Posted on: Saturday, August 24, 2002
Homestead fears boulders
By Karen Blakeman
Advertiser Staff Writer
When Mona Arthur stepped outside to tend to her plants about a month ago and discovered that a 350-pound rock had rolled down the hill and lodged against the fence behind her house in Kalawahine Valley, she didn't give it a lot of thought.
It wasn't until she heard about the death of a Nu'uanu woman killed by a boulder crashing through a bedroom wall that Arthur understood the significance of the rock.
"It hit the fence and then stopped," Arthur said of the rock that fell in Kalawahine Valley. "If the fence wasn't there, it would have hit the house. And it was the smallest rock that fell. There are big, big rocks further up."
Arthur, like other residents of O'ahu homes that abut cliffs and slopes, worries that the disaster that killed Dara Onishi in Nu'uanu on Aug. 9 could be repeated in her neighborhood.
Arthur's neighbors in Kalawahine Streamside, a new Hawaiian Homes development behind Roosevelt High School, have decided they don't want to wait for another tragedy before taking action.
Backed by the Kalawahine Streamside Neighborhood Association, they have complained to the Department of Hawaiian Home Lands and to the developer, Kamehameha Investment Corp., a for-profit subsidiary of the Kamehameha Schools trust.
Dirk Soma lives on Kapahu Street, a couple of houses down from Arthur. Two boulders are perched precariously on the slopes above his house, he said. Periodically, small rocks fall down the mountainside; during the year and a half since he moved in, he estimates, enough loose dirt has filtered down onto his lot to raise the elevation of his yard by several inches.
Soma recently went to Kamehameha Investment and asked that the slopes be subjected to an analysis by a professional geologist.
A Kamehameha representative told him he had a year under warranty to assess the property, but the warranty period had lapsed several months before, Soma said.
Louis Kau, president of Kamehameha Investment, said that although one of his representatives had met with Soma earlier in the week, his company had just received a letter from the Kalawahine Streamside Neighborhood Association, and from another of Soma's neighbors, yesterday morning. He said he was going to have to study the matter further before determining exactly what Kamehameha would do.
"The Department (of Hawaiian Home Lands) is talking about geological studies," Kau said. "We're in favor of that and willing to assist however we can, but we don't know who will be responsible for any work that has to be done."
Kamehameha Investment completed the $26 million Kalawahine Streamside development in April 2001. The neighborhood consists of 54 multilevel duplex units and 33 three-story, single-family homes. Built on Hawaiian Homes land, the units sold for prices ranging from $175,000 to $226,000.
Francis Apoliona, a spokesman for Hawaiian Home Lands, said his department would do a soil analysis in the neighborhood. He said talks with Kamehameha Investment were continuing.
"We're the landowners, and we take our responsibility seriously," he said. "We need to get our partners involved, but if we have to do it ourselves, we'll do it ourselves."
Apoliona said the Kalawahine Valley isn't backed by slopes as steep as those in Nu'uanu, but the rock that fell against Arthur's fence was about 3 feet across and could be an indication that further problems are lurking above.
He said he didn't think the Kalawahine homeowners were the only valley residents likely to be looking nervously up the cliffs and slopes after hearing about Onishi's death.
"I live in St. Louis Heights and I think I'm going to go home and take a look around," Apoliona said.
The neighborhood where Onishi was killed is still dealing with its rock problem. The cliffs above Onishi's Henry Street home has private owners who hired a geologist after the tragedy to assess the rock hazards.
Residents of the area were informed this week by the O'ahu Civil Defense Agency that another boulder sits precariously on the slopes above. An attorney for the owners of the cliff property said Tuesday that his clients are considering a number of safety measures, including removing the boulder or securing it with cables and netting.
And Hawaiian Home Lands has dealt with falling rocks mauka of Roosevelt High School before.
Leon Miguel, an estimator for Perfecto Engineering and Construction, said his company recently removed part of the mountain behind some houses in the 2200 block of Anianiku Street, a few blocks from Kalawahine Streamside, for Hawaiian Home Lands.
Rocks once were rolling down those slopes, too, he said.
The job involved heavy excavation and rock-breaking equipment, he said. Concrete mixed with rock was used to reinforce part of the hillside.
The work took three months to complete. The bill to Hawaiian Home Lands was about half a million dollars, he said.
