The initial quake, which had a magnitude of 6.6, struck at 7:07 a.m. (1:07 p.m. ET) from 24 miles below the west coast of the Big Island, 157 miles southeast of Honolulu, the U.S. Geological Survey said. (Map)
Seven minutes later, an aftershock measuring 5.8 struck 145 miles southeast of Honolulu from a depth of nearly 12 miles. Over the next seven hours, 53 aftershocks reverberated in the state, though none of them with a magnitude exceeding 4.4, the USGS said.
The quake was not strong enough to trigger a tsunami.
Gov. Linda Lingle, speaking from the civil defense headquarters in Honolulu, issued a disaster declaration for Hawaii. (Watch rocks block roads, damage to buildings -- 2:08  )
She told reporters she was at a hotel near the epicenter when the jolt hit.
"It threw everything in the hotel room around the room -- television, lamps, everything," she said. "I thought that was it, and then we had a second jolt that, while not equal to the first, was very intense with, again, the television and everything else flying. It was at that time when we evacuated to the police station."
’Many lacerations and fractures’
A spokeswoman for North Hawaii Community Hospital in Waiema said the emergency room was "inundated with many lacerations and fractures."
At Kona Community Hospital, a 96-bed facility on the Big Island, medical-surgical patients were evacuated after ceilings in the medical-surgical unit fell in, said Terry Lewis, interim director for public relations at the facility. (Watch how people woke up to shaking and quaking -- 1:28 )
Some of the patients were discharged; about five others were to be flown to Hilo Medical Center, she said.
The Kona hospital lost power for about four hours before it was restored and its water supply was limited, she said.
Throughout the ordeal, the hospital’s emergency room remained functional, she said.
The structural integrity of the hospital was not compromised, but the hospital was not likely to reopen fully for some days, she said. "It’s really just a mess. We have ceiling tiles coming down. All of that stuff has to be repaired before we can place those patients back in those units."
Airport service limited
Waiting rooms at airports filled quickly with would-be travelers.
Service was limited at Honolulu International Airport and Maui International Airport.
A spokeswoman for the Transportation Security Administration said electrical outages had hamstrung equipment routinely used to screen passengers and luggage. In response, procedures were set up to screen by hand, she said.
United Airlines canceled 11 flights to and from Hawaii on Sunday, airline spokesman Brandon Borrman said.
"We’re working to accommodate those passengers," Borrman said, but he would not predict when they might reach their destinations since that depends on when the islands’ airports in Honolulu and Maui are able to resume full operations.
"We have to wait for the airports to tell us what they’re expecting," he said.
Similar delays were occurring across the Pacific.
"Hundreds of people are trying to fight their way back," said would-be passenger Robert Kekaula, who was stuck in San Diego awaiting a flight to Hawaii. He was told not to expect one before Tuesday night.
Though telephones across the state, for the most part, were working, residents were urged not to tie up the lines so that the circuits would be free for emergency use. Hawaiians were also urged to stay off roads and highways if possible, to keep them clear for emergency vehicles.
Rockslides blocked passage along a number of major routes.
Power was knocked out across much of Oahu but had been restored to 43,000 customers by late Sunday afternoon, a spokesman for Hawaiian Electric said.
Jose Dizon predicted that, by midnight, power to the entire island of more than 800,000 residents would be restored.
Dizon urged customers to turn off their water heaters and shut off circuit breakers so that, when power is restored, power surges would not throw the system off-line again.
Bill Wong, a Big Island resident, said some buildings were extensively damaged. He said the 100-foot-tall smokestack to a century-old sugar mill collapsed into a pile of rubble. "Everything in our house is damaged," he said.
"Our whole house was rocking, it was swaying from left to right," he said. He described his neighborhood after the quakes as looking "like a war zone." (Watch the Big Island’s mayor describe the damage -- 4:57 )
Flooding also a concern
The Federal Emergency Management Agency carried out a preliminary disaster assessment with state officials and sent an emergency response team to Honolulu, a spokesman said.
FEMA’s Aaron Walker said water quality and sewage on the Big Island were matters of concern, as was the structural integrity of bridges in the state.
Earthquakes were not the only force of nature Hawaiians had to endure Sunday: heavy rains in recent days meant that flash-flood warnings were in place for all but the Big Island, CNN Meteorologist Rob Marciano reported.
Greg Knudsen, a spokesman for the Department of Education, said late Sunday that public schools would be open Monday on all islands but the Big Island, where just 10 schools were to be closed.
The earthquakes and the fact that they occurred Sunday meant that few stores were open. One of the few open in Honolulu was Home Depot, which reported that it was nearly out of batteries but still had supplies of propane and charcoal.
A U.S. Pacific Command spokesman, based in Hawaii, said there were no immediate reports of damage to U.S. military assets in Hawaii and no requests from civilian authorities for military assistance.
Earthquakes occur commonly in the Hawaiian islands, said Harley Benz, a seismologist for the USGS in Golden, Colorado.
"The children there and the adults are used to them and often they do practice safety measures," Benz said.
But they rarely occur with such force. The last such quake struck in Hawaii on November 16, 1983, when a 6.7-magnitude temblor injured six people and 39 houses sustained major damage, the USGS said.
Hawaii’s largest recorded quake struck the Ka’u District on the island of Hawaii on April 2, 1868, with a magnitude of 7.9. It resulted in 77 deaths -- 31 by a landslide and 46 from a tsunami, the USGS said.
CNN’s Barbara Starr and Jeanne Meserve contributed to this story.
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