Cleanup efforts were already underway as locals came together to help displaced families returning to destroyed homes. Mac Burton, who lives in Wailua Beach, went out into the streets of the North Shore community Sunday to help his neighbors.
Cleanup, Burton said, is going to take months. “Anything that was, you know, four feet or below, it is just completely wiped out,” he said.
Burton said that many homes still have standing water in them and that even when the water level goes down, they’re left with “a ton of mud.” Wood homes that are still standing will face mold and water damage, Burton said.
“Everyone’s kind of in the street, just shoveling out mud and pulling out soaking debris and doing whatever they can to kind of start drying things out,” Burton said. “But we’re still without power here, so it’s making some of those efforts a little more difficult.”
Burton was awake when the flooding began early Saturday. As he watched the water level rise in the street, he began to wake up his neighbors. “I was knocking on doors and just kind of yelling, like, ‘Hey, I think everyone should wake up. This is kind of a big deal,’” Burton said.
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