Rockfall prevention bills failed
By Will Hoover and James Gonser
Advertiser Staff Writers
NANAKULI — As experts yesterday were demolishing and preparing to remove the boulder that came to rest next to a Nanakuli house, neighbors tried to resume a normal life while warily watching the rock-filled mountain above their homes.
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"It's scary," said Belinda Anderson, as she played in the yard with her pitbull, Tako. "I have trouble sleeping at night."
Rock expert Rod Anderson bores one of 25 holes into the boulder. A chemical which expands was poured into the rock to slowly break it apart.
Anderson was one of 39 residents from 11 area homes evacuated Thursday night when the boulder tumbled down. She said she now keeps the family vehicles parked between her house at 1428 B Akowai Road and the mountain. She and her neighbors wonder if their homes will be safe from falling boulders.
"That's what we're trying to figure out," she said.
Two bills that advocates say would have addressed such rockfall hazards failed in the recently concluded session of the Legislature. One would have directed the state to conduct a survey of potential danger areas and the other would have required counties to enact zoning ordinances to protect against land and rock slides.
Proponents say residents are nearly defenseless in dealing with rockfall danger on their own, and legislation is needed to assure public safety.
"These bills, because of the objections from the city, didn't even get a hearing from the Senate," said Rep. Sylvia Luke, D-26th (Punchbowl, Pacific Heights, Nu'uanu Valley), who introduced the bills. "Even if we couldn't have prevented the recent rockslide incidents, we can prevent future rockslides."
The bills cleared three House committees, but when they crossed over to the Senate they died in the Transportation, Military Affairs and Government Operations Committee.
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Committee chairman Sen. Cal Kawamoto said the bills were not heard because of concerns by City Corporation Counsel David Arakawa.
Rock expert Rod Anderson handles a chemical substance that will expand and slowly break the Nanakuli boulder into 100-pound pieces.
"All the parties should get together and iron out their differences before it becomes a bill — the city, private developers and the public," Kawamoto said.
Luke said she will try again next year.
The bills were the result of two years of effort by Nu'uanu residents, who have sought legislation to help minimize the chance of rockfalls since 26-year-old Dara Rei Onishi was killed in 2002 by a 5-ton boulder that tore through her bedroom as she slept.
"Our community is trying to do something about it," said Nu'uanu resident Barbara Chu. "We testified on bills. We feel we are not strong enough, and these senators are not hearing us."
In Nu'uanu and elsewhere, some residents have put up expensive rock-catching fences to try to protect their property. Others have hired consultants to survey the property above their homes and assess the potential danger. Many just pray they are not the next victims.
Following Dara's death, Patrick Onishi, her father, filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the owners of the property above their Henry Street home — Hiroko and Vance Vaughan — and hired geologists Masa Fujioka & Associates to do a survey of the property.
The survey, completed in April, found a cluster of large boulders at the top of a 50-foot cliff that needs immediate mitigation. The boulders have been loosened by runoff water and several appear likely to fall, the report said.
The report recommends that the Onishi family move out of their home until the rocks are secured and says others homes in the area are also in danger.
Vance Vaughan declined to comment on the situation because of the pending litigation.
Onishi said his family, which has lived there for years, no longer sleeps in the bedrooms close to the hillside and is thinking about moving out.
Moving is not an option for many of the residents of Akowai Road in Nanakuli.
Yesterday, chemical expanders were being used to break apart the boulder that came to rest against the residence at 1428 M Akowai Road, said Rod Anderson, a rock expert with the company contracted to demolish the rock.
After drilling 25 two-foot holes into the 10- to 12-ton boulder, Anderson added the chemicals. He said the chemicals would act like a slow explosive to expand the boulder with 6,000 tons of force per cubic meter. After about 12 hours, the boulder would crack from the pressure and break into smaller, more manageable rocks weighing about 100 pounds each, he said.
Civil engineer Ardalan Nikuo, with Earth Tech, the firm in charge of evaluating conditions along the lower ridge for the state, said the boulder had rested on state property for decades before finally becoming unstable and toppling, hitting the house about 30 feet away on private land.
"This rock was sitting right on the border, state side," he said.
Because it fell from state land, Nikuo said the state would remove the boulder as well as stabilize or remove any rocks that are on the embankment near the house.
Nikuo said crews would not touch rocks on private land "except for rocks that may have been disturbed because of the movement of this big rock."
He said he knew of no plans to inspect or evaluate any rocks higher up on the ridge.
"Anything else above, that's another issue," he said. "At this point we are concentrating on the incident that occurred and rectifying it."
Deborah Ward, spokeswoman for the state Department of Land and Natural Resources, said the state is still awaiting a cost estimate for the work that's being done near Akowai Road.
Onishi, the Nu'uanu resident, said communities all over the state are in the same situation as Nu'uanu and Nanakuli, with homes at the base of steep slopes with rocks that could fall at any time. He said lawmakers cannot continue to pass the buck and wait for consensus to get something done to help protect people.
He would like to see a survey done in all areas where homes and lives are at risk from rockfalls and standards set for development on ridges in these areas to make sure boulders are not loosened in the course of construction. He said communities across the Islands need to approach their elected officials about getting something done.
"After going through a tragedy as we have, you can't help but feel that this may be a bigger issue for us than the rest of the community," Onishi said. "But there has been so many occurrences of rockfall that I'd hate to see our inaction in addressing these issues to be a reason why there is another loss of life."
Reach Will Hoover at 525-8038 or whoover@honoluluadvertiser.com. Reach James Gonser at 535-2431 or jgonser@honoluluadvertiser.com.
