North Shore residents reported that they escaped major damage from gusting wind and torrential rain, but the area from Waialua to Kahalu'u was without power for most of yesterday.

Large, old trees and utility poles toppled, and roofs lost bits and pieces, residents said.

Tree debris littered Kamehameha Highway, impeded traffic and cut off utility services.

With the highway shut in both directions and Kaukonahua Road from Schofield Barracks closed, people who live on the North Shore couldn't get to work in town yesterday morning, and North Shore employees who live in town couldn't get to Hale'iwa.

Kamehameha Highway to Wahiawa finally opened around 11:45 a.m. yesterday.

Kathleen Pahinui said she decided to drive to Honolulu to get food because she couldn't cook or purchase anything in Hale'iwa. All the stores and restaurants were closed, she said.

Speaking from Like Like Drive Inn in Honolulu, Pahinui said, "We're going to get a portable gas grill and a little lantern, so at least next time we're covered."

Susan Matsushima, owner of Alluvion Inc. near Hale'iwa, said the nursery suffered wind damage and lost part of a roof. A shade house was destroyed and plants were scattered, she said.

"It was just horrible," Matsushima said. "Mother Nature, you cannot control."

The outage shut down most Hale'iwa businesses, but residents said some grocery stores were open in the morning. Paalaa Kai Bakery also was open, and people lined up for coffee and pastries.

But even it had to close because everything was sold by late morning, said baker David Oka.

He wasn't looking forward to today.

"It's a little humbug because now I can't work because there's no power so I can't mix (pastry dough) for tomorrow," he said.

Matsumoto Shave Ice wasn't as lucky as Paalaa Kai. It couldn't open because of the power failure, said owner Noriko Matsumoto.

"Every time we have bad weather, the electricity is out," she said. "Only here in the country, and always telephone poles fall."

Antya Miller, executive director of the North Shore Chamber of Commerce, said the loss of power is "ridiculous" and hurts small businesses that can least afford to close for a day.

"It's time for the electric company to start systematically budgeting for undergrounding the main lines," Miller said. "If they would underground, it would be a lot safer, especially with high winds."

Hawaiian Electric Co. has considered undergrounding wires and it must weigh issues in each situation, said spokesman Darren Pai.

WINDWARD FOLKS AWED BY STORM

In all her years in Hawai'i, Kathy Nohr had never seen anything like yesterday's early morning storm.

"It seemed like we were in the middle of a hurricane," said Nohr, who has lived at the Puu Alii condominium complex in Kane'ohe for 17 years.

"The wind was extremely loud," she said, retrieving her mail yesterday afternoon while workers nearby cut a wind-blown tree into pieces. "I was concerned that my patio furniture was going to fly into the glass, so I moved all the potential projectiles inside."

Throughout Kane'ohe, Kailua and Waimanalo, residents talked about the storm yesterday and dealt with its after-effects. Many people were without electricity during the day, and debris, broken branches, uprooted trees and downed Christmas displays bore witness to the high wind.

Summer Jenkins woke up yesterday morning in her Waimanalo home to a washed-out driveway and an outside view that "looked like a bomb went off."

"There were fences, parts of the roof, tree limbs down everywhere," said Jenkins, 31, manager of Naturally Hawaiian Gallery.

Patrick Ching, Naturally Hawaiian's owner and resident artist, found the front of his store flooded and pieces of an art classroom roof missing.

Ching, 45, lives down the road by Shriner's Beach Club and his house is about 40 feet from the ocean. He said the wind and rain that pummeled his house in the past two days were the strongest that he can remember in recent years.

"The storm picked up the ocean and threw it into the house," he said. "It was hard to see where the ocean ended and the rain started."

Back at Puu Alii in Kane'ohe, Robert Agustin, an owner of Hawaii National Landscape Inc., was helping load large chunks of tree trunks and branches into the back of a truck. Agustin said about 15 workers from his company had been dispatched throughout the Kane'ohe area to work on fallen or damaged trees.

"My guys are all over the place today," he said.

Earlier yesterday, workers from the city had come to work on a large tree in front of Puu Alii that fell across Lilipuna Road during the night, pulling several feet of the concrete sidewalk with it.

Many homes in Kailua and Kane'ohe were still without power by midday. Windward Mall was packed with families, and around noontime, about a dozen people had gathered outside Ruby Tuesday waiting for seats.

Kimberly Louis, 42, a mortgage broker who works out of her Kane'ohe home, said her family lost electricity about 1:30 a.m. That meant she had to close her business for the day and will probably have to work on the weekend to make up for the lost hours, she said.

MUDSLIDES, SEWAGE SPILLS STRIKE MAUI

KAHULUI, Maui — Heavy rains and wind on Maui caused a mudslide that endangered residents in the Keokea-Waiohuli area and left a third of Maui without electricity for most of the day.

The mudslide swept across Kula Highway at 1:30 p.m., carried a home in the Waiohuli Hawaiian Homesteads off its foundation and pushed large amounts of debris against two other homes in the remote subdivision, according to county spokeswoman Mahina Martin.

A Maui Fire Department helicopter airlifted two stranded residents from the roof of their home in the homesteads, which is served by unpaved roads.

Two homes on Polipoli Road above Waiohuli also were affected by the torrent of water, mud and debris.

Late yesterday afternoon, the American Red Cross opened shelters at the Kihei and Kula community centers and the Mayor Eddie Tam Memorial Center in Makawao. The latter two shelters were closed as of 9 p.m.

Public schools that were closed yesterday are expected to be open today, according to the Department of Education. However, the three campuses on Lahainaluna Road — Lahainaluna High School, Lahaina Intermediate and Princess Nahi'ena'ena Elementary — are closed today because of a disruption in water service.

Maui Electric Co. restored power to Wailea earlier than expected at 7 p.m. yesterday but suffered another blackout a little more than an hour later, said MECO spokeswoman Kaui Awai-Dickson. It was expected to take hours for MECO crews to uncover the source of the transmission problem and make fixes, she said.

Power also was restored to parts of Kula last night, which had lost electricity before daybreak yesterday, but Awai-Dickson said MECO customers in Upcountry areas who remained without power were likely to stay in the dark until at least this morning.

The lights in South Maui went out at 9:40 a.m. yesterday when the utility lost two transmission lines that feed power from the Ma'alaea Power Plant to customers in Kihei and Wailea. One line was lost due to eight downed poles, and insulators failed on the second line, Awai-Dickson said.

The Department of Water Supply reported that some areas of West Maui in Napili and Lahaina were without water, and that the Lahaina Water Treatment Facility was unable to filter water because of a blocked intake at Kanaha Stream.

Consumers in West Maui were being asked to use water only as needed for health and safety purposes to extend the supply available in the storage tanks.

Martin said a water tanker will be located at Niheu Place in the Kelawea Mauka subdivision for residents to fill their own containers.

A water tanker also will be available to Kula residents on Crater Road above the 3,800-foot elevation who were without water because of a pump failure. The tanker will be at the department's Haleakala Acres tank off Crater Road.

Another tanker will be stationed at the Waiohuli tank on Polipoli Road for those affected by a broken 8-inch water main at Kawehi Place in Kula.

The Department of Environmental Management reported weather-related sewage spills at wastewater facilities in Lahaina, Kahului and Napili.

The Lahaina spill was contained in a gated access area on the makai side of the highway known as the North Beach parking area, Martin said. An overflow at the Kahului plant sent 1,500 gallons of wastewater onto the roadway outside the facility.

Officials are unsure of the amount of wastewater that overflowed into the ocean at Pohaku Park, known as "S Turns," because of a broken air relief valve at Napili Pump Station No. 2, Martin said. The state Department of Health posted warning signs to advise swimmers and surfers to stay out of the water.

KONA BEARS BRUNT OF WINDY WEATHER

Hawai'i County Mayor Harry Kim yesterday signed a county emergency proclamation in response to the winter storm as flooding closed some Kona highways, and winds and fallen trees caused an array of problems for the Big Island power company.

"We're having a lot of trouble mainly in the Kona side," said Rhea Nakaya, spokeswoman for Hawaii Electric Light Co., yesterday afternoon. "We have been receiving reports of very heavy rain in the area."

Flooding prompted the closure of Ali'i Drive from the Palani Road area to Hualalai Road intersection about 5:15 p.m. in the middle of the Kailua, Kona rush hour, and a section of Old Mamalahoa Highway in North Kona was also closed.

A section of Hawai'i Belt Road or Highway 11 between Punalu'u and the 60-mile marker in Na'alehu was closed at 9:40 p.m. because of flooding, Hawai'i County Civil Defense said.

Kim's proclamation cited the widespread power outages and the risk of high winds, high surf and flooding.

Nakaya said officials at HELCO were particularly concerned about reports of lightning late yesterday afternoon because repair crews cannot work in a lightning storm.

Crews were working yesterday afternoon to restore service to about 3,500 customers in three areas on the Kona side.

About 1,450 customers were without electricity in Kailua, Kona, from the beginning of Ali'i Drive to Royal Poinciana Drive; an outage in Kaloko Mauka affected another 1,500 homes and businesses; and another in the Honaunau area affected about 500 more, Nakaya said.

Trees falling on a transmission line also in the Glenwood area also cut service to about 2,600 customers for about an hour this afternoon, she said. She said crews were also working on "pocket outages" in other areas of the island, including some who lost power on Tuesday.

For the 24-hour period ending at 8 p.m. yesterday, the heaviest rainfall in the state was recorded at Kapapala Ranch in Ka'u, where 8.13 inches were recorded. The Pali 2 rain gauge in the Ka'u Desert south of the Kilauea Crater recorded 4.58 inches during the same period.

A barge-type platform used to load passengers and serve vessels in Kailua, Kona, broke its moorings in the high surf yesterday morning and became stuck on rocks in the harbor, according to Big Island Civil Defense staff officer Duane Hosaka.

The high surf also prompted harbor officials to close the Kailua pier about 9:15 a.m. yesterday, Hosaka said.

In Puna, the charter school Kua O Ka La at Pohoiki was closed for the day, but all other public schools remained open.

A downed power line closed one lane of the Akone Pule Highway this morning near the 23 mile marker, but the problem had been cleared by mid-morning.

At Hawai'i Volcanoes National Park, hazardous storm conditions including heavy rain and ponding on roads, fog and wind gusts of more than 50 mph prompted the park to close the summit of Mauna Loa and all other backcountry trails and campsites.

A flash flood watch remained in effect for the Big Island through this afternoon, and civil defense officials were advising travelers to avoid the summit areas of Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa because blizzard conditions are expected at the high elevations there later today.