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Saturday, January 1, 2000



NEIGHBOR ISLANDS

Tapa

HILO

Tapa

All that hoopla, but
‘nothing happened’

Star-Bulletin staff

Tapa

HILO -- On the Big Island, assistant Civil Defense chief Bruce Butts summed up the situation:"Nothing happened. ... Everything went smoothly."

The Hilo Hospital emergency room reported no one had to be treated for breathing problems caused by fireworks. Police said they had the usual number of miscellaneous complaints.

Civil Defense director Harry Kim had been prepared for the worst, but expected no problems.

The island's electric grid, for example, had been tested over and over. Hawaii Electric Light Co. president Warren Lee had told Kim that 65 percent of its system was so old it was built before there were computer chips to run things. And the island normally uses a maximum of 65 percent of Helco's equipment at any given moment.

Representatives of 25 public and private agencies had been called to Civil Defense headquarters by Kim in case of trouble. Before midnight, two large boards listed each agency with a check mark besides the word "No," meaning no trouble, and the date, Dec. 31.

Dwayne Miyashiro, Big Island manager for GTE-Hawaiian Telephone, commented, "The phones are ringing like crazy. That's good news." The system suffered no breakdown.

About 1 a.m., most people, including Kim, went home. A few went into the Civil Defense kitchen to eat Portuguese bean soup.


KAUAI

Tapa

Kauai rings in spectacularly
ordinary New Year

Star-Bulletin staff

Tapa

LIHUE -- Kauai County officials who spent the evening at the county's Emergency Operations Center reported a trouble-free New Year.

There were no Y2K problems in county departments, it was a slow night at police drunken driver roadblocks and only two small fires were attributed to fireworks.

The Wilcox Hospital emergency ward as of 12:30 a.m. said no one sought treatment for respiratory problems from fireworks smoke.

The maternity ward clocked in the first baby, a boy, at 12:22 a.m. The couple's car broke down on the way to the hospital and quick work by a Kauai police dispatcher was credited with getting them to the hospital just in time.

Revelers on Kauai's North Shore were treated to spectacular fireworks displays on opposite sides of Hanalei Bay: one put on by the Princeville Hotel, the other by novelist Michael Crichton ("Jurassic Park") at a beach party in Hanalei.

Two veteran Kauai surfers, writer Chris Cook and photographer David Boynton, became the first to surf Hanalei Bay in the new millennium, riding a north swell shortly after midnight.


MAUI

Tapa

Year’s traffic fatalities
up 33 percent on Maui

Star-Bulletin staff

Tapa

WAILUKU -- Seven people on Maui suffered slight burns, and firefighters put out a few small brush fires in an otherwise peaceful New Year's Eve on Maui with no traffic fatalities.

But the number of traffic fatalities in Maui County increased 33 percent in 1999 from the previous year. Fatalities included police officer Gene Williams.

Police Lt. Charles Hirata said that of the 15 crashes involving 16 fatalities in 1999, seven accidents were alcohol-related.

The increase is occurring at a time when the county has been facing a shrinking budget, and the police drunken-driving task force has been reduced to three police officers from five.

Hirata said he believes eight of the 16 people who died in the crashes might have survived if they had been wearing seat belts. He favors enacting a law requiring rear passengers to buckle up.

Under Hawaii law, front-seat passengers are required to wear seat belts.

But Hirata noted that rear-seat passengers ages 4 and older are not required to wear seat belts.

Hirata said that of the eight people last year who died and were not wearing seat belts, five were rear-seat passengers.



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