Just as power is being restored and life has started to go back to normal in some parts of the island following Hurricane Lala, Hawaii County residents are now bracing for Tropical Storm Moke, which is expected to pass south of the island this weekend.

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Just as power is being restored and life has started to go back to normal in some parts of the island following Hurricane Lala, Hawaii County residents are now bracing for Tropical Storm Moke, which is expected to pass south of the island this weekend.

The Keaau transfer station had a line of cars down the road as people came to drop off waste and restock on water at the county spigot on Friday.

“I didn’t expect it to be so busy. I’ve never seen it like this before,” said Molly Abromitis, a Hawaiian Paradise Park resident, as she filled up several large jugs. “People are going through it and also preparing.”

She said she felt lucky her home did not sustain serious damage from Lala. However, she said she was heeding warnings to take Moke seriously.

“I’m just stocking up on food and what not, and just riding it out, and then hoping no trees fall on my house,” she said.

Fellow HPP resident Dorian Lovell was also at the spigot. She said her power came back on Tuesday, but she was still working on cleaning up her home, where she also runs a licensed childcare center.

“Our property is basically a wreck, a mess — screens blown off, catchment covers shredded … so (the kids) haven’t been able to come because of the mess, the debris, the water and the loss of two side-by-side fridges stocked of food that all had to get tossed,” she said. “There’s just a lot of damage and loss of work, business, income, food, money and no ability to recoup that.”

She said she was hoping to reopen this coming Monday, but now worries that the incoming weather system could undo recovery progress. She noted the existing strain on Hawaiian Electric, which has been working around the clock to make repairs since Lala.

“I’m really worried because if there are more winds again, power will be out again and we’ll be in the same boat,” she said. “I mean that’s a nightmare, back-to-back. If another storm comes and we have an outage, what is HELCO going to do now?”

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Sylvia Dolena, a Hawaiian Acres resident, said she was still waiting for power to be reconnected at her home since it went out during the storm over the weekend. She said she runs an animal sanctuary through which she cares for over a hundred animals — a task that has been made significantly more challenging without electricity and running water.

“It’s difficult,” she said. “I’m here hauling buckets and buckets of water for the animals.”

She was gearing up for more rain and said she recently bought new tarps at Home Depot to better protect the animals’ kennels.

Up the road in Mountain View, community members have been running a resilience hub in Fern Acres all week. Volunteer Claudia Ziroli said they had distributed food and water to about 250 people a day through the hub’s drive-thru set up, including a Hele-On bus full of passengers.

“I said ‘how many on the bus?’ And we handed them all burritos,” Ziroli said.

She said that she and other volunteers had spent years preparing the resilience hub to support the community during disasters like Lala. She said they are equipped and ready to continue the work with more severe weather in the forecast.

“As long as the storms are going to keep rolling, we’ll be here,” she said.

In Hilo, another community-led effort was underway Friday to collect donations for people in Ka‘u, the region most heavily impacted by Lala.

Stacy Ojana of Hilo was helping to coordinate at the site and said the main concern about the incoming storm was how it could impact already flooded and damaged areas in that part of the island which have not yet had time to recover.

“We live in Hilo, so I’m not too worried about us,” Ojano said. “But they’re already soaked and drenched, so just worried about what’s gonna happen.”

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But Ojano added, people will continue to support each other through it all.

“We just depend on the community… the community is resilient.”

Email Grace Inez Adams at [email protected]