HURRICANE AFTERMATH : The Eyes of the Hurricane: Victims Recall Iniki’s Terror : Ordeal: Islanders found their paradise lost as tourists met a deadly storm and a selfless stranger on Kauai.

When Ida Alkire and her family moved last month from their Seattle home to this place they call the Garden Island, she thought little of hurricanes. This was her slice of paradise. Then she met Iniki.

For several terrifying hours last Friday, Alkire and her son coiled under a bathroom sink. Her husband and two other children huddled beneath mattresses in a bedroom closet. They were 10 yards apart but could not hear each other shout in the howling wind. Suddenly, a wall was ripped apart and the roof wrenched off. With their house collapsing, the drenched and frightened Alkires fled to a nearby shelter.

Only later in the debris did they find a tiny keepsake that was given as a going-away gift. It was still dangling from a hook in the now-open kitchen.

Their survival, she told her children, was a miracle. Pointing to the heirloom that reflects her Japanese family crest, Alkire said: “That was my daddy talking to us from heaven.”

As they struggle to recover, those who remain on this 30-mile-wide island are also beginning to look back at how Iniki touched their lives.

The Newcomers

Ida Alkire still has trouble sleeping, trying to shake the nightmare that day she clutched her child under the sink, praying that the rest of her family was safe in the other room.

When she returned to her home the following day, she found that a wooden beam had crashed through the kitchen. Jagged glass remained on the windows. Only small portions of the roof could be found in a neighbor’s yard.

“Who knows where the rest of it went,” said her husband, Dennis.

Across the street, Dennis pointed to the home of an elderly neighbor who was devastated to find not only his home damaged but also his beloved botanical garden destroyed.

“He told me he’s too old to plant another garden,” Dennis said. “This is more than just a monetary loss.”

The Alkires have moved to a nearby hotel. The day after the storm hit, Ida was back at her job at the Westin Kauai, where she is the wedding coordinator. Despite the hurricane, one couple still wanted to get married. But the ministers weren’t available--they were busy dealing with the loss of their own homes.

Although their 13-year-old son, Peter, says he’s ready to go back to the Mainland, the Alkires in general have no regrets about leaving their Mercer Island, Wash., home to come to Kauai.

“The vegetation will return. The tourists will come back. The island will be back,” Ida said. “And we’ll be here.”

The Locals

Some natives call themselves Kamaainas , or locals, who were born and raised in Kauai, an island that considers Oahu too fast-paced and congested. Some also fear that too many people will want to live here. Now there’s a question of who will want to come and who will stay.

Pat Neleimaile, 48, has no intention of leaving the place where she was born. She and her husband own a gas station in Waimea. She also works as a nurse while her husband works as a firefighter.

“We all struggle from day to day here,” she said. “People don’t realize that many of us have to hold down two or three jobs to survive, and now some of those jobs are lost.”

As she spoke, two nephews were cleaning the debris around her station. Next door, a restaurant had been leveled by Iniki. Yet even with her own business relatively untouched, Neleimaile cannot reopen. There is no gas to sell and no electricity to pump it.

Her own home lost a roof and suffered other damage, but although she now has children and grandchildren on Oahu, she does not intend to leave. “These are my roots,” she said. “How can I leave them?”

Several miles down the highway, off a series of dirt roads, camps house workers who toil on a sugar cane plantation.

The camps are mostly wooden houses, built several feet off the ground and covered with corrugated tin roofs, and Quonset huts. Families of workers live down the dirt roads.

Ellen Albarado, whose father and son work on the plantation, lives less than 100 feet from the ocean. When Hurricane Iniki approached, she took her family and fled the storm, fearing the worst.

“I thought I wasn’t going to have a house left,” she said. “I thought to myself, I don’t care if I have to sleep on the floor but just leave my house.”

When she returned, she couldn’t sleep on her waterlogged floors, but the house was standing. Still, it was surrounded by coconuts hurled from a bent tree. Huge gouges pocked the road where 30-foot waves had come crashing only feet from her front door.

The Tourists

Sixty-seven-year-old Dorothy Edmonson came to Kauai’s north shore to stay in a rented condominium in Princeville. The tourist from Valencia, Calif., knew the island well. It had become a yearly ritual to spend a month here, joined at different times by other family members.

News of the approaching hurricane didn’t particularly worry her. She had confidence in her second-floor condominium with its beautiful view of Hanalei Bay.

As the storm approached, her daughter Deborah, of Boulder Creek, Calif., left for the safety of the Princeville Hotel, and although she begged her husband and her mother to come with her, they declined.

It was a decision that almost was fatal.

As fierce winds, gusting to 125 m.p.h., struck their condo first from one side then another, they used tables as wind screens and braced their backs against the wall. Suddenly the bedroom wall gave way and an overhead beam hurtled toward Edmonson, striking her and then trapping her.

Loryn Anderson was able to free his mother-in-law, but when he could not carry her, he ran barefoot through the maelstrom to a nearby bar, where others had taken shelter. The only volunteer was an inebriated man with a beer can in hand.

As the drunken man raced into the hurricane, Anderson caught up and the two made their way back to Dorothy Edmonson. They found her still crammed into the tiny space of safety amid the collapsing condominium. By the time he could get his mother-in-law to the hospital, Anderson’s co-rescuer had disappeared.

Dorothy Edmonson had a fractured hip but will recover.

“The angels were on our side,” Deborah said.

Recovery Effort

Power: Power is out after most of the power poles were knocked down.

Relief Effort: Barges were ferrying in telephone poles and heavy cables. It may take a week to get the power plant running.

Housing: Officials said that about half of the island’s 21,000 homes suffered at least partial roof damage.

Relief Effort: The American Red Cross set up housing for 7,000 to 8,000 people. Relief centers were handing out tarpaulins to protect homes from rain.

Water: Service is out across half the island.

Relief Effort: Army was bringing in drinking water. Those without water service bled water heaters and hot tubs for drinking water.

Phones: Limited phone services was restored.

Relief Effort: Officials pleaded with people not to jam the lines by calling into the island, so that the islanders could call out.