HILO — Exposed steel bars, crumbing concrete and other hazards have prompted Hawaii County to close the Laupahoehoe boat ramp, the only ramp along the Hamakua Coast.

The ramp was shut down because of deteriorating conditions June 9, said Clayton Honma, deputy director of the county's Department of Parks and Recreation.
“We put in caution tape, closing the boat ramp for all activities,” he said, adding signs and barricades also have been put up to alert users of the hazards.
Waves have eaten away at the concrete ramp, exposing jagged reinforcing-steel bars called rebar, Honma said. County maintenance workers have been trimming the bars as they appear, but the situation has still become unsafe, he said.
Also, uneven surfaces have left the ramp “unusable for all purposes,” the county said in a statement announcing the temporary closure.
Honma said he'd like to have a short-term solution in place so the ramp can be reopened by the July 4th holiday weekend.
“There's no other boat ramp for about 40 miles in both directions,” he said of the nearest launching sites in Hilo and Kawaihae.
It's now fishing season, increasing the impact of the closure, he said.
“That's the one we want to get open so they can enjoy the activity out there,” Honma said. “The fish are biting.”
Design plans for a new boat ramp already exist, he said.
Honma said e-mail updates are being sent to affected boaters to keep them aware of the ramp status.
The county is responsible for the launch ramp and shoreline features, while the federal government maintains the breakwater, a wave absorber, the depth of the entrance channel and the turning basin, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' Honolulu District wrote in a February 2005 information paper on Laupahoehoe Harbor.
The ramp was damaged by high surf in December 1991, three years after it was built, the document adds.
The county asked the Army Corps of Engineers in February 1999 to examine modifying the harbor to reduce wave damage. By June of that year, however, both the county and the Corps had abandoned that study “due to the lack of local funds for potential feasibility investigations and future construction,” the Corps states in its 2005 update.
“Local users currently assert that the ramp is unusable due to damages,” the Corps added more than four years ago.
The launch ramp is the site where 20 students and four teachers were killed when a tsunami washed away Laupahoehoe school on April 1, 1946. A monument at the county park lists the victims' names.
Following the deadly wave, which killed 159 people, the coastal village was moved to higher ground and the area turned into a park.