Mystery itch strikes again at Makalapa Elementary
By Mike Gordon and Dan Nakaso
Advertiser Staff Writers
Makalapa Elementary School will be closed today and tomorrow while investigators try to learn what sent 22 students to hospitals yesterday complaining of an itch that wouldn't go away.
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It was Makalapa's second bout with a mysterious irritant since Friday. The state Department of Health initially suspected it could be the work of small insects, possibly straw-itch mites, coming from a Weeping Bottlebrush tree or a Tacoma tree on campus.
One of Timon Tran's three daughters at Makalapa Elementary School was affected by the itching Friday and yesterday. The cause continues to baffle officials.
"They live in trees with seed pods and there have been outbreaks in Hawai'i before," said Janice Okubo, health department spokeswoman. "You can't see them. They are microscopic."
A vector control inspector took samples from the trees yesterday, but the results were negative. Koa haole trees on the perimeter of the school did show mites but they are far from where the students complained of the itching, Okubo said.
"It's a mystery right now until we get more information," said Capt. Wally Oda of the fire department's Hazmat 2 unit, which was called to the school. "We could not find any kind of gas. Our best guess is something is in that tree."
The children's symptoms yesterday were not as severe as Friday, when 17 students and one adult were treated for respiratory problems. Many of the students treated yesterday were the same ones afflicted on Friday.
"It looks like bites on the back of your head, rashes and bites behind the knees," fire department spokesman Capt. Richard Soo said yesterday.
The children were taken to the Queen's Medical Center and Tripler Army Medical Center to be decontaminated and examined.
The school reported the problem at 8:06 a.m. Just as on Friday morning, the victims had been playing or standing around a green picnic table under the Weeping Bottlebrush tree, near their classrooms in Building D.
The school was locked down and students kept indoors for much of the day. The Weeping Bottlebrush tree was surrounded by orange cones and red, plastic tape to keep students away.
Bruce Asato • The Honolulu Advertiser
"We're very concerned because we've yet to find out what it is," said Ray Fujii, principal at Makalapa Elementary School, which has 714 students. "This is really exasperating, not knowing the answers. Not knowing is very disconcerting."
Ray Fujii, principal of Makalapa Elementary School, is exasperated because he doesn't know what's causing his students to itch.
Pinhead-sized mites are more closely related to spiders than to insects. They feed on microscopic debris and in turn are eaten by insects and even larger mites, said Wayne Brown, who studies mites as a research associate with the University of Hawai'i department of entomology.
"They have legs, they're capable of crawling, but they don't jump," Brown said. "If their habitat is in a tree, a breeze might disturb them and they might fall on a child. If they were on the ground or a picnic table, they could crawl onto a child."
Straw-itch mites have been known to bite humans and cause a reaction, Brown said. But although the mites' life span lasts up to two months, he said they would not live long if they accidentally hitched a ride on a Makalapa student.
"They're creatures of the outdoors," he said. "The typical home is a hostile environment, with cleanliness, vacuuming. It wouldn't survive."
On Friday, the students' symptoms were described as similar to those resulting from exposure to pepper spray or Mace, and also very similar to those reported at neighboring Radford High School in March, when the school was closed after students eating breakfast in the cafeteria reported itching and burning.
Tests conducted at Makalapa by the department's hazardous materials team showed no chemicals present shortly after the students first noticed the itch.
State Rep. Bob McDermott urged officials late yesterday to quickly pinpoint the problem. "Four consecutive school days interrupted by mysterious ailments is unacceptable. My constituents are demanding an answer," McDermott said in a press release.
Some of the children complained about strange odors, McDermott, R-32nd ('Aiea, Salt Lake, Aliamanu) said. "I want a thorough battery of toxicology tests done," he said.
Michele Keohokapu was one of the parents who waited outside the school yesterday hoping for answers. On Friday, her two children, a first-grade girl and fifth-grade boy, had to be locked in their classrooms, near the tree where fire officials suspect the mites live.
Her children, like the others affected Friday and yesterday, attend classes in Building D. She called the area near the tree "a major thoroughfare for the children. It's the only way they have to get into the classrooms."
Keohokapu said she was concerned about her children "only if it is something that is airborne." Otherwise, she would trust the word of Battalion Chief Craig Matthew that they were safe.
Timon Tran, a father of three daughters at Makalapa, including one treated Friday and yesterday, shouted his own solution to fire officials: "Why don't you just cut down that tree?"
