Struggling out of Misery, Kauai Is Hit by More Rain : Storm: Coast Guard halts search for 2 reported aboard sailboat. Utility service is restored in some areas.

The people of Kauai, their lives torn asunder by Hurricane Iniki, began a long crawl out of misery Monday as the skies over Hawaii, unrelentingly cruel, poured down more rain.

A new, more moderate storm blew in on a tropical depression, and the Coast Guard suspended a search between Kauai and its tiny neighbor island, Niihau, for two persons reported aboard a sailboat that sank when Iniki hit last Friday.

A 50-year-old Kauai man, also on the boat, was rescued Saturday after clinging to a floating ice chest for 21 hours. If his companions are declared lost, they would bring Iniki’s death toll to six, with more than 330 persons injured. Damage has been estimated at more than $1 billion.

At the Lihue airport, scores of tourists lined up to leave Kauai--although many others had decided to stay. The departing stood in the rain for hours. “God, do I want to get home,” said one man, a portrait of exasperation. “This was a nightmare. Now it’s a soaking wet nightmare.”

As the new rain added fresh insult to injury, workers wrapped scores of broken houses on Kauai with plastic sheeting. Gov. John Waihee said that at least one-third of the homes and other buildings on the island were destroyed, another third severely damaged--and that no home escaped harm.

Utility workers put pumping stations back into service. About half the island had running water. Some telephones were working, but power was unlikely to be fully restored for weeks. Officials planned to ration electricity, with rotating blackouts on parts of the island.

Nearly 1,300 National Guard troops were expected on Kauai by the end of the day, including an array of skilled carpenters, plumbers and engineers. The troops set up a major relief supply center at the Navy’s Barking Sands missile facility, on the south shore of the island.

A Navy amphibious assault ship, the Belleau Wood, anchored offshore and began to offload Humvees, five-ton trucks, field kitchens and portable showers. From the ship and from Barking Sands, supplies were taken to distribution centers at National Guard armories across Kauai.

The troops offered their meals-ready-to-eat rations, but many Kauaians resorted, instead, to cooking whatever food they could find on outdoor grills. The tang of barbecue drifted through entire neighborhoods, and many of the residents shared their fare with one another.

Some of the troops patrolled shattered neighborhoods, but there were no reports of large-scale looting. People lined up at grocery stores and waited in lines blocks long to buy gasoline.

At Wilcox Hospital, Kauai’s largest, doctors struggled under a continuing influx of casualties. Chief Executive Officer Phil Palmer said his staff had treated 332 injured people in the three days since Iniki hit the island.

Although most were treated in the 24 hours after the hurricane, wounded people without homes continued to straggle into the overburdened hospital, some merely to seek shelter from the rain.

Palmer said he expected many more to show up for treatment in coming days.

In one treatment room, Albert Swarez, a 62-year-old heavy equipment operator who had lived his entire life on the island, was perched uncomfortably on the edge of a wheelchair, his foot badly swollen.

“I can’t afford to go into the hospital,” he told a doctor. “I need to work. I need to rebuild my home.”

The doctor shook his head. “You can’t afford to lose a foot either.”

Most of the injured suffered puncture wounds or cuts, but several patients were treated for heart attacks.

Power lines were toppled in the hospital parking lot. Although the facility was operating on generators, officials did not have enough power to turn on the air conditioning or many of the lights.

Waiting rooms were cloaked in murky half-darkness, and few doctors could perform surgery because they did not have steam to sterilize their instruments. Some instruments were being airlifted to Honolulu so that they could be sterilized and then flown back.

“They tell me it could be two weeks before we have power,” Palmer said. “We are operating, but we’re in what I call disaster mode. We’re being forced to send serious cases to Honolulu.

“And if we can’t get electricity for two weeks, we’ll be in this mode for awhile.”

The biggest challenge, said Claudia Schnagl, a spokeswoman for the American Red Cross, “is making sure that the immediate concerns of the victims are being taken care of--food, water, clothing.” She said the Red Cross was housing nearly 8,000 persons in shelters.

Across Kauai, residents and tourists huddled side by side in partially destroyed churches, homes and businesses. They ate bologna sandwiches and muffins and relished small plates of hot dogs and scrambled eggs.

It was the only hot food many had eaten in days.

Hundreds of natives volunteered at the shelters, mopping floors and scrubbing the toilets--even though many had just lost their homes.

“We came because we are thankful for the help,” said Philip Demerin, 70. “We need so much and we want to give something too.”

About 1,200 of the homeless flooded into the Lihue convention center, where they survived on food and water offered by Red Cross workers and island residents. Some wondered about their mail. Mail carriers were at work, but they could not deliver to houses no longer standing.

At a Buddhist mission in hard-hit Kapaa, a community on Kauai’s northeastern shore, 40 people took refuge from the downpour. They waited patiently in line for showers and food and chatted quietly in small groups.

The Rev. Shinkai Murakami said panic in the day or two after the hurricane had faded--but had been replaced by mounting anxiety about the task of rebuilding.

“There is so much exhaustion,” he said. “It is hard to contemplate the work that is to be done.”

A few natives, even some whose homes were destroyed, seemed determined to stay on the island. Joseph Iida, 87, lost all but one room of his house to the hurricane. He had taken shelter in a badly damaged Pizza Hut--but he vowed that he would not let a hurricane chase him away.

“We need help, we need somebody to help us build our house, but we are not going to leave,” he said. “I was here for a tidal wave, and I’ve been here for three hurricanes. I will also be buried here.”

Wallace Stickney, director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency expressed worry about those in the far reaches of the island.

“Until we have power restored, until we have electricity,” he said, “we are concerned there may be some people that we still haven’t reached.”

Federal teams headed to the island to begin accepting disaster applications for rental assistance and home repair grants. A toll free hot line was set up for victims to register for aid--if they could find phones that worked.

Waihee praised the fast and coordinated relief effort. “All the agencies learned a lot from Hurricane Andrew,” he said, “and it shows here in Hawaii.”

After Andrew struck three weeks ago in Florida and Louisiana, President Bush announced that the federal government would pick up 100% of the cost of relief efforts in Florida, over a threshold of $10 per capita paid by the state.

The federal government normally pays 75% of that cost.

It was not clear whether Bush would extend the same provisions to Hawaii, a much less politically significant state. Officials said it would depend on the extent of damage from Iniki.

“I’m sure it’s under consideration,” Stickney said, “for here as well.”

Newton, a Times staff writer, reported from Lihue, and Essoyan, a Times special correspondent, reported from Honolulu. Staff writer Richard E. Meyer in Los Angeles contributed to this story.