It’s been a few weeks since my March week of December Adventuring came to an abrupt end, and I though it was time to write about it: on March 20 a Kona low—a cyclone by any other name—brought floods to our small town of Waialua here on the North Shore of O'ahu, forcing us to evacuate by foot through waist-high water. Thankfully, we’re safe, there was no recorded loss-of-life (despite hearing some truly terrifying stories from friends and neighbours), and we’ve personally been very lucky—water didn’t enter our house. That said, many lost their houses, crops, and possessions and, while it starts to look more normal here again, there’s a lot of quiet work rebuilding and reestablishing livelihoods. No one wants to see rain again for a long while.

The community has been amazing, on the day and beyond: Sarah and I were given coffee and breakfast by neighbours and then evacuated, first by a local construction firm in the bucket of a bulldozer, and then by some lads in their jacked truck¹. And seeing everyone contributing to clean up and rebuilding has been amazing—while the state has struggled find its place in all of this, I continue to hear epic tales of the efforts of those living here.

If you’d like to contribute to the disaster relief efforts here, there are many ways you can do so, including Our Hawai'i, the Lāhui Foundation, and Refurnish Waialua. There are also many individual GoFundMe campaigns; here’s a few posted on the wall of Mele Mele, our local coffee shop, if you’d like to donate:

Needless to say, I didn’t take many photos, but here’s a few that capture just a little of our experience…

Our day began, like many, with emergency alerts at about 2am, when we promptly discovered the car sitting in few feet of water.

By the time we decided to leave, the sun was coming up and the beach road past our house had become a river—waist-deep at points, and chest-deep heading the other direction into town.

It was particularly absurd to see the bus stop under water—there was no way we were catching a bus this morning.

By the time we were making our way out of Waialua some hours later, the damage was already incredibly clear, with whole buildings having been washed away at Otake Camp.

Whither plptools?

Needless to say, I wasn’t able to continue my December Adventure work on plptools, and getting back to things has been a slow process. I managed to put together a new proof-of-concept command line—plpbackup—before things ground to a halt:

I’ll be continuing to work on this over the coming weeks and I hope to merge it in the not-too-distant future.