Loading ...Red Cross opened shelters at Pahoa Village and further up the road at Kea’au. Salvation Army is feeding the people in the shelters, and they tell us they are providing about 300 meals, three times a day, for the shelters. Of the 1800 or so residents evacuated, maybe 350 are in the Pahoa shelter, with another couple dozen at Kea’au. There’s lots of community support, with donations of all kinds of basics, food, clothing, diapers coming in to the Red Cross resource manager at Pahoa. This morning’s news says about 500 people in shelters now, and the State is making plans to open more shelters.
Lots of refugees have gone to stay with other family elsewhere on the island. Some have gone off-island or back to the mainland if they have the resources or family elsewhere. So far it is just the Leilani Estates area that is evacuated. There is concern that the roads to lower Puna and the whole south shore area may need to be evacuated if all the roads are cut off and they are landlocked. The governor has said that such an evacuation would be beyond the State’s capacity to take care of that many people