Big Island littered with unexploded ordnance
| • | Map (opens in new windwo): Where the explosives are |
By Kevin Dayton
Advertiser Big Island Bureau
HILO, Hawai'i — Unexploded bombs and shells from long-ago military training exercises litter huge swaths of the Big Island, from Hilo and Ka'u to Waimea and North Kohala.
Known deaths and injuries from unexploded military ordnance on the Big Island: • A civilian highway worker was killed by exploding ordnance in 1945 while working on a road project three miles south of Waimea near Mamalahoa Highway. • Two Parker Ranch employees were killed and three more were injured in 1954 when a mortar round exploded as the men were getting on a truck after working on a pasture fence. The deaths of Joseph Iokepa and Theodore Bell, both 21, prompted a clearing operation on Parker Ranch lands that turned up more than 900 grenades, mortars and shells. • Seventeen-year-old Waimea resident James O'Hare died in 1971 when a 40 mm grenade exploded as he attempted to dismantle it. Police said the youth found the grenade at the Pohakuloa Training Area. • Two Schofield Barracks soldiers were injured in 1983 on Parker Ranch land near Pu'upa about four miles from Waimea when an old round exploded during a military exercise. Thomas Skipon suffered shrapnel wounds to the stomach and Darby Holsing had shrapnel wounds to his feet. The military swept the area with metal detectors after the incident.
At least nine people have been killed or injured by old artillery rounds since the 1940s. The abandoned ordnance is a particular threat to children, who may find the objects and not recognize the dangers they pose.
Deaths, injuries since 1945
Ka'u Paio was digging up a patch of ground for a garden at Waimea Middle School two years ago when he uncovered a live grenade. Paio, who was working with picks and shovels with three other students, handled the grenade before putting it down and telling a teacher. Military ordnance experts were called to the school and found three more grenades in the garden plot.
"It was spooky," said Ka'u, now 14.
His grandmother, Mary Paio, said school staff earlier this month asked her to keep two of her other grandchildren from playing in bushes mauka of the school for fear they would find more unexploded weapons.
"They are not confident, they're not too sure," she said of the school staff. "So what is it going to be, leave it until somebody gets hurt?"
Paio, a school bus driver, questions the pace of the military cleanup of old bombs in Waikoloa and Waimea, particularly in areas frequented by children.
As part of a five-year, $50 million federal cleanup of the 123,000 acres known as the Waikoloa Maneuver Area, contractor American Technologies Inc. this month began using sophisticated equipment to search for unexploded bombs, shells and grenades, starting with about 340 acres closest to the developed areas of Waikoloa Village and another 340 acres in Waimea.
The Army Corps of Engineers, which is overseeing the cleanup, has identified five other Big Island sites totalling more than 11,000 acres that contain unexploded ordnance, but it does not have money to clean up those areas. The list does not include the 51,000-acre impact area at the Pohakuloa Training Area, which is still used for live-fire exercises.
The Army Corps acknowledges that at the current budget of $10 million a year, it would take more than 65 years to find and dispose of the unexploded ammunition in the Waikoloa Maneuver Area.
Crews searching the Waikoloa Village area, home to about 4,800 people, have been covering a bit more than six acres a day, using sophisticated equipment that can distinguish metal objects such as a buried grenade from the iron content in lava fields, said Timothy "TJ" Roberts, American Technologies Inc.'s senior unexploded-ordnance supervisor. Once the company confirms the location of ordnance, explosives experts from Donaldson Enterprises are called in to handle disposal.
In one area, search crews found four 155 mm rounds lying on the ground in an 80-acre section of land, which is the biggest concentration of large rounds seen so far in the cleanup area, according to Johnie Wells, director of unexploded-ordnance operations for Donaldson.
One area with a rash of buried "anomalies" that could be old shells is the Waikoloa Community Park in the middle of the village.
Department of Defense regulations require that when crews dig up an "anomaly," the assumption is made that the object is the most destructive type of explosive found in the area. In Waikoloa Village, that is a 155 mm artillery round, which can fling shrapnel within a radius of more than 2,500 feet.
"We're talking about in some cases in Waikoloa Village, we'd have to evacuate up to 500 homes if we want to investigate," said Charles F. Streck Jr., project manager for the Army Corps of Engineers.
To limit the need for evacuations, the Army Corps is looking for equipment that can better identify buried objects without digging them up. Another strategy is to use shields to limit the hazards from explosives when they are detonated in place.
Still, a "programmed evacuation" to temporarily move residents out of portions of Waikoloa Village may be necessary, he said.
"This is the first time I know of in Hawai'i where there will be this kind of an effect on an established neighborhood," Streck said.
Last year county firefighters said they were surprised to discover an unexploded 155 mm round while battling a brush fire near the western edge of the village.
The dangers hidden in the tall grass and kiawe trees of Waikoloa are probably more familiar to most people in West Hawai'i now, since there have been community meetings to explain the project and prepare residents for the possibility of evacuations to remove explosives uncovered near populated areas.
The cleanup project also includes an educational campaign warning people not to handle the old munitions.
Hawai'i County Civil Defense Administrator Troy Kindred predicted that as residents become more aware of the hazards, they will demand more action on the cleanup effort.
"I think, in general, any responsible person who has children who may play out in those areas at some point will be concerned, as they should be," he said. "The more we become aware of it, the more the average citizen is going to become concerned about this issue and want to see steps taken to mitigate it."
Waimea resident Michele Chavez-Pardini said she first heard about the risk of unexploded ordnance at a community meeting on the cleanup project.
Then in September, her husband, Mick, dug up a piece of a rocket while working on a new entryway just outside the front door of their home near the middle of town.
Experts were flown in from Honolulu to remove the object, which turned out to be part of the propulsion end of a rocket and not the explosive end, she said.
"You wonder, where is the other end of that? Did that explode, or is the other end somewhere right around our yard still?" Chavez-Pardini said.
"What made me nervous about it was my son loves to dig in the yard. This was on one side of the tree where the roots were, and my son had been digging just on the other side a very deep hole."
Critics of the Army's plans to buy up to 23,000 acres near the Pohakuloa Training Area as a maneuver area for a new Stryker brigade combat team's 19-ton armored vehicles have seized on the issue of unexploded bombs and shells.
Cory Harden, one of the more outspoken opponents, argues that before the military is allowed to acquire new land, it should be required to clean up environmental hazards and unexploded bombs on the old sites it abandoned.
"If you have a teenager, and you know he hasn't cleaned his room, you don't let him go out and do anything new," she said. "To me it is just blatantly obvious where their priorities are, and the people of this island obviously are not a priority."
Lt. Col. John Williams, public affairs officer for the Army's Stryker transformation, said demands that the military clean up old training sites before it acquires new land was one of the most common themes emerging from the 3,000 public comments the military received on the Stryker project.
Still, Williams said the issue of unexploded ordnance is being addressed by the Army Corps of Engineers, and is completely separate from the Stryker proposal.
Reach Kevin Dayton at kdayton@honoluluadvertiser.com or (808) 935-3916.
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