Tourists in Oahu and other Hawaii hotspots got back to their beach vacations as residents lined up to vote in primary elections on Saturday, a day after Tropical Storm Iselle swept through the archipelago.
The first storm to make landfall in the US state in 22 years did not cause widespread damage, but blacked out a large swath of Big Island, leaving residents without power for more than 24 hours and blocking roads with downed trees.
On Kauai Island, rescuers on Saturday found the body of a 19-year-old woman believed to have been swept away in a stream while hiking in a closed state park under a tropical storm warning on Friday.
Iselle made landfall early on Friday over Big Island’s Puna District, bringing heavy rain, violent winds and toppling trees. The mostly agricultural area is as big as the island of Oahu and quickly growing because of affordable property, but is nowhere near as populated as the tourist destination.
At Waikiki Beach on Saturday, it was damp and cloudy, with rain off and on throughout Honolulu, but people went about jogging, swimming and sunbathing even as attention shifted to Hurricane Julio. The hurricane was expected to pass about 255km northeast of the islands at its closest point yesterday and linger nearby into today.
On Big Island, Gene Lamkin used rain captured from the storm to wash his hair as he and thousands of others in the sparsely populated, jungle-like Puna District remained in the dark and unable to traverse roads blocked by toppled trees. Lamkin said life there means being prepared for the worst.
“We always have our shelves stocked with food and water,” he said from a cellphone he charged using a generator.
Puna, which is home to about 40,000 people, had the bulk of the 9,200 Hawaii Electric Light Co customers still without power, the utility said, adding that outages could last through the weekend or longer. At the height of the storm, about 25,000 customers lost electricity.
After Iselle passed, Hawaii Governor Neil Abercrombie was unseated by fellow Democrat and state Senator David Ige in the primary on Saturday night — a stunning defeat for an incumbent in a race that has split the party.
Abercrombie had tried to hold onto his seat while disgruntled voters turned their allegiance to Ige, who promised to bring a less confrontational political style and was rewarded with a decisive victory.
Ige, a respected Hawaii senator who served in the legislature for 28 years, mounted his challenge despite being outspent by about 10:1.
In the US Senate race, incumbent Democrat Brian Schatz also faces a threat from fellow Democrat US Representative Colleen Hanabusa, in a contest to determine who will fill the shoes of beloved late senator Daniel Inouye, the first Japanese-American elected to both houses of the US Congress. Inouye, who volunteered for a special US Army unit of Japanese-Americans in World War II, died in 2012.
Hanabusa took a slight lead over Schatz with 49 percent to Schatz’s 47 percent in early returns on Saturday night, based on 104,000 votes cast early or absentee.
Hanabusa has attracted many of Inouye’s supporters, who felt it was disrespectful for Abercrombie to disregard the political icon’s dying wish to have Hanabusa be appointed his successor.
Abercrombie chose Schatz, his lieutenant governor, instead.
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