Posted on: Friday, September 27, 2002

Rockslide in Mililani closes Kamehameha Highway

By Curtis Lum
Advertiser Staff Writer

A section of Kamehameha Highway near Mililani was closed indefinitely last night because of a rockslide. No one was hurt.

Police last night said the highway at the Kipapa Gulch bridge would remain closed until a state geologist could exam the hillside along the highway. That, said O'ahu Civil Defense spokesman John Cummings, may not happen until this morning.

The rockslide was reported at 8:47 last night on the Mililani side of the bridge, Cummings said. Several rocks rolled onto the highway, including one boulder that struck a pickup truck.

There were no reports of injuries as a result of the rockslide, police said.

Cummings said he did not know what caused the rocks to fall, but he noted it had been raining last night in the Mililani area. He said he couldn't recall any other slides in the area in the past five years.

A state highways crew was on the scene to clean up the debris. But Cummings said police were worried about the potential for more rocks falling on the road.

"Police have some concern about some of the material that might be hung up in that catch fencing that they have on the bluff up there," Cummings said. He did not have an estimate as to the size of the debris.

Last night's rock slide came two days after a Circuit Court judge found the state negligent in the fatal 1999 rockslide at Sacred Falls Park that killed eight people.

On Aug. 9 a boulder rolled down a mountainside and killed Dara Onishi, 26, in her family's Nu'uanu home.

Cummings said last night's incident was the first in more than two years that a major highway was closed because of a rockslide. On March 6, 2000, falling rocks closed a portion of Kamehameha Highway near Waimea Bay.