Lala struck in darkness. With no power, no cell service, one Nā‘ālehu resident prayed with her dog

When the ferocious winds and raging floodwaters from Hurricane Lala hit Nā‘ālehu on Saturday, Tina Edmunds was home with her small dog Marley.

It was nightfall. It was dark.

She could not turn on the lights The power was out.

She could not call for help. The cell service was dead.

The 67-year-old couldn’t leave. She was trapped.

“I just sat in the living room and prayed,” Edmunds said Monday.

Tala‘iletalalelei Kei, born and raised in the small, rural, tight-knit town of Nā‘ālehu, also was home on Aug. 15 when Lala skirted around the southern tip of Hawai‘i Island, bringing howling 70 mph winds and buckets of rain.

“We thought it was going to be a normal storm, and then all of a sudden, we look out our window and the water’s coming on the highway, just rushing, rushing past,” said Kei, 30, of Nā‘ālehu. “Honestly, I thought it was the ocean at first, because we could hear it crashing.”

At one point, some people tried to cross the road that had turned into a raging river. They were attempting to help residents in a nearby subdivision.

Kei said: “Nobody knew what was going on at night until the next morning, until the damage was done.”

Morning came. The damage was devastating.

People’s houses had literally been moved by the floodwaters. One home was swept 100 yards away. Thick mud oozed through many people’s properties. Huge boulders were carried by the rushing water, ending up in yards and on roads.

Sergio Rojo, who lives with his brother in Nā‘ālehu, sat alone for a moment on a fallen tree across from the Punalu‘u Bakery. He began to cry as he said everything was gone 1,000 of his fruit plants.

“One night,” he said softly through tears.

Two miles north in Wai‘ohinu, another small, rural, tight-knit town on the Big Island, Merrill Avenue had built a barricade of sandbags a foot high on top of his rock wall in preparation for the storm.

But at about 10 p.m. Saturday, when he saw the rock wall was no match for the wrath of Hurricane Lala, he knew there was nothing he could do to stop the rushing water. He brought his dog inside while Mother Nature flooded his two vehicles.

The basement of his home filled with 10 feet of storm water. He spent all morning Monday pumping it out, running a hose onto the street as he moved rocks and shoveled mud.

Luci Omija, who lives in Kona, was in Wai‘ohinu on Monday to check on her family’s property just off of Highway 11 that has a storage building housing a project car and other household things.

While they’re still assessing the damage, Omija said seeing the property was overwhelming. The storage building is encircled and encased with several inches of that thick mud and lots and lots of rocks.

More heartbreak for the small communities. Cemeteries in Nā‘ālehu and Wai‘ohinu were decimated with more mud and rocks. Caskets were unearthed from Nā‘ālehu Cemetery with headstones found down the road in people’s yards.

One headstone belonged to Albert Wai Lu, who was a private in the U.S. Army who served during World War II.

The Hawaiian cemetery at the historic Kauahaʻao Congregational Church in Wai‘ohinu also was desecrated by Mother Nature.

For Omija, it is especially sad. Her husband is buried there.

“There’s a lot of family there,” she said.

Edmunds was woken at 7:30 a.m. Monday by people saying they found their grandmother’s headstone on her property.

Randy Kai, the 82-year-old owner of the Wong Yuen Store just off Highway 11 in Wai‘ohinu, said his wife’s parents and grandparents also are buried at the old Hawaiian cemetery.

When Lala hit, Kai was at his home across the street from the store. Family members on Monday were out with shovels trying to clear paths and pick up debris and belongings.

While there was no apparent structural damage to his home, Kai said the storm brought two feet of water into the store. His daughter-in-law opened the door so the water could flow out, Kai said.

His property has a flood channel, but he thinks it got plugged up by the flowing debris.

On Monday, Kai was checking on his water lines. Like most everyone else in Ka‘ū, he has no running water, electricity or internet.

Kai lost a storage area where he kept his washer and dryer. They were brand new. He had just bought them to replace the machines he had lost in March from the Kona Low storm.

His 100-gallon propane tank, which he bought two months ago, was found in his neighbor’s yard.

The resiliency of the communities showed on Monday. Clusters of cars pulled off to each side of Highway 11 at mile markers 83 and 87 in the Ocean View area. It was one of the few places they could get cellphone reception.

One Ocean View resident said she has to drive 35 minutes just to check her messages.

The community of Nā‘ālehu also is grieving the death of a 98-year-old woman who had taught children at the town’s elementary school. She is the only known casualty of Lala in the state.

And in spite of the tragedy, the hardy people of Ka‘ū were busy on Monday cleaning up roads, filling water tanks and grabbing food. The 76 gas station was dark, but open, running on a generator.

Kei, who also works for Isemoto Contracting, provided potable water to his fellow residents.

“We’re just giving them water to at least shower,” Kei said. “Today was actually a good day. We brought joy back into their hearts.”

Omija’s grandkids found the youthful joy of riding their bikes through the mud puddles.

The small wins are giving people hope.

Just up the road from the heart of Nā‘ālehu town, the Hongwanji Mission building opened as a Vibrant Hawai‘i resilience hub to begin offering food to the community Monday afternoon.

‘A‘ahu Kahiwalani, a Ka‘ū resident and a member of the Hawaiian Kingdom, was there supporting hub organizers and talking with community members.

“Today is really a day of connecting. Yesterday was a day of destruction,” Kahiwalani said. “Discovering what we were dealing with, we got to see what happened to us overnight in the dark.”