Karen Costello points visitors to the debris line near the top of her white fence. That's where six feet of floodwater stopped on March 20, after a Kona low pushed through her Ke Iki Road home in 45 minutes. Her children's photos are gone. Her tenant moved out. She had no flood insurance because she wasn't in a flood zone.
She still isn't. FEMA's redrawn maps take effect June 10, adding more than 4,000 O'ahu homes to mandatory flood zones for the first time. Ke Iki Road remains outside the lines. The maps modeled streams. What flooded Costello was rain pooling faster than a city drainage valve could release it.