WAIMEA — Folks braced for the worst after the mountainside at Waimea Bay came crashing down early yesterday morning — near the same place where fallen boulders shut down Kamehameha Highway for 95 days in March 2000.

Following an assessment of the damage after sunrise, the Department of Transportation described yesterday's slide as "substantially worse" than the 2000 slide.

Yet, department heads remained optimistic that the road would be at least partially open by tomorrow.

"We expect to be open maybe within a couple of days," said state transportation director Barry Fukunaga.

The reason: A 1,000-foot metal and mesh impact fence placed between the highway and the cliff face after the rockslide seven years ago did its job by holding back most of the boulders, some weighing thousands of pounds.

That — and a $7.5 million road realignment also completed after the earlier slide — minimized the amount of damage by moving the highway farther from the cliff.

Officials heaped most of their praise on the mesh impact fence. The brunt of the rockslide was caught by three 15-foot sections of the fence, which were destroyed.

"This fence system actually did what it was designed to do, which was to arrest the impact of the boulder fall, and dissipate the collapsing rocks and boulders" Fukunaga said.

Brennon Morioka, deputy DOT director, said the 2000 slide was essentially three large boulders that fell across the road. Although yesterday's slide was much larger, the mesh fence thwarted the bouncing boulders.

"It's meant to provide 350 tons of thrust resistance," Morioka said. "It's meant to catch a very large boulder falling down from a cliff. If this fence weren't here, that whole slide would be clear across the road."

Morioka said it appeared the debris that did hit the highway did little damage. He said repairing the impact fence shouldn't take long.

"What we did experience, though, was some intrusion into the roadway," he said. "And those are some pretty sizable rocks.

"So, the process really is to pick that up and clear the area and hopefully be able to reopen the roadway, initially maybe a single lane."

By yesterday afternoon personnel from the Department of Land and Natural Resources along with officials from the Historic Preservation Office had completed an inspection of caves above the rockslide site and found no bones, or iwi, of deceased Hawaiians. Archaeologists also were expected to come in to determine the stability of the cliffs, Morioka said.

Scott Ishikawa, spokesman for the DOT, said state crews expect to begin repelling down the cliffs today to remove any remaining loose rocks and materials.

"The hope is to at least have contraflow traffic on one lane of the highway by Monday morning for the rush hour," said Ishikawa.

Civil Defense had shut the highway down in both directions of the slide, and a pair of massive excavators were brought in to break down boulders and load the rocks into six trucks that continually hauled away the rubble throughout the day.

MAJOR INCONVENIENCE

Meanwhile, motorists tried to deal with the fact that traffic could no longer get from Hale'iwa to Pupukea and vice versa. Individuals, however, could move by foot from one side to the other via Waimea Beach and the roadway leading from Pupukea.

Although no one was injured in the rockslide, for some motorists the inconvenience began shortly after the boulders fell. One driver apparently ran the roadblock in a failed attempt to traverse the debris, and his battered Ford pickup ended up stranded among the boulders.

It took a bulldozer and tow truck to dislodge and remove the vehicle, Ishikawa said.

"The driver ditched the truck and walked home," he said.

Around 2 a.m. yesterday, Jason Garrett, 19, was heading from Hau'ula to his home in Mililani when he stopped for a police roadblock on the Pupukea side near the curve leading to Waimea Beach Park. Garrett was told the road would be closed for some time.

"We drove back to Kailua and then took the H-3," Garrett said. "It took us an hour and a half more to get to Mililani."

About that same time, Scott Weeks was having a similar experience on the other side of the divide. Weeks was driving home to Pupukea from Hale'iwa at about 2 a.m. when he met a roadblock at Waimea Bay Beach Park.

So Weeks spent the next four hours sleeping in his Toyota Corolla in the beach parking lot.

"Not another slide," Weeks said, when he awoke to the news. "Argh!"

Like untold others, he decided to drive back through Hale'iwa, down the island and back up to Pupukea through the Windward side.

"I'm so close," Weeks said. "I've only got to go two miles but I'm going have to drive 40 miles to get there."

SHUTTLE FOR WORKERS

Just like seven years ago, Adela Trilles and her housekeeping colleagues at the Turtle Bay Resort found themselves walking across the sand in their hotel uniforms to get to a shuttle that would drive them to work in time for their 8 a.m. shift yesterday.

"I guess we'll be walking again," Trilles said.

Wes Fernandez and Al Pacheco, both of Wai'anae, had prepped their dirt bikes for their usual Saturday at the motocross park at Kahuku. But they pulled over when they saw truck after truck with motorcycle after motorcycle in it headed in the opposite direction toward Hale'iwa.

Each of the drivers pointed at Fernandez and Pacheco to turn around.

"We seen everybody signalling us so we stopped," Fernandez said.

Like others, Fernandez and Pacheco decided to make the long drive around the island to fulfill their motorcycle plans.

"We get our minds all worked up," Fernandez said. "You just do what you got to do."

Reach Will Hoover at whoover@honoluluadvertiser.com and Dan Nakaso at dnakaso@honoluluadvertiser.com.