It took seven days after the March 11, 2011, tsunami for the Kona Inn Restaurant to regain power.
It took seven days after the March 11, 2011, tsunami for the Kona Inn Restaurant to regain power.
On the eighth day, the restaurant reopened, General Manager Stephen Falcinella said.
“We worked from sunrise to sunset,” he said. “We had a quiet opening on Friday. We were busier Saturday, and Sunday we were full-bore.”
Repairs weren’t completed then. In fact, he said, repairs are still ongoing, even a year later, as employees occasionally discover something rusted in the wall or other damage.
The morning of the tsunami, tables and chairs, normally arranged in neat rows on the oceanfront lanai dining room, were piled on top of each other in the restaurant’s southwestern corner. Equipment in the center of the room was ripped from the wall. Today, the restaurant has resumed its former appearance, Falcinella said.
Another restaurant he manages, Kona Canoe Club, opened 18 days after the tsunami and a day after its power was restored. Falcinella estimated the damage to the restaurants at about $100,000. The closures came during the busy season, which caused additional financial losses, he added.
Up the street, a sign bearing the British phrase, “Keep Calm and Carry On” hangs in the Cindy Coats’ gallery. The red finish is scratched and Coats said she still sometimes finds a bit of sand clinging to it. It was one of the few items salvaged from the shop, which fronts Alii Drive, just across from Kailua Pier and King Kamehameha’s Kona Beach Hotel. The store’s walls and windows — and all her inventory — were destroyed.
It took a few days before the full impact of her loss hit. And then she had to figure out how to rebuild her collection.
“I had never started from scratch before,” Coats said.
In the days following the tsunami, Coats received hundreds of emails from people all around the world, people who had purchased some of her art, even years before. They wanted to know if she was OK.
She reopened in July.
“It was a disaster, but it wasn’t a tragedy,” Coats said. “It truly was just stuff.”
Damage at Hulihee Palace, particularly to artifacts previously stored in the palace’s basement, prompted the Daughters of Hawaii to implement new policies to prevent future tsunamis from destroying the palace’s collections, Fourth Vice Regent Lolly Davis said.
“We’re not putting collections that can be damaged down there (anymore),” Davis said.
The waves caused about $140,000 in damage to the grounds, Kiope Pond, the Kuakini Building, the caretaker’s cottage, gift shop and the palace’s basement. The Daughters of Hawaii is asking the state to pay for the pond repairs, because the state owns the pond, Davis said. The group is also seeking about $400,000 in Federal Emergency Management Agency reimbursement because of the damage and destroyed artifacts.
Farther north, the waves damaged just two of the Big Island’s coastal resorts, the Four Seasons Hualalai and Kona Village Resort. Attempts to reach Kona Village Resort CEO Patrick Fitzgerald were unsuccessful this week. Fitzgerald previously told West Hawaii Today damage at the property reached into the tens of millions of dollars and he didn’t anticipate the resort would reopen before 2013.
The neighboring resort, the Four Seasons Hualalai, closed for six weeks after the waves struck.
Looking makai from roughly mid-property, General Manager Robert Whitfield pointed to what was the high-water line during the tsunami, maybe a few hundred feet inland.
“We were really very lucky,” Whitfield said. “Most of the damage was somewhat superficial.”
That damage included water washing beneath several seaside bungalows and into two restaurants, furniture and saltwater deposited in a man-made snorkeling pond, and plants killed by salt water. The plant loss was the most visible damage to the resort, Whitfield said. An ocean-side sidewalk was undermined by the waves, as well.
He declined to say how much the damage cost the resort.
During the closure, Four Seasons officials kicked into high gear, designing and replacing a pool in one of the areas, called crescents. The pool, with a swim-up bar, gives swimmers an ocean view. The redesign began with the resort’s shoreline surveys, which helped designers keep construction mauka of the shoreline.
“We’re extra sensitive to that,” he said. “We do not want to jeopardize, in any way, the understanding of what the boundaries are and what we can and can’t do.”
Whitfield said while he wouldn’t want to go through another tsunami any time soon, the waves gave the resort an opportunity to update the property without disturbing guests.
Hawaii County officials last year announced property owners repairing tsunami damage could begin doing so before building permits were issued. Whitfield said the mayor and planning director were “incredibly responsive” to the resort as it completed the repairs.
Whitfield said the resort kept its employees working during the closure and took on about a dozen workers from the Kona Village Resort, which remains closed.
“It’s always about the people and how people respond,” he said. “Our staff was magnificent.”
In Kailua-Kona, King Kamehameha’s Kona Beach Hotel paid about $8 million to complete repairs around the property, Sales Director Deanna Isbister said. Work was done in September, meeting the hotel’s goal of being ready for October’s Ford Ironman World Championships.