Hurricane Lala tore into Hawaii's Big Island on Saturday with 75 mph sustained winds, dropping trees onto power lines, flooding low-lying neighborhoods and knocking out electricity to roughly 24,000 customers by early afternoon.
The National Weather Service placed Hawaii County under a hurricane warning, while Maui, Oahu and Kauai counties were under tropical storm warnings, a step up from the tropical storm watches those islands held just a day earlier as the track solidified.
The county's public notice for the shelters asked evacuees to bring their own bedding, food, water and medications; it did not specify a pet policy, and county officials did not immediately clarify one publicly.
Why "Expected to Make Landfall" and "Not Expected to Make Landfall" Are Both True Saturday's coverage contained a genuine tension worth untangling rather than smoothing over.
Iniki is not a clean comparison to Lala: a different island, a vastly different intensity, and a storm that made an unambiguous landfall rather than the offshore pass Lala appeared to be tracking by midday Saturday.
Hurricane Lala reached Category 1 strength Saturday, cutting power to nearly 24,000 Hawaii County customers and flooding parts of the Big Island in its first serious hurricane threat in 155 years.