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Vandalism
shuts doors of
Kihei’s library

The facility was hit twice
last week and reopens Tuesday
after safety measures are installed

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By Crystal Kua
Star-Bulletin

Tiny shards of glass had to be carefully wiped from thousands of books at the Kihei Public Library after windows were smashed in the first of two acts of vandalism at the South Maui library this past week.

State Librarian Virginia Lowell said that when vandalism hits a public library like the one in Kihei, everyone suffers.

"It's kind of like when a school gets vandalized: It's a crime against all of the people. Because of the acts of one or two people, the public is denied services," Lowell said.

The library was closed today and will not reopen until noon Tuesday so safety measures can be installed.

"We're supposed to be serving the public, but we can't do that," Kihei Public Library branch manager Janet Fehr said.

The first vandalism incident occurred sometime last weekend.

The library is closed on Sundays and Mondays, so when the janitor arrived at 6:30 a.m. Tuesday, she found glass and rocks on the floor, Fehr said.

Rocks were thrown through windows that were 10 feet off the ground, shattering three of the windows. A BB gun damaged three other windows. The children's section of the library was primarily affected.

"It was pretty bad. It was all over the children's books, shelves and in the books," Fehr said.

Staff took down thousands of books from the shelves and wiped, and the carpet was vacuumed three times.

"We get a lot of kids who take their shoes off. We want to make sure, because some of the shards of glass were small, we wanted to make sure that nobody got hurt," Fehr said.

An open can of beer was also dumped in the library's book drop, which contained 300 to 400 books dropped off by patrons over the two days the library was closed.

"It was like a brewery in there," Fehr said of the book drop when it was opened up.

Several books were saturated and destroyed, but staff was able to rescue most of the books by wiping them down and spraying them with a deodorizer to get rid of the beer odor, Fehr said.

As a result of that incident, the library was closed most of the day on Tuesday so that staff could clean up the mess. Fehr said they were able to open up for three hours that day.

Then on Thursday night, vandals struck again.

"They had taken bricks from our garden and smashed the spotlight that illuminates the street sign," Fehr said.

The 18,000-square-foot building is relatively new, opening in 1996. It is the largest library in Maui County and the third busiest on the island.

The library's patrons have been told what happened, Fehr said. "The ones that we talked to have been very upset and concerned."