Hurricane Lowell Relief: September 22 Update

Two weeks after Hurricane Lowell, the recovery keeps showing up in the smallest, most human ways, and this week one of them ran straight through our own club.

On Sunday, the Kaiaulu Room at Hale Lihue, a gathering and co-working space at 4286 Rice Street, filled with music for a kanikapila organized through the efforts of Addison Bulosan. Kaua'i musician Ipo brought together some of the island's top Hawaiian musicians for the casual jam session, streamed live to help raise funds for Hurricane Lowell relief and for kupuna still working through recovery, before shifting into her other persona as a jazz and pop vocalist for a set of songs from her childhood. Contributions from the event go through the Rotary Clubs of Kaua'i, including our own Rotary Club of Hanalei Bay, a reminder that Service Above Self shows up in a lot of different rooms.

Fourteen days after landfall, KIUC has restored power to 98% of the island, with fewer than 1,000 members still out. What remains is concentrated in Wainiha and Ha'ena, scattered pockets between Hanalei and Kekaha, and Koke'e, where debris clearing has only just begun.

In Kilauea, Ke'ale and Haylee Chung brought their newborn daughter home a week after the storm, to no power or water, a nickname already waiting for her: hurricane baby. And at the National Tropical Botanical Garden, Hurricane Lowell claimed 25 of the garden's 700 Loulu palms, Hawai'i's only native palm found nowhere else on Earth. Two very different losses and beginnings, both part of the same two weeks.