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Honolulu Lite
A few random reflections on the New Year and the days that preceded it: New Year is dangerous
your healthThe butcher bill for New Year's madness was high: a couple of people dead, a couple seriously injured, a couple of houses burned. The new $25 fireworks permit did nothing but encourage outlaws to buy illegal fireworks and jack up the price of firecrackers for the few law-abiding souls.
After I slammed the new permitting scheme in a column last week, my wife bought a permit for 5,000 firecrackers because she thought our house would be staked out by a undercover fireworks enforcement team eager to make me pay for my blasphemy. Well, I paid. Through the nose.
With permit in hand, we learned that many places that usually sell firecrackers weren't doing so this year because they didn't want to deal with the paperwork. We found a little Mom and Pop (get it?) fireworks shop where we paid $36 for a box of fewer than 2,500 firecrackers. Although the permit allowed double that amount, the price was too steep.
It was quieter this New Year's than last, but that was to be expected. Despite what the millennium sticklers say about 2001 being the real beginning of the new millennium, there was no way Year 2001 would pack the same punch as Year 2000.
There were hardly any aerials, at least over our view plain in Kaneohe, but the aerials that were fired did plenty of damage. An 80-year-old woman was burned to death in her Palolo home after an aerial hit it. It's hard to think of a more pointless waste of life.
Actually, maybe not. In Waipahu, a couple guys got into a liquor-fueled pointless argument and one of them was shot dead with a rifle. Sanity 0; Insanity 2.
Other statistics for the three-day weekend included several other major house fires, a fatal head-on car crash in Olomana and a pedestrian run over on Kamehameha Highway in Kaneohe.
These sound more like box scores from the Middle East than Hawaii, except in the Middle East they are waging a holy war. In Honolulu, we're just waging fatal partying.
Speaking of the pedestrian accident in Kaneohe, I know something about that area since I walk by it almost every day. There's a crosswalk in the middle of the block, between the Windward Mall and Lilipuna Road. It shouldn't be there. There are no lights to stop traffic, which is always heavy and fast. It is a death trap, especially for the elderly or infirm who depend on the kindness of drivers to allow them to cross the street. It would take about a minute for an elderly person to shuffle up to the intersection where the crossing would be safer. But the crosswalk is near a bus stop and I guess the old folks assume the city wouldn't put a crosswalk there if it wasn't safe.
We saw an elderly woman almost get hit in that crosswalk on Sunday. I asked my wife how many people would have to be killed or injured there before the city wises up and either puts in a stop light or gets rid of that idiotic crossing. Obviously, a few more.
Sorry if this sounds more like Honolulu Heavy than Honolulu Lite today. But along with the partying, it's good to take a couple minutes at this time of year to reflect on serious matters. Now get out and enjoy the new year. And as the old sarge used to say on "Hill Street Blues": Let's be careful out there.
Charles Memminger, winner of
National Society of Newspaper Columnists
awards in 1994 and 1992, writes "Honolulu Lite"
Monday, Wednesday and Friday.
Write to him at the Honolulu Star-Bulletin,
P.O. Box 3080, Honolulu, 96802
or send E-mail to cmemminger@starbulletin.com.
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