In a special series on fire vulnerability, HPR reporters Ashley Mizuo and Savannah Harriman-Pote examine how various Hawaiʻi communities identify shortcomings and find solutions to their wildfire risks. This is part two:
Hanapēpē Heights is a residential area nestled in Southwest Kauaʻi with acres of agricultural land on one side, and a cliff on the other.
The neighborhood has one way in and one way out on Moi Road.
When a fire earlier this month ripped through 1,100 acres of land, coming just several yards away from some homes in Hanapēpē Heights, Kauaʻi Emergency Management Agency Administrator Elton Ushio made defending that area a priority.
“The only way in and out — ingress and egress — is through Moi Road, so the responders are well aware of that,” Ushio said.
“Throughout this incident, they almost continuously had some units in the area and whenever they'd see something flare up, even days later, they'd respond immediately to defend that path up and down," he said.
In the case of the July fire, the wind was blowing west, toward the acres of farmland and away from the homes in Hanapēpē Heights.
However, Jean Souza, who lives in the neighborhood, knew that if the wind had blown in the other direction, the outcome could have been different.
“What happened a week ago had the best possible outcome. You could imagine, it could have been horrible. We could have been toast in a flash,” Souza said.
She used a mango tree in the distance to decide whether she should evacuate.
“That was my marker that we had lost control or it was too big,” she said.
A fire break and firefighters are all that stood between the flames and that mango tree.
Kauaʻi Fire Department Chief Michael Gibson explained that it’s the law to have fire breaks at least 30 feet from every structure. The department can also require up to 100 feet if it’s deemed to be a high-hazard area, such as around a child’s day care center or elderly care facility.
“Those fire breaks give our firefighters under normal conditions enough room to get in and protect the structures and to control the fire,” he said.
Souza is part of the Hawaii Hazards Awareness and Resilience Program (HHARP), which helps communities prepare for natural disasters. It requires neighborhoods to come together and plan for emergencies.
Hanapēpē-ʻEleʻele has been an HHARP community since 2019, although Souza and another neighbor, Malia Nobrega-Olivera, worked for four years to get it certified. However, after the pandemic, they both said it has been difficult to find meeting spaces to bring people together and work on emergency planning.
“As these things become so real for communities all over, I think this is the right time to do that outreach when we can because people are seeing it and experiencing it,” Nobrega-Olivera said.
Hanapēpē Homestead Community Master Plan
Atop Hanapēpē Heights, the Department of Hawaiian Home Lands owns approximately 350 acres, earmarked for a three-phase residential development. The first phase was completed in the mid-2000s, and in June, the department notified the contractor, Hawaiian Dredging, to commence the second phase.
Phase three of DHHL’s Hanapēpē Homestead Community Master Plan would include an additional road out of Hanapēpē Heights to the main highway. Officials think the road could solve the neighborhood’s problem of having only one way in and one way out.
However, DHHL Land Agent Kaipo Duncan said phase three is years away.
“It's not even funded yet. So it won’t happen until we get the funds,” he said.
Those funds are highly dependent on the state Legislature’s decisions on what DHHL projects should be built.
In the meantime, a significant portion — about 300 acres — of the land is left unmanaged.
“We have done fire breaks to the west of the Moi Road homes. That's the extent, pretty much, of our management making a 100-foot wide fire break,” Duncan said.
“After the Kauaʻi fires this summer, we could look into perhaps having someone put horses, cattle, just to have a presence because they leave permanent fire breaks in that area. So that's kind of what we're looking at and discussing," he said.
In the meantime, Ushio said that there are cattle roads through the agricultural land that could be used to evacuate residents if there is a strong need.
“Unfortunately, they're not mapped out where the public can see where they are,” Ushio said.
“But it's always in our playbook if we had to use it. And in this incident, evidence that it can open quickly can be seen in the fact that [KFD] did not wait very long. Very quickly they're able to get into the fallow fields and fight from inside," he continued.
Utilizing back roads through agricultural land
Those back roads through the agricultural land were part of the evacuation process in Kaumakani, a neighborhood west of Hanapēpē Heights.
The fire came as close as 15 feet from homes in the area.
Howard Greene, vice president of Gay & Robinson, a prominent local landowning company, had to swiftly evacuate the village's approximately 1,000 residents. These residents lived in plantation-style homes, many of which are old and single-walled structures built in the 1940s.
Greene tried to get residents to leave through an emergency route in the back of the village to not block the main highway and allow emergency responders to get through.
“All these fire engines and police were showing up there. So we were trying to stay out of the way of the firefighting efforts too,” he said.
Greene explained that the fire was a lesson learned about communication.
“We were directing people out the backside of the village, which most of the tenants are not used to going that direction,” he said. “It all worked out, but it was basically just because we were super cautious and early on called for evacuation.”
Although Gay & Robinson did not lose any homes, animals or significant crops, it’s still looking at thousands of dollars of damage to pipes and infrastructure.
However, Greene noted that active cropland, where plants were growing, served as a natural firebreak that helped prevent the fire's spread.
“It just burned like crazy and it burned right up to the sunflower here and just stopped because the sunflower was green and irrigated,” he said.
“Fortunately, we had those sort of buffer zones in a few areas, and having the land in productive [agriculture], it was recently tilled and planted. There was nothing really to burn there. That saved us.”
The Kauaʻi Emergency Management Agency urges residents to keep their phone's emergency alerts turned on, maintain a battery-powered radio, have a go-bag packed for evacuation, and have an emergency plan ready.
The Kauaʻi Fire Department also has information for residents on how to make their homes more resilient to wildfires.
Ushio recalled watching firefighters' locations and listening to them on the radio from the Emergency Operations Center during the Hanapēpē-Kaumakani fire.
“If you could hear the radio traffic and how they said, 'Make our stand here,'” he said.
“The fire was right in their face and by God, they saved that town.”
How has Oʻahu's Pacific Palisades community advocated for improved emergency preparedness in their neighborhood? Read part three of HPR's series on fire vulnerability:
