Stairway
to Heaven
By Ken Ige, Star-Bulletin
Hiker Tracy Masuda ascnds the Haiku Stairs trail in a spot where there are no handrails.
The city wants Haiku Stairs saved
By Gordon Y.K. Pang
and the hiking spot reopened
Star-BulletinJim Flanigan remembers the first time he climbed the 3,922 steps to the top of Haiku Stairs. "I'd always wanted to fly a balloon," Flanigan said, recalling that climb along the wall of Kaneohe's Haiku Valley in the early 1980s. "And that was the closest I could get to flying a balloon and still be on the ground."
Those who trek to the top - up 2,800 feet - are rewarded with panoramic views of Windward Oahu, Leeward Oahu, even as far as Waimanalo.
Flanigan and other hiking enthusiasts may soon get a chance to again ascend "the Stairway to Heaven," which has been closed since 1987. The Coast Guard, which owns the structure, deemed it unsafe after vandals tore off sections.
Mayor Jeremy Harris this week sent a letter to Adm. Thomas Collins, commander of the 14th Coast Guard District, asking that the stairway and its Omega station, at the base of the stairs, be turned over to the city.
Harris said he's asking that the staircase be turned over at no cost, and that money earmarked to tear it down be used instead to fix it up.
Experts say it will cost about the same to do either.
"It's one of the most beautiful areas on the island," Harris said. "We'd hate to see it lost."
Windward Councilman Steve Holmes, a key backer of a city takeover, was ecstatic.
"I think the bottom line is that an important resource will be protected," said Holmes, who first climbed the stairs in the early 1970s. "The valley itself will be protected for watershed value."
By Ken Ige, Star-Bulletin
Tracy Masuda sits on one of the few level spots on the Haiku Stairs trail. The H-3 freeway is far below. This is a digital composite of two photos.
The Omega station is part of a worldwide navigational system that will become obsolete with new technology by Sept. 30. The Coast Guard is under orders to vacate the station and start removing the stairs by Oct. 1 unless otherwise directed.Cmdr. Timothy Belz, the Coast Guard's Hawaii district planning officer, said final disposal of the station and stairs lies with the federal General Services Administration.
"Our obligation is either to take out the stairs on city and county property, or repair them, whichever is lower in cost to the federal government," Belz said.
Belz believes "it would be much more expensive (to remove the stairs) because it would require the use of helicopters."
He estimated it would cost about $150,000 "to just replace the missing rungs and fix the ones that are bent and rusted."
The plan under discussion calls for the Coast Guard to fix the stairs, remove other military structures, including six tall antenna cables that stretch across the valley, and then turn over the stairs and Omega station to the city in 1998, according to one timetable.If the Omega station and the six antennas had continued to operate, the state would have been forced to build a Faraday shield around H-3 to protect motorists from the Omega transmitter's electromagnetic radiation.
There are no plans on how the city would operate and maintain the facility.
One proposal, touted by Holmes, calls for the city to contract with a private agency to operate and maintain the facility. If the site is run by a nonprofit agency, "we may be able to shield the city from additional liability," Holmes said.
Flanigan said an interested group could use the Friends of Haiku Valley organization, which has been inactive for years but is still alive because he kept paying incorporation fees for the nonprofit group.
Holmes disputes talk that Haiku Stairs is dangerous. "In all the years the stairs have been operated, no one has been seriously injured."
Questions have also arisen regarding the cost of maintenance, estimated a decade ago at $100,000 annually.
By Ken Ige, Star-Bulletin
The view of Kaneohe Bay from the hut near the top.
The Navy originally built a wooden staircase in 1943 to reach the cable facilities atop Haiku Valley for repair and maintenance.Preparing for a long Pacific war, Navy officials wanted a signal that could reach both Australia and the Indian Ocean.
The Navy discovered that the best way to accomplish that was by stringing copper cable between the peaks of two, 2000-foot mountains with vertical drops.
In the beginning, a cable car ran from the south side, where the stairs are, to the north to reach the antenna poles on the valley wall opposite the stairs.
Later, helicopters were used to reach the farther poles.
In 1955, the stairs were replaced with ones built of galvanized metal.
The Navy decommissioned the communications station in 1957, but Haiku was soon chosen to be a station for the Omega long-range radio navigational system. The Coast Guard took over operation of the system in 1972.
When the stairs were closed to the public in 1987, Flanigan and other supporters of the attraction protested and formed Friends of Haiku Stairs. Then-state land board Chairman William Paty suggested that the state might be willing to take it over.
At that point, the state estimated it would cost about $400,000 to refurbish.
Those plans were postponed and forgotten in the decade since.
City officials earlier feared they'd hit a glitch when the state Department of Hawaiian Home Lands suddenly entered the picture.
The 1995 Congressional Hawaiian Home Lands Recovery Act allows any federal fee excess properties in Hawaii to be obtained by DHHL.
DHHL does not know whether it can make a claim on the land, said Bob Freitas, a DHHL planner.
DHHL is exploring whether it can put up housing in the area, Freitas said, noting that the Coast Guard at one point considered using the land near the Omega Station for housing. But he said DHHL is not looking to interfere with any city plans to restore Haiku Stairs as a public hiking trail.
