A well-known house in Ka‘u that was once a bed-and-breakfast sustained major flood damage as Tropical Storm Hone passed to the south of the Big Island over the weekend.
The home on Ha‘ao Springs Road off Highway 11 in Waiohinu is known as the “Hobbit House.” It currently is the residence of 78-year-old Sharon Mastandrea and her beekeeper son, Jacob Satterwhite.
The family has a GoFundMe.com page to help them finance repairs to the damage, which Satterwhite described as “just devastating.” The page, titled “Restore Sherry’s Home After Devastating Flood,” had raised $1,860 of a $15,000 goal by late afternoon Wednesday.
Satterwhite, who lives in the bottom of the house while his mother occupies the upper floor, said he was awakened at about 3 a.m. Sunday by the rain from the tropical cyclone, the eye of which passed about 45 miles south of Ka Lae, also known as South Point.
“It was raining and raining, and then I heard a sound like one of my propane tanks had burst or something,” Satterwhite told the Tribune-Herald on Wednesday. “I saw water outside my house up to my waist — and I’m almost six-foot.
“The whole bottom half, there was a river going through it. The laundry room with a bedroom was where it hit first. It flooded my whole room, my furniture, everything I had in there. It was coming through my laundry room to my kitchen. I raced up the stairs and told my mother that there was a flood coming through the house.”
Satterwhite then took matters into his own hands to ensure the water ran through the house instead of building up and causing structural damage from the pressure to the walls.
“The only way the water could go out was through my kitchen. The water blew open the door of the kitchen,” he said. “When I looked in there, it was already waist high. I had to go to the garage and grab a crowbar and break open my front door. And then, the water shot out like it was out of a dam or something. It went several feet in the air.
“If I hadn’t busted open the front door, the water probably would’ve gotten as high as the windows and broke them.”
The flood deposited mud, boulders and other debris into the family’s yard, with some of it making its way inside the house.
“It started carving around the house and, basically, just made its own canal all the way through my front and back lawn,” Satterwhite said. “We were worried that it was going to uproot trees that would fall on the house.
“The neighbor above us, (the flood) was across his road. He couldn’t get out or in from his house. It completely dug a trench about three-and-a-half or four-feet deep and about four-feet wide in front of his house. He couldn’t get to his truck, so he was stuck there.”
According to Satterwhite, the house is off the grid and the flood damaged his generator. The flood water, however, spared his beehives. He gathered up his family’s important documents and as much of his honey inventory as he could salvage, and he and his mother evacuated their home.
“The really good news is that we’re all safe — my mother, my bees, my dog and my two cats,” he said. “We didn’t get swept out or anything like that. Everyone in the family was accounted for, so I’m thankful for that.”
Julia Neal, owner of Pahala Plantation House and editor-publisher of the Ka‘u Calendar, said some coffee farmers reported damage in their groves.
“We didn’t have a huge wind event,” she said. “There were some trees down, but the majority of the damage was from that overnight rain. It was just a hammering of rain.”
Neal said there also was pavement damage to Kaalaiki Road, a side road to Highway 11 also known as Cane Haul Road. It remained closed as of late Wednesday afternoon.
Hilo Bayfront Soccer Fields also remained closed because of flooding.
County Civil Defense Administrator Talmadge Magno said county damage assessment teams were in Waiohinu Wednesday examining affected properties.
According to Magno, the county as of Wednesday had received 38 damage claims “spread out all the way from Kohala to Ka‘u.”
“The flood damage is all on the windward side — Kohala, Hamakua, Hilo, Puna and Ka‘u,” Magno said.
He said that of the damage claims that had been assessed thus far, 18 have been verified.
“Nine are major, meaning it’s questionable whether they can live in” the affected structures, Magno said.
According to Magno, Civil Defense will continue fielding storm damage claims through Friday. Call Civil Defense to make a claim at (808) 935-0031.
Magno added that the county closed its two evacuation shelters in Keaau and Pahoa, as Hawaiian Electric Co. reported Tuesday night that all customers who had lost power during the storm have had their electricity restored, with the exception of those who must repair damage to their property before service can safely be restored.
With Hone far to the west of the islands, two tropical storms, Gilma and Hector, are still under the watchful eye of forecasters and Civil Defense officials.
As of 5 p.m. Wednesday, the center of Gilma was 440 miles east of Hilo and just barely clinging to tropical storm status, with maximum sustained winds of 40 mph. Gilma is expected to be a remnant low when it passes to the north of the Big Island late this week or on the weekend.
“If we get anything from Gilma, it’ll be rain. So we’re tracking that,” Magno said. “By the time it gets to us, it won’t be a tropical storm — so we’ll issue a wind warning or a flood watch or something like that.”
The center of Hector was 1,380 miles wast of Hilo as of 5 p.m. Wednesday and also had maximum sustained winds of 40 mph. Hector is expected to be a tropical depression when it crosses into the Central Pacific Basin and is forecast to dissipate somewhere east of Hawaii.
Email John Burnett at jburnett@hawaiitribune-herald.com.