People stuck in elevators, traffic gridlock: Power outage triggers chaos in busy business district

HONOLULU (HawaiiNewsNow) – The Downtown Honolulu power failure Thursday struck the center of Hawaii commerce and government, shutting down federal and state offices, courts and the work of thousands of office employees. It also created massive traffic jams as people left those buildings for home.

With traffic lights out from Punchbowl to Chinatown and between Nimitz and Beretania, security workers from the City Financial Tower — which did not lose power — coordinated chaotic car and pedestrian traffic.

At other intersections, police officers jumped in to keep things moving.

Emergency responders were called to Century Square at Bishop and Beretania for people stuck in an elevator.

The same thing happened to Mike Kawaharada in his building at Tamarind Square.

“That was when it first went out. I got stuck halfway up the building,” he said.

“Pretty scary — the elevator just went boom and stopped and it went black.”

The scare lasted only a few minutes, until back-up power brought the elevator safely down, although he was frustrated he couldn’t finish his work.

The experience was different from building to building. Some had lights but no internet. Others had nothing, like a group of state workers who work at the Kamamalu Building on Richards Street.

Paula Davis said the building was dark and elevators were not working. She and coworkers were headed home.

Hawaiian Electric spokesperson Darren Pai apologized for the inconvenience to about 900 customers, a figure that didn’t encapsulate the full scope of the disruption because many highrises are considered a single customer even if many thousands are employed or live there.

“We realize this is a huge disruption to our customers — to Downtown, to that entire commercial district, so our crews are out there working as quickly as possible,” Pai said.

The pre-lunch timing was particularly bad for many food outlets. Without power for credit card readers, some switched to cash only. But for some like Ernesto Limcaco at Prime Roast Café, there was a big financial issue.

“Certainly, certainly, we had parties booked up, catering stuff like that. But what are you going to do?”

Pai, with Hawaii Electric, said customers have 30 days from the date of an outage to file a claim, which will be evaluated case by case. He said he couldn’t say immediately what kinds of claims were usually qualified.

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