ANAHOLA — “How can you go somewhere so beautiful and make it ugly?” Kaua‘i Fire Department Capt. Jeremie Makepa asked as he looked out to the coastline off Anahola in late July.
Makepa stood, staring out at the waves, surrounded by derelict and abandoned vehicles.
Using drone footage from April, the department was able to spot over 200 out-of-service vehicles on this parcel of over 400 acres belonging to the state Department of Hawaiian Home Lands. That doesn’t include the possibly hundreds more hidden by overgrowth or torched and stripped with just skeletal remains covered by brush.
On the makai side of Kuhio Highway, passersby can catch a glimpse of some of the abandoned vehicles. Heading toward Anahola Beach Park, even more cars seemingly stacked on top of each other line the side of the road.
“We stacked about six cars up over here before, and the guys would just come with a big truck and just drag them out of the way,” Makepa said. “They would just keep doing that, so we kind of buried some cars so they cannot drag them away.”
Makepa is with KFD’s Fire Prevention Bureau, and he’s not just moving cars around to keep people out of the area.
Anahola is one of the county’s hot spots as identified at a brush-fire-mitigation meeting held every year in anticipation of the hot, dry summer. Anahola is a top priority, Makepa said, and specifically this area, where a brush fire can quickly turn into a chemically fueled vehicle fire.
As of July 29, some 135 brush fires have been reported islandwide for a reported 65 acres burned. Forty of these brush fires occurred in Anahola, accounting for 39 acres. The year before, in 2020, a total of 209 brush fires burnt 505 acres across the island. Forty-three of these fires were in Anahola, burning 70 acres.
While these are on DHHL acreage, the KFD is the responding agency, with the Kealia Kaiakea fire station the nearest to Anahola.
“It’s probably about five minutes (to respond), but then you have to unlock the gate, go real slow so you don’t damage your vehicle,” Makepa said.
And without a water source and the fire engines being too big to drive through these unimproved roads best for an all-terrain vehicle or motorbike, another mitigation tactic came to mind.
In May, the county Department of Public Works came onto the property to widen some of the narrow roads, creating fire breaks and a grid system so that a brush fire will be less likely to spread to another patch of land, protecting the firefighters and equipment.
About three miles were cleared from May 27 to June 16, for about $61,000.
It was necessary to reduce risk, Makepa said. The brush fires on this vastly dense and undeveloped land can spread fast, and once the blazes reach a car, the danger increases.
“Because of the fuel and all of the plastic and rubber … it’s going to definitely burn a lot more and intensely because of what’s in there,” Makepa said.
And when these fumes are released, the wind carries them into neighboring communities, Makepa said.
“So if we did get one big brush fire in this area with all the cars that you’ve seen, so much toxic smoke is going to come off of that,” he said.
The lands in Anahola carry a land-use designation of Special District in DHHL’s Kaua‘i Island Plan, meaning they include environmentally or culturally sensitive lands, a DHHL spokesperson said. DHHL will be installing guardrails and fences in the area as resources become available.
“Eventually, when the tow companies come — Hawaiian Home Lands is going to set up a contract for cleanup of all of this — when they come, this is just easier for them to take and tow away,” Makepa said of the stacked cars.
This work has been a long time coming.
“The firefighters at the station have been waiting for a long time (to do this),” Makepa said. When he became the prevention captain in January, helping his community was top of mind, he said. Hopefully, what’s done here can be used as a template for other problem areas.
What’s a shame, Makepa said, is that only one accessway is open on this land, keeping others out.
“Some people like to come in and fish, some like to ride their motorbike,” Makepa said. “But the one who is dumping (the cars) ruin it for everyone.”
Makepa lives up the road from the site, so this project hits close to his heart. He and his wife walk around the neighborhood at night, and by the morning he can sometimes spot new abandoned cars or tampering of old abandoned vehicles at the site.
“Like menehune in the middle of the night just working,” Makepa said. “If (only) they could do it constructively instead of destructively.”
Darn tourists.
Yes. Obviously, it is the horrible visitors that are destroying our paradise.
How can we expect the poorest in our community, the ones that need to buy a car on its last leg, to pay to decommission a car? Possible solution. Add $500, or whatever it costs to remove a car, to the cost of every new car and use that money to dispose of the old cars. Turn in any old car and get $500. End of problem?
Anything brought on island and sold should bear the cost of recycling. Pay the true cost of using these products.
Stop over tourism! See what they do?
It’s called Meth. Do something about it and maybe we will see that coastline stay pretty.
Just one more reason to ban tourists forever. Leaving their trashed out rental cars in the bush. Sheese.
People caught dumping old cars and other rubbish should be locked up for one to two months, then flown back to the mainland on military aircraft,(if they came from there) at no charge to Kauai residents.
No more of this BS taking advantage of a situation. If they were born here, they can stay, Kauai and the other islands are going downhill, roads are overcrowded, locals can’t afford to live here, lets get real here, no more of millionaires manipulating the outcome.
Enough already,,,, return Coco Palms to be a Hawaiian Historical site, Elvis is gone, return the respect to the Aina, quit taxing residents so much, we used to have Prop 15 until “the state needed to raise taxes”….
Kauai cannot accomodate all these mainlanders who want to come here and stay..
There comes a point where the island is maxed out, and I think we are just about there…..
What on earth does this have to do with tourism? Tourists don’t even know this car graveyard exists.
We visited Kauai last month and visited this beach and area, and let me say, I don’t think tourists are the problem with their cars. There’s a lot of homelessness and this beach/area was one of the worst spots we came across. Unfortunately with homeless people, you also get trash, burned out cars, etc.
I definitely agree that something needs to be put in place for the locals to be able to afford homes. We looked at some properties and even the smallest home was going for $450K.
For the car decommission, I definitely agree with nobody about the $500 fee to be paid at purchase of new vehicle.
On the Big Island I work for a Rubbish and Recycling Company, and thru the County we have a contract, where the County picks up the disposal fees to dispose of the vehicles. It costs $110.00 per ton, so long as the person goes on the County Website and fills out a waiver form to qualify for their abandoned vehicle to be disposed of. The only other stipulation would be that the person needs to get their junk vehicle towed to the recyclers scrap metal yard, submit their waiver form and everything is taken cared of…
I’m not sure if Kauai has a recycler whom scraps metal, but if so that maybe an option to look into.
Here’s a good write-up on the problems with cars and why it’s so bad here: http://dav.idmorgan.com/hawaii-abandoned-car-problem/
So make everything around DMV easier and there will be less of this problem. Next thing is to do something with the land rather than just posting a bunch of signs that say no trespassing. Criminals don’t care. Maybe get the bike path built?
And be careful with the word “tourist”. The people that stay for a week aren’t going back here – they have no idea about this amazing land. A slow and ineffective government that doesn’t fix the DMV, and not to mention, swiftly prosecute drug dealers are some root cause problems IMHO.