HONOLULU (HawaiiNewsNow) – Hundreds of residents on Molokai’s east end are facing nearly a week of daily, eight-hour power cuts as Hawaiian Electric upgrades aging infrastructure, prompting widespread pushback from community members who say the schedule threatens their food supplies and daily safety.
Crews will replace power lines and utility poles with new aluminum conductors along an eight-mile stretch of East Kamehameha V Highway, starting near Onioni Drive and moving eastward toward Ualapue. Hawaiian Electric said the work is the first phase of an effort to harden the island’s electric grid, with a second phase planned next year.
The daily outages are scheduled from Saturday, Oct. 3, through Thursday, Oct. 8, between 8 a.m. and 4 p.m. While physical line replacement spans eight miles, grid connectivity means outages will cut off power to roughly 600 customers across a 23-mile expanse reaching Puu O Hoku Ranch…