Star-Bulletin
Rows of bars keep debris from overloading
the chain link fence along the H-3.
Dave Thorne of Kailua was curious about an oddly designed fence that's appended several feet behind the generic chain-link fences alongside H-3, bridging small valleys on the mountain side of the highway. They're substantial, post-like affairs, more like metal bars to a cage than anything else. Bars hold off
the threat of debrisMaybe they're avalanche barriers. But we don't recall seeing much snow piling up on the Koolaus.
Maybe they're to keep the raptors penned up -- but when was the last time you saw any sort of dinosaur crossing the highway? Mongoose, yes; Deinonychus, no.
We were also curious about the great number of manholes (personholes? oneholes? access portals?) regularly sited every hundred feet or so in the Pearl Harbor-bound side of H-3, but there are none on the Kaneohe-bound side.
According to Marilyn Kali of the State Department of Transportation, the metal-bar fences are placed where mountainside valleys are most likely to funnel brush or debris into the chain-link fence during heavy storms. Because, if the chain-link goes, the debris spills out onto the highway.
There were terrible debris- and mud-slides onto Windward highways during the 1960s and '70s; much of the design work on H-3 takes this into account. It's one reason the highway is elevated -- slides go underneath.
As for the manholes, Hawaiian Electric has a major utility line crossing the mountains, and it's hidden under one side of the highway. The manholes are accesses for electrical workers.
Are you listening, Manoa people who don't want want power lines and towers squatting on Waahila Ridge? You can hide them under a superhighway.
Burl Burlingame, Star-Bulletin.
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