Posted on: Tuesday, December 14, 2004
EDITORIAL
Manoa flood: Where is sense of urgency?
What we're hearing plenty of these days is the rapidly escalating assessment of the damage caused by the Halloween Eve flood at the University of Hawai'i's flagship Manoa campus.
What we're not hearing these days — at all — is an urgent collaboration of state, city and federal officials about what must be done to prevent this disaster from being repeated.
Flood-control projects — and that clearly is what is called for in the valley above the Manoa campus — are usually expensive, disruptive and time-consuming.
Although the damage at UH is the most eye-catching, many homes and businesses were affected by the flooding, in some cases severely. All of these interests must be represented in deciding how and where to build the public works project that now appears to be indicated.
The damage from water and mud on the first floor of UH's Hamilton Library prompted an Advertiser headline to resort to the word "catastrophic." Assuredly that is not a word seen frequently in Island news.
The catastrophe at the library results from the nearly wholesale destruction of irreplaceable, and arguably priceless, documents and records.
Indeed, the damage is heartbreaking. Among the almost countless losses are volumes once owned by Prince Kuhio, and rare congresssional materials dating to the 18th and 19th centuries. The latter include a report about the Fremont Expedition in the 1840s describing part of the United States' expansion toward the Pacific.
Advertiser reporter Beverly Creamer, who has chronicled the steadily mounting toll at UH, reported that the total damage assessment at UH is approaching $100 million.
It's not clear how much of the financial jerk will be picked up by insurance. We hope it will be the lion's share but realistically expect it may be much less.
What is crystal clear, however, is that we as a community simply can't afford to let this happen again. It won't do to hear officials suggesting there's no urgency because it's a 50-year or 100-year flood so it's our grandchildren's problem.
Let's get started on this crucial project now.
