New home renovations are usually done by choice. You pick out the walls you want to tear down, decide the placement of new doorways. That list almost always includes what the homeowner chooses. But recently Nature decided it deserved a say in what one owner’s home would look like. And it definitely spoke loud and clear.
An enormous boulder smashed its way through a Hawaii home recently, and it was all caught on video. And new homeowner, Caroline Sasaki, barely avoided being caught in its disastrous path. Video from inside the home shows Sasaki as she walks down a hallway, when suddenly the walls around her explode as the massive 5-foot by 5-foot boulder careens just a hair’s width past her, and slams to a stop in the bedroom. Sasaki was left in shock after the dust settled.
Caroline Sasaki ducks after a giant-sized boulder came crashing through her house. Photo from Sasaki family.
“All I heard was the boom when the glass cracked from the sliding door, so I backed up and I guess it passed right through me,” the 65-year-old said to KITV. She told reporters that her family had only been in the newly-built house for a week, before the catastrophic visit by the boulder occurred.
I haven’t watched the video, but they said if I took one more step, I probably wouldn’t be here,” Sasaki said, adding that because she has a bad leg, she tends to walk slower.
Reporters noted that Sasaki, as well as other homeowners in the area, think the boulder came from an excavation that is being done at a nearby development. “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 station. “We’ve had some issues with them carving the mountain, and I don’t know if that’s the cause.”
However, the development’s owner, Bingning Li says that the new project wasn’t the cause. “Not at all, this is from way above, I looked at one of those rocks about 50 feet away from on top of the property and (it) landed over there and then made its way down here,” he said. “So it hit one of the cables that was supposed to stop it and the cable snapped. That took a lot of energy away otherwise this damage would be way more.”
After the damage was done, Sasaki said she is determined to get the excavation work stopped. But regardless, she is thankful that she made it out alive. She said, “I would like to just thank all of my family and friends for helping. Thank you.” The Department of Planning and Permitting said they are still investigating what caused the boulder to crash into the home.
