I awakened at 2:00 a.m. to the sounds of silence. The overhead ceiling fan had ceased to move and the room was black as pitch. I got out of bed to make my way down the hall, but in my blindness had to retrace my steps. Gently I placed my hand on Gerald’s shoulder and shook him awake. “I can’t see. Something’s wrong.” He grabbed the flashlight off the bedside table, clicked on a beam of light, and flashed it around the suite. “The power is out”, he concluded. Raising the nine foot wall of window blinds confirmed his assessment. The entire Bay Area was in total darkness. The only evidence of the Marriott Beach Resort’s existence was the illuminated tiki torches along the cobbled walkway. Across the bay, Nawiliwili Harbor was only a shadow dimly lit by the crescent moon above.
As we stood there on the sheltered lanai in bare feet, we marveled at the sight before us imagining the early days of this Hawaiian settlement on Kauai. Captain James Cook arrived in 1778 when Nawiliwili was a center of island life, a home to fishing and taro farming. No hotel had yet been built. Just a beach, the stream, and the ironwood trees that grew on the hill above the beach.
We discovered later the entire island was without power just 23 minutes into the new year. Some areas were in total darkness for almost five hours due to a transformer’s automatic shutdown. A control system at the Eleele location detected a fault. The cause of the fault is still unknown. Some say it was due to antiquated equipment.
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