Big Island fire
destroys 2,000 acres
While there's still some action
By Rod Thompson
off Hawaiian Paradise Park, the
earlier threat has eased
Star-BulletinHAWAIIAN PARADISE PARK, Hawaii -- Jess Crawford spent a nervous night at his rural Puna district home watching the glow of a raging brush fire a mile away color a quarter of the sky red. "We were a little scared. We were busy trying to figure out what to save," he said this morning after the danger subsided.
Civil Defense officials said the fire remained active today about half a mile from the edge of Hawaiian Paradise Park subdivision where Crawford lives, but was not advancing.
Crawford was among the residents on the southern side of the subdivision advised last night to prepare for evacuation, although the order to move never came.
The sky was raining ashes like snowflakes during the night, he said.
When he drove into Hilo today, he had to wash the sludge off the car window, he said.
Paradise Park community association President Patrick Walsh feared worse damage last night as the fire surged toward the subdivision.
"Half the sky is dark," he said at sundown. "It's black. The other half still has a pink hue to it."
The fire in the uninhabited 4-mile-wide expanse between Paradise Park and Hawaiian Beaches burned more than 2,000 acres by this morning.
Most of the fire had run along the edge of Hawaiian Beaches Monday before heading toward Paradise Park.
Keonepoko Elementary School, a Head Start program in Hawaiian Beaches and the private Malamalama School in Paradise Park were all closed today.
Quiet wind conditions early this morning kept the fire stable, the Fire Department said.
Residents of Ainaloa subdivision on the mauka side of the highway were put on a smoke alert and warned to leave their homes if breathing became difficult, Civil Defense official Bruce Butts said.
"It's very serious, very active," Civil Defense chief Harry Kim said.
From a daytime force of two helicopters and two bulldozers, one of which broke down, firefighters beefed up to a force of five bulldozers and five helicopters, including two from the National Guard, he said.
Lights and generators were brought in so the 75 people working in ground crews could see. With homes in Paradise Parking depending on rainwater caught in home tanks, water supplies were low not only for drinking and bathing but also for fighting fires, he noted.
Whenever fire trucks arrive to fight a fire in the subdivision, they tap into the water tank of the threatened home.
In a reversal of the process of the last several weeks -- when people carried drinking water home in jugs and canisters in response to severe drought conditions -- some are now pouring the water into their catchment tanks so they will be able to pump it through water hoses to fight fires, he said.
On the other side of the burn area, Hawaiian Beaches resident Rachel Kruse also was worried -- not for her own home in the center of the subdivision, but for neighbors along the boundary where the fire burned Monday night.
"We're going to go down to our neighbors (on the edge of the subdivision) and take our hoses," she said.
Unlike Paradise Park, Hawaiian Beaches is served by piped water from a private water system that draws on well water.
