Several homes on Hawaii’s Big Island destroyed by mudslide triggered by former Hurricane Lala

As Tropical Storm Lala continued moving west away from Hawaii on Monday, residents were dealing with the destruction from the heavy rain the storm brought to the islands over the weekend.

In the small community of Waiohinu on the southern point of Hawaii’s Big Island, a mudslide swept through and destroyed about a dozen homes.

“The boulders that were coming down were so heavy they were like shaking the ground,” resident Alice Birnbaum told CBS News. She said the news crew was the first people she had seen from outside her community since Lala swept by the island.

“We need water. We need, people need propane, people need gas, people need food,” she said.

While a hurricane hasn’t made direct landfall in the state since Iniki in 1992, the eye of then-Category 1 Hurricane Lala passed just 30 miles off the Big Island’s coast over the weekend, bringing wind gusts over 80 mph and torrential rain, with some areas seeing more than 3 feet. Kapalua, located in Maui County, was hit with 48 inches of rain over the weekend. 

As of Monday, more than 100,000 customers were still without power across the Hawaiian Islands, according to poweroutage.us.

Bridges on the Big Island were washed away, and several communities have been entirely cut off from the rest of the island.

Without emergency services able to reach them, Waiohinu residents have been forced to rely on each other. One resident told CBS News a family that included a young child barely made it out of their home before it was washed away.

All Hawaii state and county offices, state Department of Education schools and public charter schools, courts and judiciary offices were closed Monday, state officials said.

Lala has since weakened to a tropical storm, but it’s expected to gain strength as it continues moving across the Pacific and could become a hurricane again over the open waters of the Pacific by late Tuesday, the National Hurricane Center said. As of Monday night, it had maximum sustained winds of 65 mph, slightly up from earlier in the day.