On Friday, before the weather intensified as Hurricane Nolo moved toward Hawaii, Kerry Vekhov was at the controls of his 15,000-pound excavator on a ranch in Ka’u.
Hurricane Lala had left a trail of devastation through the area last month, including flooding a historic building on the ranch. Knowing that rain was coming, Mr. Vekhov, 35, had spent days removing debris from a nearby gulch and building a berm to give the ranch a fighting chance.
Mr. Vekhov, who owns the Kona-based company Aina Landscaping, has put his regular business on hold for the past five weeks to help communities in the area recover from Lala.
In Kaloko, where he lives, the storm brought down trees and power lines, making roads difficult to pass. Mr. Vekhov quickly began volunteering to clear them, using his company’s equipment. He soon realized that many residents did not have the machinery for recovery work on their properties, so, for the first time in five years, he posted on social media, inviting people to contact him directly if they needed help.
The post was so popular that he spent the next two days helping clear storm debris all over Kona. He hasn’t stopped.
Mr. Vekhov’s grandfather was buried in the Na’alehu Cemetery, where flooding damaged several graves and unearthed human remains. His grandfather’s grave was intact, but as Mr. Vekhov drove to answer the calls for help, his heart sank.
“It was the worst devastation on this kind of level that I’d ever seen,” he said.
He got to work with his employees and some volunteers. Near the Wai’ahinu flood channel, he said, some areas had six to 10 feet of debris piled up around buildings.
Many homeowners, Mr. Vekhov said, had either no insurance or no flood insurance. But he believed many buildings were still salvageable and that he and his team needed to act quickly to prevent mold damage. He went from house to house with his equipment, including his excavator, a 10,000-pound loader, trucks, trailers and dumpsters.
He also lent some of his equipment to people in need, and donated $30,000 in fuel to areas that did not have a working gas station. He sought to recoup some of his costs through a GoFundMe, but eventually shut it down because he did not want to take donations away from families in the community, he said. He then sought support only through nonprofits and the government while continuing to document his work daily on social media, hoping to keep attention on Ka’ū.
More than a month after Lala, Mr. Vekhov said he is getting dozens of messages a day asking for help. With Nolo approaching, he was worried about further damage to structures and more loss of life. At least two people in Ka’u had died in connection with Lala.
“If I can save a structure or someone’s home by putting in a day of work, I’m not going to stop until all of them are saved, or at least have a fighting chance,” he said.
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