Shocking Images Of Hawaii's EXTREME Historical Flood - $1 Billion In DAMAGES, Wahiawa Dam FAILS?!

Hawaii just experienced its worst

flooding in more than 20 years. And the

dam holding back three billion gallons

of water above the flooded towns nearly

failed overnight.

The images are shocking. Two backto-back

storm systems have dumped over 50 in of

rain across the Hawaiian Islands in 10

days. On Aahu's northshore, flood waters

ripped homes off their foundations,

swallowed cars to their rooftops, and

cut off every road in or out. More than

236 people have been rescued, some

pulled directly from their roofs by

helicopter.

The National Guard scrambled Blackhawks

to airlift 72 children from a spring

break camp surrounded by rising water. A

dam more than 120 years old surged from

79 ft to 85 ft in a matter of hours, 3

feet from its crest, and the city issued

an imminent failure notice to 5,500

people in the dark. On Maui, the same

neighborhoods that burned to the ground

in 2023, wildfire, are now under flood

evacuation warnings because the

retention basins holding the water back

are nearing capacity.

And the governor says the damage will

exceed $1 billion.

But here is the detail that tells the

real story. The Wahiwa Dam was built in

1906

to irrigate sugarcane fields for the

Dole Food Company. State regulators have

warned Dole since 1978 that the dam

spillway is too small to survive an

extreme rain event. They have issued

four deficiency notices since 2009.

Dole has made none of the required

repairs.

Instead, the company proposed donating

the dam to the state and letting

taxpayers pay for the fix. And on Friday

morning, as sirens screamed across the

Northshore and families evacuated in

chest high water with no electricity and

no visibility, Dole released a statement

saying the dam was operating as

designed. This is how it happened. The

first Kona low arrived on March 10th. A

Kona low is a subtropical cyclone that

reverses Hawaii's normal northeast trade

winds, pulling a massive plume of

tropical moisture directly over the

island chain. For six straight days, it

stalled northwest of the islands and did

not move. When it was done, Aahu's

highest peak had recorded over 26 in of

rain. Maui's summit gauge measured

nearly 50 in. Honolulu shattered a daily

rainfall record that had stood for 75

years. Every official weather station in

the state set a new record. Wind gusts

hit 135 m hour on the Big Island and

every square inch of soil across every

island was saturated.

Then the second storm hit. Thursday

night, March 19th, the rain returned.

Not a lesser system, not the tail of the

first. A second Kona low. By 3:42 in the

morning on Friday, the Honolulu

Department of Emergency Management sent

its first alert to Northshore residents.

The message said, "If you are trapped,

go to the highest level. Stay out of

attics without a way to the roof." By

4:30, the Wahayawa Dam had climbed from

79 ft to within 3 in of the 84 ft

evacuation trigger. By 5:35, the city

issued the imminent failure warning and

told everyone downstream to leave

immediately. By 8 in the morning, the

National Weather Service elevated its

warning to a flash flood emergency, the

highest designation it issues with

language that is almost never used. This

is a particularly dangerous situation.

Seek higher ground now. And here is what

made it so much worse.

Fington Highway, the main road out of

the Northshore, was already underwater.

Kamehaha Highway was impassible. Every

route in or out was flooded. The people

being told to evacuate had nowhere to

drive.

To understand what was happening, look

at where the water was going.

O AAU sits in the middle of the Pacific

Ocean, roughly 2,400 miles from the

nearest continent. The Northshore

stretches along the island's northern

coast, facing open ocean.

Behind it, the Wanai and Kuao mountain

ranges funnel rainfall down into

low-lying plains.

Walua and Haleiwa sit in that drainage

path on flat land between the mountains

and the sea. And directly above them on

the Kokona stream sits the Wahiwa Dam

and its reservoir Lake Wilson holding

over three billion gallons of water.

The dam is 88 ft tall. It was built in

196

out of earth and rock, not concrete, not

steel,

earth. It was reconstructed after a

collapse in 1921.

And today, federal dam safety records

classify it as being in poor condition

with a hazard potential rated high and a

risk assessment classified as very high.

Its spillway, the channel designed to

safely release excess water, has been

flagged as undersized since 1978. That

is not a recent finding. That is 48

years of documented knowledge that this

structure cannot handle the kind of

rainfall that just hit it. But that was

only half the collision. When the dam's

water reached 80 ft, it breached the

spillway and began releasing 1,500

gallons per second. That water poured

into towns already drowning. The flood

waters that had been rising since

Thursday night were now being fed from

above by a dam that was struggling to

hold. The dam did not fail, but it did

not need to fail to cause devastation.

The spillway discharge compounded what

the rain was already doing to

communities that had no way out.

Here is what was happening on the

ground. Raquel Ashiu is a farmer in

Walua and a member of the Northshore

neighborhood board. Thursday night, she

found her goat standing in kneeh high

water. One hour later, the water in her

elevated dog kennel had risen so fast

that her seven dogs were about to drown.

Their heads were the only thing above

the surface. Her nephew and son-in-law

charged into chest high water in total

darkness to pull them out. She sent a

text to a reporter at Civil Beat. It

read, "We are completely cut off. Can't

see a damn thing. It's so bad." She was

not alone. Across the Northshore,

families woke to sirens and had minutes

to decide what to carry. Wua High School

opened as an emergency shelter only to

flood itself.

186 people and 45 dogs who had fled

there for safety had to be evacuated a

second time bust to higher ground in

Wahiawa.

An emergency shelter that had to

evacuate its own evacuees.

That is the scale of what happened. Here

is what is not making most headlines.

The last time a dam breached in Hawaii

was 2006

when the Ka Loco Dam on Kauaii collapsed

and killed seven people.

That dam's owner, a car dealer named

Jimmy Fluger, faced seven counts of

manslaughter. He pleaded no contest to

one count of reckless endangering and

served seven months in jail. The

Wahayawa Dam is owned by Dole Food

Company. The state has sent Dole four

deficiency notices since 2009 and fined

the company $20,000 for failing to

address safety issues on time. Dole's

response was to propose handing the dam

to the state. Legislation was passed in

2023

authorizing the acquisition with $5

million to buy the spillway and $21

million to repair it.

The state's deadline to close the deal

is June 30th of this year. And while

that deadline creeps closer, Dole

installed a portable water-filled

barrier on the dam crest to temporarily

extend its height to 90 ft. That barrier

is what stood between billions of

gallons of water and the flooded

communities below. 236 people were

rescued. Dozens, possibly hundreds of