HAWAI'I KAI — Excessive storm runoff into the Hawai'i Kai Marina tossed boats around like they were toys and flooded homes in Kuli'ou'ou.

Steve and Gayle Carr were at their Maka'a Street home at the height of the storm yesterday when a huge wave of storm runoff flipped two boats moored to the dock at the back of their house. Steve Carr went outside to move one boat when a wave washed over it, sucked him in and pushed the boat under his dock and under the second boat moored there, his wife said.

"I looked outside and saw the rushing water and my husband went to secure the boats better," said Gayle Carr. "In a flash, he was under the water. I don't know what happened or how it happened, but the boats flipped over and he went under the dock.

"It's a good thing he wasn't hurt," she said.

The Carrs have a large drainage pipe next to their home. Part of it broke off last year and they have tried to get someone to fix it, Gayle Carr said.

"I think that pipe had something to do with all of this. I told Steve the marina looked different. And now this," she said.

The rain flooded front yards and turned the marina water a dusky brown from the runoff that flowed off mountains and from the farms of Kamilo Nui Valley.

George Rol's Kuli'ou'ou home had about two inches of water sloshing around inside. He and his family soaked it up with towels, shaking their heads at how fast it happened.

Rol planned to hook up a pipe to a pump to disperse the water outside his home that continued to seep in through doorways.

"It all just happened," Rol said as he squeezed a towel out into a 5-gallon bucket. "The water just came in. The land is higher in my neighbor's yard and it flowed in here."

Hawaii American Water also reported a 5,000-gallon spill of raw sewage that flowed into the Maunalua Bay, near China Wall. Officials with the private utility said the heavy rains overwhelmed the system's capacity.

Reach Suzanne Roig at sroig@honoluluadvertiser.com.