What happened
Hurricane Lala struck the Hawaiian Islands on August 15 and 16, 2026, with high winds and heavy rain. By Hawaiian Electric's account, more than 65,700 customers lost power on Hawaii Island alone. Honolulu Civil Beat reported that roughly 6 in 10 Hawaii households lost power, including 190,418 on Oahu. The utility said it lost about 174 of its roughly 60,000 poles on Hawaii Island and that 21 transmission lines were damaged there. In parts of Puna, Kohala and Kau, it warned residents to expect at least two more weeks without power. It completed repairs on Hawaii Island on August 31, about a week ahead of its own estimate.
Three weeks later, Hurricane Lowell hit Kauai overnight on September 7 to 8. The County of Kauai reported the next morning that about 90 percent of the electric cooperative's more than 36,000 customers were without power and should expect prolonged outages. The same county update carried an islandwide water conservation notice and a state brown water advisory, and counted 301 people sheltering at five refuge areas.
Trees, not towers
The single largest cause was not wind loading on utility structures. Hawaiian Electric said more than half of the Hawaii Island outages were caused by invasive albizia and other vegetation. A company vice president called albizia "the No. 1 culprit." Albizia grows fast and breaks easily, and its canopy often spreads well beyond the corridor a utility is permitted to clear. On Kauai, the cooperative's vice-chair told Civil Beat that albizia canopies fall from outside rights-of-way the utility maintains, even though the cooperative has doubled its vegetation work since 2023.
That puts much of the problem on private and public land that the utility does not control. Counties have nuisance-tree ordinances, but Civil Beat reported that many say they have done little to address the problem. A 2026 state bill that would have directly funded hazardous tree management did not pass.
Inside the corridors, the money is set by regulators. Civil Beat reported that Hawaiian Electric spent more than $103 million on vegetation management statewide from 2021 to 2025, and that when the state Public Utilities Commission ruled on its plan in 2024, funding for hazard tree removal was set at $11.1 million against a $32.4 million request.
Hardening follows the last disaster
After the 2023 Lahaina fire, hardening work in Hawaii shifted toward wildfire-prone leeward areas. Civil Beat reported that transmission hardening lagged other parts of the utility's resilience program, and that, according to the utility's own federal progress reports, two Hawaii Island transmission projects, including the Upper Puna line, were still in design as of June. A Hawaiian Electric executive said the company had done little beyond "traditional resilience work" in Puna.
That is not a scandal. It is a trade-off, made openly in regulatory proceedings, between one hazard and another. But residents of the areas left for later rarely know the trade was made until the lights go out. A local environmental advocacy group has asked the Public Utilities Commission to open a formal investigation into the Lala outages, which would allow outside parties to request information and the public to comment. As of Civil Beat's August 23 report, the commission had not announced one.
A power outage is also a water outage
Kauai's experience shows how quickly one failure becomes two. The county's Department of Water warned that outages can affect pumps and wells, so service could be interrupted, or pressure could drop, even at homes with no storm damage. It asked customers to limit water use to essential needs. The electric cooperative said it would restore critical infrastructure and high-density areas first, transmission before distribution.
The people most exposed are the least able to wait. State Representative Greggor Ilagan, whose district includes Puna, spoke of "frustration and urgency, especially for kupuna and families who rely on power for essential medical needs." Hawaiian Electric told reporters it could not "provide specific restoration times for specific neighborhoods." A company executive explained that outages were patchy partly because neighboring homes are often on different circuits.
Why this matters outside Hawaii
Every community served by overhead lines has some version of these conditions: trees on land the utility cannot touch, hardening budgets allocated by the hazard that made the last headline, and drinking water systems that stop when the grid stops. The decisions that govern them are made in rate cases, county ordinances and water utility capital plans, usually with very little public attention.
Questions to ask local officials
| Ask | Who usually answers | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| Which water wells, pumps and lift stations have on-site backup power, and for how many hours? | Water utility, public works | Determines whether a power outage becomes a water outage |
| Who is responsible for hazard trees outside utility corridors near critical lines, and how is it enforced? | County council, planning or code enforcement | Most Lala outages started outside the right-of-way |
| Which feeders serving shelters, hospitals and water facilities have been hardened, and which are still in design? | Electric utility, state utility commission | Shows where restoration will be slowest |
| Is there a published restoration priority list? | Electric utility, emergency management | Lets residents and facilities plan for their place in the queue |
| How are residents who depend on powered medical equipment identified and reached? | Emergency management, health department | The longest outages fall hardest on them |
| Will regulators open a formal, public review after a major outage? | State utility commission | A public docket is how residents learn why specific circuits failed |
Most of these answers end up in front of a state utility commission as a cost recovery question, and that is the point where residents and ratepayer advocates have the most leverage. The brief on what CIP-014-4 changes for substation owners makes the same point about grid security work: the time to understand it is before it arrives in a filing.