Dramatic video captured on a home camera (below) shows a large boulder crashing into a home near downtown Honolulu in Hawaii Saturday night with such force, it looked and sounded like the house had been hit with a bomb. The powerful boulder, about 5' tall, broke through a wall, rolled down a hall, and nearly struck the homeowner standing inside her living room. But fortunately it missed, leaving the woman and three others in the house unharmed.
The family had just moved into the house a month ago.
From 9News.com:
Caroline Sasaki, the homeowner, said her family had just moved in earlier in the month, after tearing down and rebuilding the house on the property. …
Sasaki and other neighbors told KHON2 that events like this were extremely uncommon, and questioned whether a local developer's project further up the hill — where the boulder came down from — was responsible.
"We lived in this same location. We just knocked down the old house and rebuilt it; and it's never happened before, heavy rain and hurricane warnings nothing. So, no rocks ever came down," Sasaki told the TV station. "We've had some issues with them carving the mountain, and I don't know if that's the cause."
Hawaii News Now said investigators had fielded reports from another homeowner complaining that a smaller boulder, approximately 2 feet by 2 feet, had struck his property's retaining wall.
The uphill development's owner, Bingning Li, told Hawaii news outlets that his project and the boulder incidents were unconnected. He said protective measures put in place for his development actually mitigated the damage.
Click here for raw footage of the incident.
Front page thumbnail image: Mark van Dam / shutterstock.com
