from the water commission “receive priority review and, depending on what is requested, can be approved on the same day.” The commission’s rules also allow landowners to start work right away and notify the department of the work they’re doing “no later than the first working day” after they start. 

The water commission “did not receive any resident complaints about not being able to perform work in the stream channel,” the department said. 

Ornellas said if they can’t use heavy machinery, the community may have to “go old school” and start “passing rock hand to hand … the way our kūpuna did it.”

“We gotta get back to that laulima, back to the neighbors knowing neighbors,” Ornellas said. “And if you’re gonna dwell in the valley, you have to live like a river person.”