HONOLULU (KHON2) -- The power is back on and businesses in downtown and Chinatown are open again after power was out for four days earlier in the week.
But, it was a slow start on Saturday for businesses.
"Yes it's a slow comeback usually like today, we should have a full house and it's usually full of people walking around but today we're not as busy," said Ave Kwok, Maunakea Marketplace owner.
To help bring a positive light to Chinatown, neighborhood leaders had already planned on a community walk prior to the outages.
"It was awful, from the seafood vendors who had lobster and fish die, to lei shops who couldn't string lei in the dark, to the bakeries who couldn't bake anything and get product out it was really really bad," explained Honolulu City Council member Tyler Dos Santos-Tam, who represents Chinatown and Downtown along with other districts.
The walk started at the old HECO building, and throughout the day, people from across the island came out to shed light on businesses after they were left in the dark most of last week.
"It's not just the businesses that were impacted," said Sheryl Matsuoka, Hawaii Restaurant Association Executive Director. "Think of the employees who couldn't come to work every night and the restaurant owner who went to bed thinking 'I hope we can open in the morning,' then notifying the employees not to come to work."
She said about 70 restaurants were impacted by the days-long outage.
"So come down and support, I'm here to support those restaurants, the employees who count on those tips, rent is due at the end of the month they need to make up three days of loss."
The Chinese Chamber of Commerce Hawaii offered bilingual support to file damage claims.
"We had several days of negative news, but now we're in revitalization mode we want to bring people down and this is a good way to showcase it," Dos Santos-Tam said.
Several shoppers hit up as many stores as possible on Saturday.
"We just want to support the businesses with everything going on," said Earl and Kaito Solidum. "It's just nice to support local so we're all for it."
Dos Santos-Tam said some landlords gave tenants a break on rent and vendors with power or generators helped those in the dark.
Community members also stopped by new stores as Chinatown continues to grow with new shops and restaurants.
"I think we're at a point where we have momentum going, we're not going to let a blackout stop us we're going to keep moving along."
