Raging brushfires in Anahola and Waimea kept most of the Kaua‘i Fire Department personnel busy yesterday, scrambling engines and brush trucks from all over Kaua‘i to cover the raging blazes. They got help in Anahola from home owners and others
Raging brushfires in Anahola and Waimea kept most of the Kaua‘i Fire Department personnel busy yesterday, scrambling engines and brush trucks from all over Kaua‘i to cover the raging blazes.
They got help in Anahola from home owners and others who came out with heavy and light equipment, from backhoes to gardening tools to water hoses. Personnel aboard Inter-Island Helicopters and U.S. Navy helicopters from the Pacific Missile Range Facility assisted firefighters.
While there was no major damage to homes or other structures as of press time last night, the two fires off Waimea Canyon Road in Waimea and near Kealia and Kawelo roads in Anahola burned quite a bit of state and private land.
A firefighter at Anahola was to be relieved around 6:30 p.m., as he had an injured hand and needed to get it treated, according to information heard on police and fire radio frequencies. No other injuries were reported.
As of 6 p.m. last night, the Waimea fire was under control, but firefighters were still working on the widespread Anahola blaze to contain it.
KFD Battalion Chief Theodore “Teddy” Williams, who was on scene in Anahola, said it was probable firefighters would be working through the night to put out the blaze and all the hot spots. There was no way to make an accurate determination on how much acreage had charred at that time, he said.
Three helicopter crews were helping out as the sun went down over the Anahola mountains last night, and everyone from the Lihu‘e Airport Crash/Fire/Rescue crew to Anahola residents were pitching in with KFD firefighters to control the blaze.
Meanwhile, firefighters in Waimea continued to make sure the brush didn’t reignite.
The fires started within a couple hours of each other, filling the Kaua‘i air with screaming sirens as KFD personnel scrambled to cover both the blazes and other medical calls.
The Waimea Canyon fire started first, around noon, with an Anahola fire igniting around 2 p.m., according to information heard on the police and fire radio frequencies. The crew aboard one Air 1 (Inter-Island) rescue helicopter had an unusually busy day, flying from the Waimea fire (once that spot was controlled, at around 4 p.m.) to Anahola to continue efforts of helping KPD personnel on the ground. That chopper was joined by the back-up Air 1 bird and a Pacific Missile Range Facility helicopter to get water on some hard-to-reach areas.
Meanwhile, Anahola residents protected their own homes where they could, from using garden hoses to keep their foundations flame-free, to residents pulling brush with a back hoe to keep it from combusting.
While no structures were reported in jeopardy on the Westside, the Eastside fire lapped at the bases of numerous houses.
Seven fire trucks from across the North and East shores fought the fire all afternoon, successfully keeping the fire away from homes on the two mauka Anahola roads, and a concrete communications building also had flames within the vicinity, witnesses on the scene said.
Homeowners and residents did their part, too, armed with garden hoses and light equipment, putting down hot spots and cutting brush to keep the fire from spreading.
Ray Manaku of Anahola was not even home when he got the call Wednesday afternoon.
But, luckily, his relatives were, and through their combined efforts, they were able to save his home from the brush fire that raged in the grassy fields mauka of the Anahola state Department of Hawaiian Home Lands subdivision on Kawelo Road.
“There used to be a fire break here,” Manaku said as he made his way along a dirt path leading to his home. “But, I guess they couldn’t find anyone to take care of it, so now it’s just (guinea) grass.
“My house, it just got singed a little,” Manaku said while wielding a hoe to pull dirt across some of the hot spots that appeared along his property’s boundary.
But, clearly, the fire had encroached to within inches of his home. “Lucky, my relatives (saved) my house,” he said.
“I was at the store, and look at how much (area) got burned in less than an hour,” Manaku said while surveying the blackened field, the signs of the fire-break berms now revealed on the denuded landscape.
Other residents watched the fire, whipped by the brisk winds, from vantage points of their homes’ rooftops as the fire moved towards the mountains, and Kealia.
The Rivera family was concerned that the fire threatened a livestock pen on the far end of Kawelo Road, and Shellie Rapozo, her daughter Shayna Kamoku clutched in her arms while wielding a garden hose, noted that the fire destroyed all the chicken coops.
The sound of cackling was interrupted by a abrupt thump as a fleeing chicken crashed into a window of one of the houses along the road.
Police officers intermingled with residents while awaiting the arrival of a pumper from KFD’s Kapa‘a fire station, and throughout Kawelo Road, a mixed flow of traffic from curiosity-seekers to children on skateboards and bicycles heightened the excitement.
Nathan “Dukie” Lemn, a county worker, said he had just come home from his job when he saw all the smoke. Lemn was one of the citizen volunteers who manned garden hoses to keep the Kawelo Road homes safe, some of those homes still empty as their owners were still at work.
“This is the first time it’s come this close,” one spectator noted. “Last year, it burned in this area, but the flames were kept well away from the homes. This year, the flames came right up to the boundary.”
A former Lihue Plantation sugar worker organized a crew to backfire the dry guinea grass in an attempt at trying to battle the rapidly burning blaze. This tactic worked, as the fires set from the homes side was pushed along by the trades, dying as it met the on-coming blaze.
By 6 p.m. last night, the fire had not been contained, but was not immediately threatening homes.
Smoke, however, from the Eastside fire, could be seen as far away as Lihu‘e Airport yesterday afternoon, adding a few ominous clouds in a bright-blue sky.
And, while firefighters were able to avert any tragedy yesterday, the dry weather Kaua‘i has experienced this year is definitely fueling the blazes in the past few days.
According to the National Weather Service Honolulu forecast office Web site, an extremely dry May, with rain gauges reporting 40 percent to 60 percent of normal rain amounts, has dropped many rain gauges below normal for the year.
While most of the gauges have reported 70 percent to 90 percent of normal rain for the year, Wai‘ale‘ale is just barely holding on to its wettest spot on Earth moniker, with 63 percent of the normal rain amounts falling so far this year, according to the Web site. And little relief is expected, with sunny skies and only isolated showers expected for the next five days, according to NWS forecasts.
