Boulder crash renews talk of landowner obligations
By Mike Gordon
Advertiser Staff Writer
O'ahu's crumbling cliffs are generating new concern after a pair of huge boulders narrowly missed plowing into homes below a Hawai'i Kai ridge on Thanksgiving evening.
Cory Lum • The Honolulu Advertiser
But it's doubtful the latest of several rockslides in recent months will breathe life into a failed City Council bill to make landowners
Condominium manager Joe Ornellas looks at two large boulders that fell Thursday night near 7168 Hawaii Kai Drive, smashing into the family cars parked outside the Lalea townhome of Sione and Tracy Galvez.
responsible for removing potentially dangerous rocks and boulders from their property, said Councilman Jon Yoshimura.
None of the rocks and boulders that have come down in recent weeks from Mililani to Makapu'u has been as serious as the deadly 5-ton boulder that killed Dara Onishi on Aug. 9 as she slept in her Nu'uanu bedroom. But some have come close.
The boulders that fell about 8 p.m. Thursday — one 4 by 6 feet and the other 4 by 4 feet — crashed into a sport utility vehicle and a sedan parked outside a Lalea townhome at the bottom of Mariners Ridge, said Tracy Galvez, who was standing a few feet away in her garage.
"If my car wasn't there, it would have damaged someone's house," she said. "My car stopped it."
Yoshimura said the rockslide responsibility bill had strong support among councilmembers. City attorneys convinced them at a committee meeting Nov. 20, however, that the city did not have the authority to create the law.
"They told us it was more and more an issue for the state Legislature," he said.
Yoshimura is hoping Thursday's near-miss will demonstrate how common rockslides are, and prompt the Legislature to force landowners to inspect their property or give the counties power to create such legislation.
"The last time we had a serious rockslide — the one that killed the woman in Nu'uanu — you heard a lot of talk about 'act of God' and 'rare occurrence.' I don't think that this is the case," Yoshimura said.
There are numerous rocks and boulders held in place above the Lalea complex by thick braided cables anchored into the ridge. Homeowners who bought into the complex when it opened four years ago were assured that workers had secured them, Galvez said.
"You think about stuff like that," she said yesterday.
"It was one of our concerns when we moved in here."
It is unclear whether the boulders that fell Thursday came from land owned by the 22-acre complex with 290 units or from the rocky cliffs above, owned by Kameha-meha Schools.
"We are not sure where the property line is and where the boulders came from," said Kekoa Paulsen, Kamehameha Schools spokesman. "We are definitely assessing that to see what our responsibility is."
An inspector visited the site yesterday morning, but will not have an answer until Monday because a large number of staffers were out for the holiday, Paulsen said.
Even if the rock did not originate from Kamehameha Schools land, Paulsen said, the landowner probably will survey the cliffs. "Given this situation, we would have to take a careful look at that property to make sure there isn't something else," he said.
Greg Moore, a professor in the University of Hawai'i's department of geology and geophysics, strongly suspects the boulders came from Kamehameha Schools land high on the ridge where he lives.
"In order for those boulders to have done what they did, they had to come from a ways up," he said. "They came off the side of the hill, just like the one in Nu'uanu. And I would be real surprised that there were two pieces that came down independently. It was probably one humongous piece that came down."
Rocks fall as part of the natural erosion of islands. There is almost no way to predict when or where they will fall. Moore said rockslides are common, but most happen in unpopulated areas.
No one knows how many O'ahu homes could be in danger because they are too close to a valley wall. Moore estimates the figure at anywhere from 10,000 to 20,000 homes.
Yet he would not support the kind of legislation proposed by Yoshimura, saying 99 percent of people buying a house on a ridge have no idea if there are potentially loose rocks on the property.
"I would think you would cause no end of problems with that," Moore said. "That would be an amazing law. There would be a lot of people who would be liable all of a sudden without ever knowing it."
The same does not hold true of developers, he said. Anyone building a project in the last four or five years should know to check the stability of nearby cliffs and ridges and shore them up if necessary.
"It's common sense, it's logic, whatever you want to call it."
Homeowners have the right to expect that they are safe, even if a developer has built homes at the bottom of a cliff. "I think anybody buying a place has the right to believe that you have done everything you can to ensure a rock isn't going to come down," Moore said.
Homeowners below water reservoirs, or tanks, have no reason to worry, said Howard Tanaka, head of the Honolulu Board of Water Supply's maintenance and inspection branch.
The city's 164 reservoirs were built into areas carved out of hillsides, he said.
"Where the rocks come down, that is usually on the surface, and it is a case of weathering," Tanaka said. "Where we place a reservoir, we cut into the mountain."
Reach Mike Gordon at mgordon@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8012.
