Sekiya's Restaurant in Kaimuki dumped all its food and everything disposable yesterday and began to disinfect the restaurant from top to bottom after the worst outbreak of E. coli 0157:H7 in the state's history.

Six customers who ate at Sekiya's suffered bloody diarrhea in December — followed by a seventh in February — even after the restaurant corrected health inspection violations, said Dr. Paul Effler, state epidemiologist for the Health Department.

The head of Hawai'i's restaurant inspectors said the case shows the state doesn't have enough inspectors to keep restaurants in line.

"This is not surprising," said Peter Oshiro, standards office supervisor for the state Department of Health. "We're not inspecting at the frequency we need to be. That's why we get these problems."

When Sekiya's failed a second inspection on Feb. 8, the owners agreed to the unprecedented steps of cleaning and disinfecting the restaurant before the Health Department shut it down, Oshiro said.

"This thing was getting out of hand," Oshiro said. "It was a real mess. ... We've never ordered anyone to go this far — to dump all their stock."

Employees yesterday began a two-day sanitation education program at the restaurant, which is just one step toward getting the restaurant reopened someday, Oshiro said.

Restaurant employees said the owners did not want to comment. A recording on Sekiya's answering machine said the restaurant would be closed "for maintenance" until the end of the week. It could not receive messages.

Loyal customers who did not get the word yesterday drove over orange cones blocking Sekiya's parking lot across from Kaimuki High School and walked to the restaurant's shuttered glass door.

They were greeted with a handwritten sign that read:

"Closed for maintenance

Sorry for the inconvenience"

Mike and Rosemarie Fu and her son, Keith Fernandez, have eaten at Sekiya's two to three times a week for the past 30 years and were looking forward to a lunch of sushi, mac salad and deep-fried sweet potatoes.

"My (other) son's going to be disappointed," Rosemarie Fu said. "He's expecting chow fun noodles, salad and sushi for his dinner."

When his mother suggested they eat at Subway instead, Fernandez said, "It's not the same. Sweet the sushi here. I way like it over Subway."

Twelve-year-old Po'okea Lupenui stayed home from school with an upset stomach. So his mother, Jennifer Taa, brought him to Sekiya's to make him feel better.

He was planning on gorging on teriyaki beef sticks — with extra sauce — plus saimin, rice and a strawberry ice cream sundae.

When told the restaurant was closed, Po'okea could not hide his disappointment.

Taa's family has been celebrating special occasions at Sekiya's for years and Po'okea had his seventh birthday there for a simple reason:

"It's great food," he said.

REPEATED VIOLATIONS

But Health Department inspectors repeatedly found violations in the way Sekiya's employees handled the food that Po'okea loves.

The customers who fell ill went to their doctors, who then ordered stool samples, Effler said. Technicians at the state laboratory created a "DNA fingerprint" of each sample that was checked against a nationwide database on the Mainland, Effler said.

"They didn't match anything else on the Mainland," he said, "but they matched each other, which suggests a common source."

In each of the six cases, the patients had eaten at Sekiya's within seven days of their symptoms.

"This was not a coincidence," Effler said.

Anyone who suspects exposure to E. coli 0157:H7 should see their doctor, who would take stool samples, he said.

After the positive diagnosis by the first six Sekiya's customers, restaurant inspectors spent four hours at the restaurant on Christmas Eve watching the operation.

"The conditions of the restaurant were poor," said Oshiro, the inspectors' supervisor.

Among other violations, employees did not wash their hands. And raw food — and items that touched raw food — were mingled with cooked food that was ready to be served, he said.

Follow-up inspections on Dec. 26 and Dec. 27 showed that the restaurant "corrected all major violations," Oshiro said. "Everything was good."

Inspectors returned to Sekiya's on Feb. 8 after the seventh customer showed the same DNA fingerprint for E.coli 0157:H7.

"Many of the same problems that were there in December were noticed in February," Oshiro said.

PERMIT SUSPENDED

Health officials suspended Sekiya's permit to operate and were prepared to shut down the restaurant when the owners agreed to a series of dramatic steps, Oshiro said. He said they agreed to: