Rotting food that was left in dim sum carts, on dining tables and in unpowered freezers has been stinking up a Honolulu neighborhood more than a month after heavy rain from Hurricane Lala caused part of the roof of a seafood restaurant to collapse.
It was the peak of the afternoon dim sum service on Aug. 18 when diners at the Happy Days Chinese Seafood Restaurant heard a cracking noise above them and “just got up and left,” some with food still in their hands, said Dawn Takeuchi Apuna, director of the Department of Planning and Permitting for the city and county of Honolulu, which oversees building safety across the island of Oahu.
This Tuesday, a hot and sunny afternoon, there was a putrid, musty odor in the parking lot behind the restaurant as some workers from a cleaning crew left. The stench seemed to dissipate when the breeze picked up.
It is much worse inside, said Ms. Takeuchi Apuna, who visited the restaurant, in the Kaimuki neighborhood, last week to check on the cleaning progress.
Photos taken by department staff show broken ceiling panels and twisted metal on top of tables. Some tables were still laden with plates, steamer baskets of food and cups of tea.
Ms. Takeuchi Apuna said there was a “really sour smell,” and when she walked in she noticed that much of the food had become a “gooey substance” that had dripped onto the floor, making it slippery.
She and the staff members who accompanied her had to throw away their shoes, even though they wore covers over them, Ms. Takeuchi Apuna said.
“When we came out and we went back to the office, you could smell it on us,” she added.
Lala, a Category 1 hurricane, did not make landfall in Hawaii but passed close enough to wash out highways, damage homes and cause extensive power outages. At least two people were killed in the storm.
There were some injuries at the Happy Days restaurant, health officials said, with one person taken to a hospital.
About three weeks later, officials started to receive complaints about a bad odor from neighboring residents and businesses.
“Because of the structural hazards, crews were unable to safely enter the restaurant to remove spoiled food left behind after the collapse,” the state of Hawaii Department of Health said in a statement in late September. “The continued presence of spoiled food has contributed to odor and pest concerns in the surrounding area.”
A cleaning crew was allowed to enter in mid-September to begin removing food from the kitchen, which has a separate ceiling. But it started to collapse as well, forcing the crew to leave, Ms. Takeuchi Apuna said.
Cleaning work resumed in the kitchen last week and is expected to be completed by Saturday, she said. That should go a long way toward reducing the stench.
“The kitchen is the worst part,” she said, describing a “gust of warm stinky air” when a worker first opened a freezer.
Her department has been working to coordinate the various parties involved — the building owner, the restaurant tenant and insurance companies — to find a solution.
In a statement sent via their lawyer, the building owners said “unprecedented weather with near weekly hurricane and storm threats” in recent weeks have “hindered our ability to do certain shoring up of the building so that cleanup crews could enter and safely clean.”
Representatives for the restaurant, which opened in 2001, did not immediately return messages seeking comment.
Kaimuki’s Waialae Avenue, where the restaurant is located, has become a trendy dining and shopping scene in recent years. But nearby businesses say they have noticed a drop in customers, perhaps because of local news reports about the smell.
“The stench is so bad that it hits you in the face,” said Roxanne Rivero, who works at Sugarcane, a gift shop near Happy Days. “It stays with your clothing, in your nose.”
She struggled to describe it. “Hauna,” she said, using a Hawaiian word commonly used by locals for unpleasant odors.
The authorities shut off gas and electricity to businesses near Happy Days as a precaution after the collapse, including Maguro-Ya, a Japanese restaurant next door. Owner Goro Obara wants people to know they’re open now — and that the smell stays outside, which this reporter can confirm.
Shawn Gushi, a sushi chef at Maguro-Ya, said he was prepping for dinner when authorities evacuated the restaurant because of the collapsed roof at Happy Days. He recalls wondering: “What happens to all the food in there?”
Kitty Bennett contributed research.
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