Grand Naniloa Hotel staff pull together after Hurricane Lala

HILO, Hawaii (HawaiiNewsNow) – Hurricane Lala left Hilo and surrounding communities flooded and without power three weeks ago, and the Grand Naniloa Hotel on the Hilo Bayfront was in the middle of it. Employees who live in Hilo, Mountain View and Volcano were without power for up to a week, but almost everyone still came to work.

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Staff showed up despite outages

Niklas Dahm, the Naniloa’s general manager, said the power outage left the hotel without elevator service for three days.

“I think the biggest thing about the storm for us was that the morning after the storm, I think we had 95% of our team members come for the scheduled shift and I think out of those 90%, at least 75% had no power at home,” Dahm said.

“We had team members having to service 12 floors of guests carrying suitcases up and down stairs. It was amazing how hard people worked to make up the difference and to take care of the guests,” Dahm said.

Hotel offered hospitality rooms

The Naniloa offered hospitality rooms for up to 30 families. Behind the scenes, a chef named Elson Sandiago voluntarily came to work to clean up the kitchen so guests could be fed.

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“Dishes piled up to the ceiling. The kitchen was a complete mess,” Dahm said.

“It makes me proud of the leaders that bring them to care like that because it’s not just me, it’s the team. It makes me teary-eyed, to be honest with you,” Dahm said.

Restaurant space became a home base

With much of Hilo shut down, the staff cared for their guests. Kahau Manso, director of food and beverage at the Grand Naniloa Hotel, said the hotel activated event space in the restaurant to serve as a home base.

“We just activate a lot of our event space in the restaurant to kind of just be a home base. We were giving out like bentos and sandwiches and whatnot just to put people at ease a little bit,” Manso said.

“It just speaks to just the heart of this place that people really enjoy and give everything they have to this place, which is amazing,” Manso said.

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