Air Force comes to rescue of 911 issue

By Will Hoover
Advertiser Leeward O'ahu Writer

Sometimes the simple solution really is the best solution.

Arthur May, a Ka'ena Point tracking station electrician, inspects the emergency phone at the Air Force guard shack near Kaena' Point. Jeff Widener • The Honolulu Advertiser

For months, Wai'anae Coast residents had complained that the vast and virtually uninhabited area, which is heavily used by fishers, divers, surfers and other water enthusiasts, was "an accident waiting to happen" because there was no way to make an emergency telephone call.

Verizon disconnected its pay phone at Ka'ena Point State Park months ago because it had been vandalized repeatedly. Verizon Wireless said cell phone service is not economically feasible beyond Kea'au Beach Park, the last place with a pay phone between Makaha and the western tip of O'ahu.

Wai'anae Coast Neighborhood Board member Jo Jordan said cost considerations, bureaucratic red tape and continual delays had stalled a plan to put an emergency phone outside the Army's military reservation at Makua. After repeated efforts to get the state to tell the Army where it intended to place the phone, Jordan was at her wits' end.

Then, on Tuesday, Air Force Maj. Kevin Lackey appeared at the Wai'anae Neighborhood Board meeting and announced that a free emergency phone had been placed outside the Ka'ena Point guard station.

"He stood up and said they installed a 911 phone on their property for public use," said Jordan. "I was like, Wow! Everyone was like, Wow! I've been getting nowhere with this for almost two years, and they solve the problem in — what? — a couple of days."

Cost to taxpayers: zero.

Lackey called the guard station emergency phone "an easy fix" because the Air Force already had a land line connected to the station, which is highly secure, well-lighted and manned 24 hours a day.

In the past the Air Force had discussed placing an emergency phone near the beach, but concluded it would be vandalized. The logical conclusion, he said, was to put the phone were vandals wouldn't dare to go — the guard station itself.

The emergency phone, which was installed last Friday and became operational on Monday, is merely an outside attachment to the existing line. With a flick of a switch, the guard can transfer the inside line to the outside phone.

Calls are monitored, and the guard maintains control at all times from inside the station. Lackey said the important thing was to make a phone available for public use in an emergency without compromising the facility's stringent security restrictions.

"It's a phone, for pete's sake," said Lackey. "It isn't brain surgery. People get wrapped around the axle filling out forms and doing paperwork. We wanted people to know the phone is there for emergency use only."

Ironically, it was the Air Force's refusal to allow an emergency call at the station in April that brought the matter to public attention. When William Aila, harbor master of the Wai'anae Boat Harbor, asked to used the phone to alert rescuers to the possible location of a missing diver, he was ordered to leave the station because the phone was off-limits to civilians.

Aila, who later received an apology from the Air Force for the incident, had to drive five miles to Makaha to make a cell phone call to police.

After the story came out, Lackey said, "Security is a concern, but common sense dictates that we do all we can to help out local authorities in an emergency."

Meanwhile, Jordan says there still needs to be an emergency phone between Ka'ena Point and Makaha.

"I'm not giving up on Makua," she said.