As waters in Hawaii rise from Olivia, typhoon nears Philippines

Associated Press

Hurricane Florence might be the big newsmaker in weather stories lately, but Mother Nature hasn’t short-changed other areas outside the storm’s path.

OLIVIA

In Hawaii, Honolulu officials said a dam holding 21 million gallons of water was not in danger of collapsing Thursday, but still warned nearly 10,000 residents downstream that they might need to evacuate after a tropical storm caused water levels to rise in the reservoir.

Water levels in the dam rose 4 to 5 feet overnight as heavy rains from Tropical Storm Olivia dumped 7.3 inches of rain in the area. Meteorologists downgraded the storm to a tropical depression as it moved away from the islands, but warned lingering moisture could bring more rain.

The Board of Water Supply, the agency that manages the dam, said plans call for a mandatory evacuation if the water reaches 1 foot under the top of the dam.

Ernie Lau, chief engineer for the Board of Water Supply, said workers began siphoning water away from the dam before Olivia reached the islands. But these efforts were unable to keep pace with the rain that fell during the storm. On Thursday morning, Lau decided to begin pumping water out of the dam with the help of Honolulu firefighters.

The storm, which was a hurricane earlier in the week, slowly weakened as it neared the state.

Mangkhut

Philippine authorities were evacuating thousands of people from the path of the most powerful typhoon this year, closing schools, readying bulldozers for landslides and placing rescuers and troops on full alert in the country’s north.

More than 4 million people live in areas at most risk from the storm, which the Joint Typhoon Warning Center in Hawaii categorized as a super typhoon with powerful winds and gusts equivalent to a category 5 Atlantic hurricane.

Typhoon Mangkhut is on course to hit northeastern Cagayan province early Saturday. It was tracked today about 250 miles away in the Pacific with sustained winds of 127 miles per hour and gusts of up to 158 mph, Philippine forecasters said.

With a massive raincloud band 560 miles wide, combined with seasonal monsoon rains, the typhoon could bring heavy to intense rains that could set off landslides and flash floods, the forecasters said.

MARIA

In the aftermath of Hurricane Maria a year ago, the clock began ticking late last month for hundreds of Puerto Rican evacuees who rely on federal assistance to pay for hotel rooms.

A federal judge in Massachusetts set today as the deadline for the vouchers to end after denying an effort to force FEMA to continue the program. The ruling by U.S. District Judge Timothy Hillman, who expressed anguish over his decision, ended almost three months of legal challenges and extensions.

As of Tuesday, there were more than 600 families using the vouchers on the mainland, with more than half of those families in Florida. Almost 400 families were using the vouchers on the island.

FEMA hasn’t done enough for the evacuees, forcing local governments and organizations to step up, advocates say.