Hurricane Lowell Recovery

When Hurricane Lowell hit Kauaʻi, Anaina Hou Community Park shifted from its daily role as a community park into its emergency role as the Kīlauea Resilience Hub.

Power and water were disrupted across the North Shore. Families needed meals, charging stations, information, volunteer assistance, and help navigating available recovery resources. At the same time, our own campus was dealing with significant storm damage.

We opened anyway.

As the Kīlauea Resilience Hub, Anaina Hou activated alongside KEMA, the American Red Cross, Mālama Kauaʻi, and the island-wide VOAD network. Our emergency generator ran for nearly two weeks, keeping food cold and our commercial kitchen operational. We distributed more than 1,000 prepared meals, supported additional meal production for communities across the North Shore, provided charging access for phones and portable batteries, assisted families with relief intake, and coordinated volunteers and resources to bring assistance directly to impacted households.

Our staff became part of that response. Rather than simply shutting down operations, we redirected employees into community recovery and campus restoration wherever possible. This allowed us to maintain paid hours for many employees while putting our existing team to work where they were most needed. For employees whose hours were reduced, we continued health benefits and helped connect them with unemployment assistance.

For Anaina Hou, community starts at home and extends outward. Taking care of our community also means taking care of the people who make our work possible.

The Cost of Responding

Responding immediately meant using the resources we had without waiting to know whether reimbursement or outside assistance would eventually become available.

In the first two weeks following Hurricane Lowell, the financial impact to Anaina Hou was approximately $100,000 as we responded to community needs, maintained our staff and critical infrastructure, and began restoring our campus.

Those costs came from operating our emergency generator continuously, providing and supporting meal service, maintaining payroll and employee benefits, coordinating volunteers and active recovery cases, conducting outreach and site visits, clearing hazardous trees, repairing electrical infrastructure, and making the campus safe enough to reopen.

At the same time, many of the activities that normally generate the revenue necessary to support Anaina Hou were interrupted or significantly reduced.

That distinction is important. We were spending substantially more to serve the community at the same time we were generating substantially less revenue to sustain the organization.

Our response also did not end after the first two weeks.

Anaina Hou continues to coordinate recovery efforts across the North Shore, with staff working directly with households, volunteers, VOAD partners, and other organizations to address ongoing needs. Our commercial kitchen continues to support community meal production, and our campus remains available as a point of connection for residents needing assistance.

And the Recovery Is Not Over

The approximately $100,000 impact during the first two weeks occurred while the community was still in the early stages of recovery.

We are now looking at a much longer recovery period, with active community cases, continued household needs, ongoing food assistance, staff committed to recovery work, and additional work required on our own campus.

We also estimate approximately $200,000 in physical damage across Anaina Hou Community Park. Based on the nature of the storm and our insurance coverage, we expect that a significant portion of this damage may not be reimbursed. We are pursuing available insurance, disaster assistance, and other recovery resources, but the ultimate level of reimbursement remains uncertain.

Taken together, the immediate response costs and estimated physical damage represent a current financial impact of approximately $300,000 to Anaina Hou Community Park, before accounting for the continuing cost of recovery or the revenue lost during and after the storm.

We were fortunate to have the infrastructure, generator, commercial kitchen, staff, and community partnerships necessary to respond immediately when the North Shore needed them. We put those resources to work without hesitation.

Now, our focus is on continuing that work while making sure the cost of responding does not compromise Anaina Hou's long-term ability to serve the community.

Your support will help replenish resources already committed to the response, sustain the recovery work still underway, restore our campus, and ensure Anaina Hou remains ready to serve the North Shore both every day and when the next emergency occurs.