A 74-year-old Kalaheo man reported missing as Hurricane Lowell battered Kauai was found dead Wednesday along the ocean shoreline fronting Nomilu Fishpond, after a day-long search that stretched across the island's storm-ravaged south shore. He was located around 12:45 p.m. Wednesday, and officials believe his death was connected to storm surge generated by the hurricane.
According to Hawaii News Now, first responders received a report of a missing person near Nomilu Fishpond on Tuesday, as the storm was still pounding the island. The Kauai Police Department, Kauai Fire Department, and the state Department of Land and Natural Resources all searched the area that day, but crews were unable to find the man before nightfall. The search resumed and ended the next day when he was found dead along the shoreline. Foul play is not suspected, and an autopsy is pending to determine the exact cause of death, though officials believe the death was related to storm surge from Hurricane Lowell.
A Second Storm-Related Death in Hawaii
The Kalaheo man's death marks the second fatality linked to Hurricane Lowell across the state. Hawaii Governor Josh Green had confirmed a day earlier that the storm caused another death on Oahu, when a falling tree trunk struck a man's tent in Waimānalo. Neither death came from a direct hurricane landfall — Lowell passed west of Kauai without making landfall, but its outer bands still produced wind gusts over 80 mph, heavy rainfall, and the kind of storm surge that proved fatal on two separate islands.
Nomilu Fishpond itself carries a history of vulnerability to exactly this kind of hazard. The 20-acre saltwater lake sits inside a volcanic cinder cone near Kalaheo and has been stewarded by the Pālama family for more than a century, now operated by Kauaʻi Sea Farms, which restores native marine habitats while farming hard-shell clams, sea cucumbers, and seaweed there, according to NOAA Fisheries. The pond relies on tidal channels and freshwater springs cut into the crater wall to exchange water with the open ocean. Those same channels were choked with debris and left stagnant for more than two decades after Hurricane Iniki's storm surge tore through in 1992, as reported by Honolulu Civil Beat.
Widespread Damage Along Kauai's South Shore
The area around Nomilu Fishpond was hardly the only part of Kauai's south shore left battered by Lowell. Ocean surge and fierce winds destroyed several vessels at Port Allen small boat harbor, flooded Hanapēpē Stadium, and closed sections of Kaumualiʻi Highway near Kalaheo, per The Guardian, which noted emergency officials were tracking nearly 200 active hazard reports across the island. Ahead of the storm's peak, the County of Kauaʻi had opened five emergency refuges, including the Kalāheo Neighborhood Center in the missing man's own hometown, which together housed 301 residents and 38 pets overnight as officials designated the shelters as a last resort and urged people to stay off the roads.
The Kauaʻi Emergency Management Agency has since instructed residents to document property damage through official online forms while maintaining islandwide brown-water advisories, warning of bacterial contamination in coastal waters after heavy runoff. Power losses compounded the chaos: the storm knocked out electricity to roughly 33,000 of the 36,000 accounts served by the Kauaʻi Island Utility Cooperative, leaving about 90% of the island dark during the same overnight hours when the man went missing. As of Thursday, only 25% of Kauai customers had power restored, prompting Hawaiian Electric and Southern California Edison to send repair crews and equipment to the island by barge, with off-island crews prioritizing hospitals before tackling the broader grid.
Damage Rippled Across the Neighbor Islands
Lowell's reach extended well beyond Kauai. The storm's swells disabled Kaumālapaʻu Harbor, Lānaʻi's only commercial port, interrupting food and fuel deliveries for the island's 3,400 residents. Heavy rainfall and surge also forced four schools in West Maui to close and buried coastal roads along Honoapiʻilani Highway and in Kīhei under sand and debris. Those impacts came even though the storm never made direct landfall anywhere in the state, underscoring how far its wind field and ocean swell reached across the island chain.
