Albert Batalona, Warren Elicker and David Scribner escaped Friday from the high-security Halawa facility.

Police Specialized Services Division personnel hiked up to the ridge today to search for the three fugitives.

Yesterday, police found the campsite where a pig hunter said he was confronted by three men on Sunday.

In a photo lineup, the hunter identified the men as the escapees.

Police reportedly found beer bottles and other evidence at the campsite.

Police also dropped tear gas and used trained dogs to search the hiking trail yesterday.

The possibility that three armed and dangerous fugitives might be hiding nearby had some residents edgy. Batalona, 27, had been convicted for his role in a gunbattle with police after the armed takeover of a Kahala bank in 1999.

Police began searching Hau'ula Loop Trail after the hunter reported seeing a suspicious man or group of men in the valley, Detective Bill Kato said yesterday.

"I would say it's a good possibility it may have been them, at least one of them," Kato said. He said Elicker, 25, is believed to have family or friends in the area.

Yesterday, police and state sheriff's deputies in body armor worked the trail with dogs and staked out the various exit points from the trail and valley.

Back near the ridge, in an area not accessible to officers, police in a helicopter spotted some old military bunkers, Kato said. Police called out to anyone who may have been inside, then dropped tear gas into the structures about 3 p.m.

No one came out and no movement was seen.

At about 7 last night police surrounded a house on Hau'ula Homestead Road and officers were heard shouting, "Come out with your hands up!" But less than an hour later police determined that none of the escapees was in the house.

Grace Nihipali said she and her husband, Joseph, began locking their doors during the day since police started searching Hau'ula Loop Trail for the escapees on Sunday.

"We just want them to be caught," said Nihipali, who lives near the trailhead. Joseph Nihipali said he was worried because the couple, in their 60s, have no means of self-defense.

Bradley Odagiri, principal of nearby Hau'ula Elementary School, said his 300 students "are aware of what's going on. There are concerns. Parents call: 'Is school open?' But there's no confirmed reports or visual incident to be scared of."

Odagiri said the school, along with some residents, fixed lunch for the officers and were planning to serve them dinner, too.

State Public Safety Director James Propotnick said Friday that the escapees apparently broke into a cavity in a wall between two cells undetected and descended into a basement. They walked out a door and squeezed through the space between two 16-foot-tall chained and padlocked gates 30 yards away. The gates were next to an unmanned guard shack and in view of a guard tower.

An investigation of the escape will take at least a month, Propotnick indicated.

Although convicts escaped from the nearby medium-security unit in Halawa in the 1980s, Friday's breakout was the first ever from the maximum-security prison.

Propotnick said there was no sign the trio had help inside or outside the prison during the escape. Instead, they appear to have taken advantage of weaknesses in the physical structure of the prison and the routine of guards, he said.

Propotnick said Batalona could see from his cell that a guard assigned to the main gate normally left that post at midnight for "roving" duties, leaving the chained and padlocked gate under observation only from a nearby tower. That gate position is now manned 24 hours a day, he said.

"We've locked the barn door," Propotnick said wryly.

The escapees apparently removed a plumbing access panel from the Elicker and Scribner cell on one wall, then broke through the concrete wall on Batalona's side to gain access to a space between the two cells that allowed them to descend to a basement, he said.

Batalona, once described as 5 feet 9 and 195 pounds, "lost a lot of weight" so he could fit through the space, Propotnick said. One prison source said Batalona had lost about 40 pounds.

The space between the cells is not like that between any others in the prison, and was particularly vulnerable, Propotnick said. "It was a case of the wrong people being in the wrong place."

Batalona had been in one of the cells only since February, while the other two inmates had been in their adjoining cell since December, he said.

"No one else is going to be digging out," Propotnick said, "and these three are going to be caught."

He said the three were in their cells at the 1:30 a.m. bed check, and the prison notified police as soon as the escapees were missed after the 4 a.m. bed count.

By that time, the three apparently had walked to Stadium Mall and stolen a car about 3:30 a.m. The vehicle was found abandoned at the Hau'ula Kai Shopping Center at 8 a.m.

Propotnick said his department had taken necessary precautions after Batalona left behind an escape note condemning the criminal justice system, and particularly criticizing former Hawai'i Paroling Authority member Lani Rae Garcia, who had said Batalona would spend the rest of his life in prison.

Although Batalona was sentenced to a mandatory term of life in prison by trial Judge Marie Milks, the parole board set minimums guaranteeing Batalona would serve at least 20 years before he could ask the governor to reduce his sentence.

"He blames everybody but himself for everything," Propotnick said.

Lt. Hank Nobriga, the lead investigator for the July 1999 American Savings Bank takeover robbery by Batalona and three others in Kahala, said Batalona would be a "tough catch."

"He has nothing to lose," said Nobriga, adding he thought Batalona would try to leave O'ahu. "There's nothing for him here. He knows it takes only one person to turn him in."

Nobriga said Batalona "has an egotistical attitude and believes he's smarter than police. He planned the Kahala bank robbery, and it wouldn't surprise me if he planned the escape."

Batalona is the best known of the three because of the robbery of the Kahala bank, in which he fired an AR-15 assault rifle at a police officer.

Elicker was serving a 20-year sentence for a 2001 home-invasion robbery of a Punalu'u couple. He has 13 felony convictions, including robbery, kidnapping, auto theft and burglary.