A Hawaii homeowner is lucky to be alive after a five-foot boulder bludgeoned its way through her home on January 28. The boulder crashed through her living room and landed in a bedroom, missing Caroline Sasaki by inches. The scary moment was captured on video from inside the home.
According to KHON 2, Sasaki and her family just moved back into their recently rebuilt home a week ago, and now she is finding it hard to sleep. "Today, I am a little better, but last night, I was very shaken. I really didn't know what happened except for the loud boom," Sasaki told the outlet.
Sasaki grew up in the area, and she and other longtime residents said that boulders coming down off the hill are not uncommon. However, a new development carving out the mountainside behind their homes is concerning.
"We lived in this same location. We just knocked down the old house and rebuilt it, and it's never happened before, heavy rain and hurricane warnings, nothing. So, no rocks ever came down," Sasaki said. "We've had some issues with them carving the mountain, and I don't know if that's the cause."
However, the development's owner, Bingning Li, disagrees. He told KHON that it was not connected.
"Not at all, this is from way above, I looked at one of those rocks about 50 feet away from on top of the property and landed over there and then made its way down here," Li said. "So it hit one of the cables that was supposed to stop it, and the cable snapped. That took a lot of energy away otherwise, this damage would be way more." Though, he is willing to have the project inspected and reinforce the barrier wall. But area residents are concerned that isn't enough.
Sasaki said to KHON, "Department of permitting and planning, the Department of Emergency Management, the mayor, the councilman, they should all get involved because people's lives are at stake."
