Wind and rain continued to pummel Oahu on Monday with up to 50 mph gusts.

Conditions eased in the afternoon.

The Honolulu Fire Department responded to 37 wind-related emergencies from 1 p.m. Sunday to 4 p.m. Monday. Most were in Windward Oahu, and most of them centered in Kaneohe and Kailua.

They include 19 blown roofs, seven downed trees and 10 electrical hazards, typically downed power lines and arcing wires. Arcing wires caused a small brush fire in Kahaluu, said fire Capt. David Jenkins.

The cold front that brought the wind and rain to Oahu and Kauai will move down the island chain to Maui County and Hawaii island, the National Weather Service said.

A wind advisory will remain in effect today for Hawaii island and parts of Maui County with gusts of up to 50 mph.

The last of some 13,000 Hawaiian Electric Co. customers without electricity Sunday had their power restored by Monday.

Most of the power was restored by end of Sunday, but some residents in Kaneohe, Kahaluu and Portlock in Hawaii Kai continued to experience intermittent outages, HECO said. Most of those had their power restored by Monday morning, and the remaining Windward customers got power by 2 p.m. Monday.

A HECO spokesman said a couple of outages Monday were resolved fairly quickly.

Judge orders theft suspect to halfway house

A federal judge ordered the release into a halfway house Monday of the chief financial officer of the Kona Youth With a Mission’s University of Nations.

Pablo M. Rivera has been in custody at the Federal Detention Center Honolulu since the FBI arrested him in Kona last week for alleged wire fraud in the theft of more than $1.5 million from the international Christian school.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Kevin S.C. Chang ordered Rivera’s release on a $100,000 unsecured signature bond.

Chang told Rivera that while he is on release at Mahoney Hale, he is prohibited from consuming alcohol, accessing the internet and possessing any mobile communication devices. He also prohibited Rivera from traveling outside Oahu and ordered him to wear a location monitoring device whenever he gets permission to leave the facility.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Nammar told Chang he agrees with the release conditions that the court’s Pretrial Services recommended but that he has concerns about Rivera fleeing to avoid prosecution.

The FBI says when the school reported the alleged theft of between $1.5 million and $2 million last month, the school’s security director also said that Rivera resides in Colorado and was scheduled to travel to Sierra Leone.

Rivera’s lawyer, Lynn Panagakos, told Chang that Rivera is not a flight risk since he is married with two young children, for whom he is the primary caregiver. She said Rivera also has a mother and sister in Connecticut.

Panagakos also told Chang that Rivera hopes to resolve the case before a grand jury indicts him.

MAUI

Missing cat is back home with family after years away

WAILUKU >> A Maui woman has been reunited with her cat that went missing about 15 years ago.

Tori Takayesu received a call last month saying her cat had been found and was at the Maui Humane Society. The female cat, named James, was traced back to the Makawao resident through a number tattooed on her ear when she was spayed at the shelter years ago, The Maui News reported Sunday.

Takayesu said her family had James for only a short time before the animal disappeared in 2001.

“My kids had been looking for her at least a month or two months,” she said. “They were really sad. She didn’t come back. We couldn’t find her anywhere. We didn’t know what happened to her.”

When Takayesu received the Humane Society’s call Jan. 26, she said she wasn’t convinced the cat could be the pet she lost more than a decade ago. It wasn’t until she went to pick up James at the shelter last week that she knew for sure.

“I really didn’t believe it until I laid eyes on her,” Takayesu said. “I did not believe this was my long-lost cat, that they would find her, that she would be in good shape, that she could come back to me. It’s crazy.”

Takayesu was told James was found on a street not far from her family’s home.

Now that James has been reunited with the family, Takayesu said it’s “just like she never left.”

The cat is now 16 years old and weighs about 10 pounds.

“It’s really nice to think someone took care of her for all these years,” Takayesu said. “Clearly, she was taken care of, even if people on the street fed her. And then to have her come back to me is so special.”