Before the pounding rain of March 24, 2006, the Ala Wai Canal was accepted by Waikiki residents as murky, polluted and a sure source of harmful infection for any of the outrigger canoe paddlers who regularly trained in it. But even though the canal opened to the ocean, it rarely intruded on the nearby beaches, surf spots and marinas.
All of that changed with a broken 42-inch sewer main on Kai'olu Street, just makai of the Ala Wai.
As frantic city crews worked around the clock to repair the pressurized main, thousands of gallons of raw sewage flowed into the canal. Workers feared that sewage would back up into homes and businesses while they struggled with repairs and so they continued pumping the spill into the canal for four days.
"We really have no other alternative," Honolulu Mayor Mufi Hannemann said.
The result was a 48-million gallon slurry of bacteria that created a brown plume along the normally sparkling blue south shore of O'ahu.
State health officials closed some of Waikiki's famous beaches and posted numerous warning signs. They estimated it could take months for bacteria levels to drop to normal levels.
But that was not the worst of it.
On April 6, with his body swollen from a painful infection, Oliver Johnson died.
Days earlier, the 34-year-old mortgage broker somehow wound up in the Ala Wai Small Boat Harbor. Exactly how that happened remained as clouded at the canal, but its effects on his body were horrific. Gripped by a fast-spreading bacteria, Johnson's heart, liver and kidneys shut down. One leg had been amputated.
The medical examiner said Johnson also suffered from chronic alcoholic liver disease which contributed to the infection's ability to take hold. Health officials were split on whether his plunge into the sewage-filled waters contributed to his death, but his family called for the state to make the canal safe and to consider larger warning signs.
Although Johnson was the only person to die after plunging into the Ala Wai, he was not the only person who suffered an infection.
Less than a week after his death, a 40-year-old Waikiki waitress remained hospitalized at The Queen's Medical Center recovering from several bacterial infections. Lisa Kennedy said she contracted the infections while surfing off Waikiki Beach. Four of the infections are associated with human feces.
