Residents of a 41-story condo tower on Ena Road in Waikiki spent days climbing dozens of flights of stairs, carrying food and medication to elderly neighbors, and watching pets die after Tropical Storm Lala knocked out their building's power and its backup generator failed. While nearby properties like the Hilton Hawaiian Village had electricity restored, Canterbury Place remained largely dark, and residents say Hawaiian Electric went stretches without speaking to them at all.
Canterbury Place lost power on August 16, when Tropical Storm Lala tore through Oahu, according to Hawaii News Now. The building's backup generator initially kept a single elevator running for the first 33 hours of the outage, but it broke down Monday afternoon, cutting off both elevator service and water to the building's 151 units. Building general manager Peggy Lebeau said in an email that residents subsequently reported pet deaths, spoiled medication, heat stroke, and people trapped inside their units.
Zander Ross, who lives on the 39th floor, said the outage left residents completely without power or elevator service. He and fellow 39th-floor resident Richard Ervais, both marathon runners, began climbing the stairs repeatedly to check on neighbors who could not manage the trek themselves. Ervais carried food to an elderly couple on the 30th floor and retrieved medication for Pauline Wagnon, a 79-year-old resident on the 35th floor.
An Elderly Resident Overheats in the Lobby
Wagnon became dangerously overheated after making her way down to the lobby, according to the same report. She had earlier climbed the stairs herself to retrieve her pets from her unit. Donna Neilson, who lives on the 36th floor, was among other residents contending with the same stairwell climbs as elevator service disappeared.
Ervais did not mince words about the stakes. “People in the building could die if nothing is done,” he said, per the station's account. Residents told the outlet they understand people across the islands were affected by Lala, but they hope they will not be forgotten as recovery efforts continue elsewhere.
Hawaiian Electric's Silence Frustrates Residents
Canterbury Place residents said they contacted Hawaiian Electric at least nine times without getting clear answers about when power would be restored. Lebeau said in her email that Hawaiian Electric told residents to remain patient, but the utility reportedly left at times without speaking to residents at all and without resetting the building's power. The building has its own Hawaiian Electric substation controlling its supply, and crews from the utility visited that substation on August 18, two days after the outage began, before management connected a new generator that same day, restoring one working elevator.
The scale of the storm's damage helps explain why individual buildings like Canterbury Place faced such long waits. Hawaiian Electric reported that Tropical Storm Lala left approximately 173,900 customers on Oahu and more than 250,000 statewide without power at its peak on August 16. Wind gusts up to 84 mph toppled trees, utility poles, and major transmission lines that form the backbone of Oahu's grid, and the utility requested mutual assistance from mainland partners, with extra crews arriving August 18 to help with repairs. With crews forced to prioritize restoring high-voltage transmission lines serving tens of thousands of customers, buildings with localized substation issues like Canterbury Place faced extended delays.
A Citywide Emergency, and a Vulnerable Tower
The City and County of Honolulu lifted its Tropical Storm Warning for Oahu at 2 p.m. on August 16 as municipal operations shifted toward recovery, even though roughly 117,000 Oahu customers remained without power that afternoon. Governor Josh Green estimated the storm inflicted hundreds of millions of dollars in damage statewide and damaged or destroyed more than 100 homes, according to Civil Beat. Amid that widespread destruction, the Honolulu Police Department and Honolulu Fire Department had issued a public safety advisory urging Oahu residents to avoid using elevators altogether during the storm because of the risk of entrapment during frequent, widespread outages.
That advisory underscores the bind Canterbury Place residents faced: a 1978-built, 40-story tower at 1910 Ala Moana Boulevard relies entirely on mechanical systems for water pumps and elevators, leaving upper-floor residents stranded once both the primary connection and the backup generator failed. Roughly 30% of Waikiki's resident population is 55 or older, according to Civil Beat, a demographic reality that makes extended elevator and power loss in a high-rise like Canterbury Place especially dangerous for older residents unable to climb dozens of flights of stairs.
Not the First Waikiki Outage This Year
The prolonged outage adds to a string of power reliability problems in the neighborhood this year. Hoodline previously reported that a sudden Hawaiian Electric outage on July 1 cut electricity to more than 3,400 Waikiki and Kapahulu customers, and a separate midday blackout on January 19 knocked out power to roughly 1,820 homes and businesses across Waikiki, Kapahulu, and Kapiolani Park. Neither of those earlier outages involved the kind of multi-day elevator and water loss now reported at Canterbury Place.
For Ervais and Ross, the ordeal has come with a financial sting layered on top of the physical strain. The two say they pay nearly $4,000 a month in expenses at the building, even as they spent days helping neighbors who could not climb the stairs themselves. With one elevator now running on the newly connected generator, residents are still watching to see how quickly Hawaiian Electric can fully restore their building's power.
