HONOLULU -- Ankle-deep water forced the closing and evacuation of Kahala Mall shortly before 1 p.m. on Friday.

Toys, food, chairs and other debris floated in brown murky water at Kahala Mall after floodwaters rushed through the theater complex at the shopping center. The water set off alarms and filled some of the 90 shops with more than a foot of water.

Storekeepers barely had time to move their merchandise to higher ground.

At risk are the goods stored in the shopping center's warehouse, one floor below ground level.

"The first thing I rescued was my employees. They got scared. We have no back entrance. We saw the water rushing throughout they had to get out. We shut the doors and realized this was coming up faster than we could take," said Julie Hassel, of Morgan Beret Lingerie.

"We heard the fire alarm go off. We usually think it's a false alarm so I ran over to theatre side to check out what's going on. I realized there was a flood coming on and we actually had less than 5 minutes to grab what we could and move to a higher level," said Brandon Bernadino, of Reyn's.

Two hours later, mall officials allowed storekeepers back on the premises to check their inventories to clean up the mess.