Mud, flooding close some lanes of H-1 freeway, Dillingham Boulevard
GOAKAMAI.ORG
Crews cleaned up Dillingham Boulevard at Middle Street after overnight flooding sent mud and debris over the road.
GOAKAMAI.ORG Traffic backed up on Nimitz Highway because of the closure of Dillingham Boulevard this morning.
CRAIG T. KOJIMA / CKOJIMA@STARADVERTISER.COM
Crews prepared to remove a tree trunk from Dillingham Boulevard after debris and mud overflowed over a bridge over Kalihi Stream overnight.
Mud, water and debris, including tree trunks, covered part of the H-1 freeway and Dillingham Boulevard near Middle Street, creating a traffic nightmare for morning commuters on Oahu.
State crews were able to reopen a couple of Ewa-bound lanes of H-1 freeway at School Street just after 5:30 a.m. and Koko Head-bound lanes at about 2 a.m., but a couple of Ewa-bound lanes remained flooded and closed and that backed up traffic to Kaimuki during the peak of the commute.
At 9:30 a.m., the right lane of the freeway was still closed, but traffic, while heavy, was mostly moving smoothly.
Traffic remained congested in Kalihi around Dillingham Boulevard as crews continued to clear mud and debris from Dillingham Boulevard.
Water, mud and debris sent over a bridge over Kalihi Stream at about 11 p.m., creating a flooded, muddy mess.
Dillingham Boulevard remained closed in both directions at Middle Street this morning. The Dillingham Boulevard and Middle Street off-ramps are closed at the viaduct and all eastbound traffic will have to take Nimitz Highway or continue on H1 eastbound. they said.
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All makai-bound traffic on Middle Street must turn right onto the H1 west or onto Nimitz Highway beneath the viaduct, and all westbound traffic on Dillingham Boulevard and Kamehameha Highway will be forced to U-turn near Marukai.
After passing the islands Sunday evening, Darby dumped heavy rain on Oahu, causing heavy flooding that closed the freeway near School Street in both directions at about 11:30 p.m.
24 responses to “Mud, flooding close some lanes of H-1 freeway, Dillingham Boulevard”
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What doesn’t cause a massive traffic jam on the H1?
It should not take this long to clear debris from the roadway.
It’s mud.
I guess you didn’t see it all…
What blocked the Kalihi Stream and overflow on to Dillingham and Middle Street? How’s the Mapunapuna drainage?
Didn’t I just hear an ad for Caldwell on the radio, saying how great the City is being managed? And yet, we can’t even keep our freeway from becoming flooded and useless during a heavy rain, let alone our side streets.
Dude your so quick to blame. The freeways are owned by the state, and you cannot control the amount of rain and location. Bro…do your homework before you mouth-off.
hehehe, that’s right….
The debris that spilled onto the freeway is city managed!
Storm-water management (or mismanagement, in this case) is a crucial responsibility of the City — although, as we can see from this article, it may affect State property as well as City property (or private property too). So this IS a black mark against the City. But I would also agree that the State government is scrəwed up too (including the State’s redundant and equally incompetent storm-water management program). I did not include the State in my initial post because I did not recently hear a radio ad for Gov. Ige crowing about what a great job he is doing, like I did with Caldwell.
Ige isn’t running for office this election year, that’s probably why you don’t hear anything from him. But give it time. I agree with you that the State is no better off in managing our crucial facilities such as our highways.
All the debris I saw all came from upstream from the mountains….
Actually this problem has been known for a long time that drainage on Oahu, especially near major roads and freeways are inadequate to handle any heavy downpour. The City of Honolulu coukd have spent momey on a long term project of underground water catchment and collection system similar to Tokyo and hire City workers to make sure there are no exposed dirt formations along freeways and highways which should have been covered by a thick layer of grass which stabilizes the area from the heavy dirt and mud runofff during a heavy rain. Honokulu could have spent the the effort and resources to protect Oahu from heavy rains that literally paralyze all of Honolulu, Including almost guarantee power outages because HECO does not spend any money from their profits to help protect the electrical system from heavy rains and the resulting floods. Instead we had Mufi, Kirk and the rest invest all of Oahu taxpayer funds and resources on a train to nowhere that would have been comletely useless because during heavy rains and storms Oahu electricity is unreliable and the electric train would stall and have to be shut down. This has been a pattern similar to how Mufi ignored the failing Oahu sewage system and instead started the uselss train project until shatz hit the fan and Oahu ended up with a 48 MILION gallon raw sewage spilll. So you can claim Kirk had nothing to do with these rain induced problems, however not preparing for more mundane things like sewage and heavy rains, which will become more frequent with man made global climate change IS a fault of Kirk and the rest of our political leaders who base decisions on what is best for special interest and making the most $$$$$$$. It is not profitable for special interest to focus our local government on things like sewage or handling heavy rains with an underground catchment system and minimizing contruction and exposure of exposed dirt areas that will cause mud slides onto roads and into our oceans.
sad, but all very accurate…
too much rain at one time..no can help..too much ding dongs driving during a tropical storm..no can help the ding dongs
totally agree !!
Don’t be too quick to judge, many of these people who were at work serving you, keeping you safe. Some of them might be making sure loved ones are safe and their property is not getting flooded. Some are ding dongs but not all.
i’m talking about the ding dongs that shouldn’t have been on the road driving during a tropical storm..the mayor said to stay home..but these ding dongs don’t listen..good for them for getting stuck in traffic
Nope all the people I talked to that got stuck or stranded didn’t need to be out there….every single one if them…
I have to agree. Both he mayor and the police asked us to “just stay home” but unfortunately people don’t listen and insist on getting on the highway business as usual in a circumstance like a TS passing Oahu.
…… But here we are 18 hours later and H1 Ewa bound is a total mess and when I drove by this morning there was one (1) pumper truck trying to do the job and as of noon today all west bound traffic is still bumper to bumper from Vineyard westward. Honolulu has become a top tier US city but our transportation infrastructure is still second or third tier. Like when the zip mobile predictably broke down and we had to go to the mainland for a replacement part and all of the chaos that created. We need to take some lessons from larger mainland cities and invest some capital in making our very overloaded infrastructure more resilient, and have better contingency plans to deal with the inevitable disruptions….
I always wonder why we don’t adopt more ideas, practices and policies that mainland states have success with. What inevitably happens is someone will reply with “THIS AIN’T DA MAINLAND” or to “move if you don’t like it” and so we continue to live with and ignore potentially solvable problems here.
You forgot to mention that the reason under Mufi as mayor and Kirk as managing director that Oahu had a 48 MILLION raw gallon sewage spill was NOT because the Ala Wai force main was already deteriorated to the point of failure prior to Mufi but the fact was in order to repair the Ala force main break, Mufi and Kirk had to wait days before specialized parts to come from the mainland to create a bypass where the ala main broke. One year PRIOR Mufi was summoned to the EPA office in San Francisco and in his “action plan” he presented to the EPA and the public he said he would focus on “spill mitigation”. In was only AFTER the Ala Wai force main broke did Kirk AND Mufi with his wastewater staff figure out they did not have the proper fittings to create a bypass because many of the older force mains on Oahu was of varying diameters and the special “adapter” fittings needed to be shipped from the mainland. What should have been a repair that took a few hours resulting in thousands of gallons of raw sewage released off Honolulu turned into a multi day delay resulting in a 48 MILLION gallon raw sewage release. You see the pattern of how ill-prepared and lack of adequate resources of sewage mitigation is handled in a similar way of how mud cleanup after this current heavy rainfall. Cause and effect: The more ongoing construction to expose more dirt and exposed tracts of land, the decrease in open areas like large ag lands that reduce the amount of water that can be absorbed by the ground, the lack of an sewage and draining system that CANNOT handle heavy rains on Oahu and you have the recipe for infrastructure disaster in the very near future But no worries you will have $20 BILLION train to nowhere on Oahu that will be useless because during the heaviest of rain and flooding electricity is unreliable and the sheer amount of rain poring down on the train track with all of the exposed electrical and electrified components that power the Oahu train might end up with short circuits or a danger to everyone or rides or works on the train. In a similar heavy rain like yesterday, if the train fails and people are stuck between stops, keeping the train and the tracks energized while people are trying to escape from the stalled train would be dicey at best. Also when the tracks are complete covered in water during a heavy rain, the coefficient of friction between the steel wheels and steel track would be so greatly reduced, they would have to run the train really slow because stopping distance at higher speeds would be greatly increased AND forgot having spurs of the train go to central Oahu because questionable if the train to safely go up or down the required incline/decline to make it to Waipio, Mililani and Wahiawa.
The “homeless” have become homeless once again.
At least their mobile residencies, have been thoroughly washed clean.
Come to thing if it, all of them have had their longest combined baths & showers.
At least they will smell bette with a shade of brown for their color of the day.
Really? You’re gloating over people’s suffering? You’re such a prize of the human race.