Maui flood victims never got warning call
By Christie Wilson
Neighbor Island Editor
WAIEHU, Maui — Alex Lessin was alarmed enough about the rising stream rushing across the road to his Upper Waiehu home late Saturday afternoon that he called his dinner guests to warn them not to try to cross the gully.
Christie Wilson • The Honolulu Advertiser
But he wasn't able to reach everyone, and by the end of the evening, three people were dead after a Jeep Cherokee was swept downstream.
Kola Axton pauses to reflect after erecting a memorial on Malaihi Road for the three victims of Saturday's flash flood. Axton knew two of them, women who had come from California for a New Age seminar.
Maui police identified them as Jim Elliott of Upper Waiehu, driving the Cherokee, and front-seat passengers Anthea Bond, 42, of Los Angeles, and Claudia Lenore, 51, of Santa Cruz, Calif.
Two people in the back seat managed to clamber out of the car after it was tossed upside-down. Dr. Harold
Kornylak, an osteopath from Virginia Beach, Va., and Jacqueline Field, who shares a home with Lessin and his, wife Janet, were spared.
Residents of the Malaihi Road neighborhood at the foot of the West Maui Mountains questioned yesterday whether Wailuku Agribusiness, which owns the watershed area above Waiehu, might have diverted or released water overflowing from its distribution system, causing Saturday's flash flood at Kope Gulch.
"Absolutely not. There's no way we would have been able to divert that volume of water down into the gulch," said Wailuku Ag President Avery Chumbley, a state senator.
He said the tragedy resulted from massive sheeting of rain water from the upper mountain areas.
Tantra yoga retreat
The Lessins and others were holding a gathering to mark the end of an intensive 10-day tantra yoga instructor training by New Age figures Charles and Caroline Muir at the Hale Akua Shangri-la retreat in Ha'iku.
Bond, Lenore and Kornylak had all taken part in the seminar and were driving on the muddy road in two cars, about four miles up from Kahekili Highway, when they were confronted with the rising stream at about 5 p.m. Saturday.
Ahead of them, Charles Muir had plowed through in his Mercury Sable."I started to flounder, and water was rushing over the front of the car up to the windshield, but I managed to make it across," Muir said.
Then Kornylak drove his rental sedan into the water, but reversed after the stream rushed over the hood.
Field, 53, who was in her own car watching the others, said she called neighbor Jim Elliott on her cell phone to see if he could ferry the group across in his four-wheel-drive Cherokee.
Elliott forded the short concrete gully crossing without any trouble and turned around to load up the four passengers.
By the time they were ready to head back, the water had risen considerably.
"Jim's been here 20 years, and he thought he could get across it," Field said.
Kornylak said, "We got about two-thirds of the way across and the front end of the Cherokee started going downstream. It got going pretty fast. The current was very intense and we bounced on a big boulder.... The car started to flip over."
Field said Elliott called out, "We have to get out of the car."
The vehicle was thrown upside-down about 50 yards from the crossing. The water slammed Kornylak's door opened and he pulled Field out.
Then she was swept away.
"The river grabs me and I'm gone," Field said. "I'm underwater from then on, crashing into rocks ... and I knew I was just about out of air, so I thought to myself, 'Dear God, if it's not my time to go, please help me.' ''
At that moment she grasped a stalk of cane grass and found footing on a flat rock. Crawling up onto dry land, she said a prayer for the others.
The river had ripped away most of her clothing. Field heard voices and cried out for help, and a man who found her gave her a T-shirt to put on.
"I feel I had a prayer answered. It was pretty miraculous," Field said.
'A helpful neighbor'
There would be no miracle for Bond, Lenore and Elliott, whose bodies were recovered downstream near Maluhia Church at the Waiehu shoreline.
After a visit to Maui Memorial Medical Center yesterday, Field joined a group of 20 for a prayer service at three white wooden crosses erected at Kope Gulch as a memorial.
Alex Lessin called Elliott "a helpful neighbor" who was a massage therapist and played in a band. Janet Lessin said he was "one of the best fathers in the world. I've never seen anyone so devoted to their children."
Elliott and his wife, Sandy Shiner, have two sons, ages 14 and 17.
Lenore was a massage therapist and writer with daughters 21 and 18 years old.
Santa Cruz friend Lynn Harrison said Lenore had been to Maui over a dozen times to take tantra yoga training.
"A lot of people loved her," Harrison said. "She was very outgoing, bold and strong."
Muir said Lenore was experiencing the "freedom we get when parenting ends and we can be friends with our children. It was the happiest time of her life."
Bond, originally from Australia, was a massage therapist.
The weather service said there was no flash flood warning in effect at the time of the tragedy.
