‘It just went boom’: Maui couple watches stream erode home during storm -

IAO VALLEY (HawaiiNewsNow) – A Maui couple says they watched helplessly as fast-rising water in Iao Valley chewed away the ground beneath their home, sending parts of the structure into the stream during the storm.

Homeowners Tom and Carrie Bashaw said they had been monitoring Iao Stream in stormy conditions Friday. They said the force of the water started taking surrounding trees — a sign conditions were quickly getting worse.

“The bunch of trees started falling upriver from us and I’m like, oh my gosh,” said Tom Bashaw.

Bashaw said trees began falling closer to their property, and a large shelf of land between their home and the river started to give way.

“When we lost the mango and monkey pod, we started throwing stuff in bags and packing up,” he said. “Half an hour, 45 minutes later, the river had come all the way up to the edge of the deck of the house, the back deck, which was about 60 feet straight down.”

The couple said they left around 9 p.m. and spent the night in a nearby barn on the property.

When the Bashaws checked the house Saturday morning, the damage was devastating.

“The whole backside of the house was in the river, gone,” Tom Bashaw said. “Food was gone. Both bedrooms gone.

“We just started removing whatever we could salvage. No food, no clothes. Only a few pieces of furniture, tools, and cat food,” he added.

As if that weren’t enough, another section of the home collapsed around noon, just as the Bashaws were finishing their initial check of the property.

“I just went in and grabbed the last thing inside the garage and about two minutes later, we heard the cracking,” he said. “I held my phone up and videotaped it and it just went boom, right into the water.”

Fortunately, no one was hurt.

The couple bought the property in 2018, building a cottage on one end before constructing the main house. They were still putting the finishing touches on it when the stream took it.

“Just working real hard and getting the landscaping and it’s in a very unique place,” Bashaw said.

But now, he added, “it’s gone. That’s the way life is sometimes.”

He said the river typically rises a few times each winter, but they had not seen it threaten the home like this.

“Usually every winter two or three times the river will come up quite a bit. No change. No nothing,” Bashaw said. “So we were never really worried about it because we were 45 feet from the bottom of the river and 60 feet to the river. I mean, it’s a change every time the river comes up.”

Bashaw said they knew this storm would be a major one and tried to leave as soon as it became dangerous.

“We vacated as quick as we could,” he said. “So we’re safe and we got each other.”

The couple said neighbors downriver offered them a cabin to stay in temporarily, and for now they’re trying to figure out their next steps.

“We’re pretty much homeless right now,” Bashaw said.

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