An unusual collaboration between meteorologists and a Hawaiian-language professor has cast fresh light on an old disaster.
A major hurricane struck Hawaii island and Maui on Aug. 9, 1871, and caused widespread destruction from Hilo to Lahaina.
Key to the findings was a program to translate Hawaiian-language newspapers into a searchable English database, the University of Hawaii said in a recent release.
The storm of 1871 was known from ship logs and English newspaper reports, but the Hawaiian-language newspapers added significant new information, allowing the team to document the intensity and track of the storm for the first time, UH said.
From 1834 to 1948 more than a hundred independent newspapers were printed in Hawaiian. This newspaper archive comprises more than 1 million typescript pages of text — the largest native-language collection in the Western Hemisphere.
A team led by Puakea Nogelmeier, professor of Hawaiian language at UH Manoa, has worked for years to convert Hawaiian-language newspapers to a word-searchable digital format that is publicly available.
Steven Businger and Thomas Schroeder, professors in the UH-Manoa School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology, worked with Nogelmeier and his graduate students to extend translation research in the Hawaiian-language papers, looking specifically for geophysical stories, including the hurricane of 1871.
What they found in the translations was a timeline of the storm and detailed descriptions of the destruction. One account says that “there were 28 houses blown clean away and many more partially destroyed. There is hardly a tree or bush of any kind standing in the valley.” Another mentions “the wooden houses of the residents here in Hawai‘i were knocked down.”
The existence of such a powerful hurricane, uncovered in the historical record, more clearly defines the hurricane risk faced by the people of Hawaii today, the scientists said.
“Puakea’s vision has helped conserve Hawaiian language of the past and is opening a window on the historical record that has been long overlooked in Hawaii,” said Businger, lead author of the study and professor of atmospheric sciences. Businger and the Joint Institute for Marine and Atmospheric Research continue to support the effort to search Hawaiian-language newspapers for articles relating to floods, droughts, high surf, storms, landslides, earthquakes, tsunamis and volcanic eruptions.
