Season begins for city's Santa display
By Mike Leidemann
Advertiser Transportation Writer
Santa finds his way to Honolulu in all sorts of ways: helicopter, water skis, parachute and, sometimes, on the back of a 24-wheel flatbed city trailer.
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"It's a little extra pressure. You've got a lot of people counting on you to get him there safely," said truck driver Paul Souza, who normally spends his day hauling 4-ton bulldozers and other heavy equipment from one city work site to another.
City worker Kawika Francisco holds on to Santa's toes as co-workers slowly inch Santa into position sitting on the fountain in front of City Hall.
Yesterday, however, Souza led a presidential-style caravan of trucks that brought the city's 21-foot-high, 3,500-pound signature "shaka" Santa, Mrs. Claus and dozens of other cement-coated Styrofoam sculptures from their year-round resting place in a Manana warehouse to town, where they'll be the focus of this year's Honolulu City Lights celebration during the holidays.
"People tease you," Souza said. "They say if you screw up, you're going to ruin Christmas."
Moving the big sculptures — everything from Santa's 14-foot-high sleigh to the newest additions of several musical bears — is a stress-filled logistical job that takes months of careful scheduling and coordination between a half-dozen city departments and agencies. The move alone takes three full days and 12 trailer loads.
Nearly two decades of moving the sculptures back and forth across O'ahu have taken their toll in damage: the time the Snow Lady's head fell off the truck and ended up in a stream; the year Rudolph's antlers hooked some overhead power lines and broke off, and the time a giant gnome came loose from its strapping and exploded across three lanes of H-1 Freeway.
If you look closely enough beyond the Christmas magic, you can see all sorts of lesser damage — chipped fingers, scratched paint, little pukas and dozens of kid-sized footprints — in the statues, some of which date back to the first Christmas lights celebration 18 years ago.
"We try to be as careful as possible, but sometimes things do break," said Francis Gora, a construction equipment supervisor for the city's maintenance support services division who watched closely Monday as his crew used a boom crane to hoist Santa from an upright resting place in the Manana warehouse and put him on 2-foot-thick cradles used for yesterday move.
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As three other workers stood by holding guide ropes, the crane hooked Santa through a steel loop in his lap, gently lifted him till he fell flat on his back in the air, then swung him over the back of the 30-foot trailer, where he was strapped down with canvas ties protected by pieces of old carpet.
Earlier, a flatbed truck transported a reclining Santa and Mrs. Claus on the freeway. During the rest of the year, they're stored in Manana warehouse.
Mrs. Claus followed a few minutes later.
"They're not really meant to be moved around," said Alex Ching, a city parks employee who works about half the year maintaining the sculptures, designing new ones and organizing the logistics behind their movement.
"It's sort of like the three bears," Gora added. "You can't tie them too tight or too loose; everything's got to be just right."
When all settled in on the trailers, the sculptures sit 14 feet off the ground, leaving just inches to spare when they pass some of the lower tunnels and power lines along the moving-day route. Santa's hands and feet stuck out over the flatbed trailer anywhere from 18 to 24 inches in various places.
"You really hope you don't show up at City Hall with one or two of those fingers missing," Gora said.
Smaller pieces are wrapped in an industrial-strength Saran Wrap-like material and lifted around on forklifts. A few of the biggest pieces have to be shipped in two pieces.
"We get a few complaints once in a while from somebody who sees the Snow Lady traveling around without her head," Ching said.
No disasters, big or small, were reported in yesterday's move of some of the top attractions of the Honolulu Hale display for Saturday's opening festivities.
Squads of motorcycle police officers cleared the way for the convoy, which stopped traffic and turned heads "just like they were escorting the president down the freeway," Souza said. Top speed was 45 mph.
"And we didn't lose any heads or limbs," Souza said.
