State should build
hospital with barsThe issue: Health Director Bruce
Anderson has proposed building a
secure facility to house patients
who pose a risk to society.BRUCE Anderson, the state health director, has explained with each escape of a patient from the Hawaii State Hospital that the facility is a hospital, not a prison. His proposal that the state build a fenced-in facility for housing criminal patients therefore is not surprising and has merit. Dangerous patients should be held in strict security without compromising the treatment of other patients, and a separate facility is a logical means of achieving that goal.
The state has been under a federal court order -- to which it consented -- for nearly a decade to bring the Kaneohe facility up to federal standards. The hospital is built to accommodate 108 patients but now houses 168, having converted classrooms into patients' rooms. Anderson's goal is to reduce that occupancy to 140 by January. The Legislature has provided $8 million in the current fiscal year and $14 million next year to improve the hospital's programs and facilities.
To match the national average of 22 beds per 100,000 population, Hawaii would have to maintain 264 mental hospital beds. Anderson has said the comparison is not fair because it does not account for patients treated in private hospitals and the Hawaii Health Systems Corp. facilities.
Anderson's description of the Kaneohe facility as a hospital, not a prison, is rather benign. Leland Chang, a court-appointed monitor of the hospital, noted recently that 76 percent of patients who entered the facility from July 2000 to April of this year were sent there by criminal court judges. It "should be thought of in that manner rather than thinking of it as a traditional state psychiatric hospital," Chang added.
Six beds at Halawa Medium Security Prison are reserved for mental health patients, as are 35 beds at Oahu Community Correctional Center. Anderson recently explored the possibility of expanding treatment at the state prisons, but state Public Safety Director Ted Sakai pointed out that the prisons already are overcrowded and provided the rejoinder that correctional facilities are built to be prisons, not hospitals.
Anderson proposes moving patients posing the highest security risk to the new building, which he says would be different from the prison system's treatment program. He plans to ask for special authority to order construction to begin immediately to house 40 to 50 who have been sent to the hospital by criminal courts. What obviously is needed is a facility with the accouterments of a hospital and the security of a prison.
Easier may not be better
to check out hot lavaThe issue: Hawaii County is
improving a road to allow sightseers
a less arduous view of Kilauea's
dangerous lava flows.HAWAII County's decision to fix a road to make it easier for people to see lava from Kilauea Volcano flowing into the ocean illustrates how an effort to improve safety can instead lead to more danger. It is an example of how the government attempts to curb risky behavior in a situation where common sense should prevail.
The Big Island county is restoring a segment of a road along the Puna coast that at one time connected Hilo to the Chain of Craters Road in Hawaii Volcanoes National Park. The road has been overrun by lava flows from the current eruption that began in 1983. The lava has continued to stream into the ocean, sending plumes of acid-laden steam into the sky and attracting thousands of curious tourists and local residents to hike to the site about three or so miles from where the paved road ends.
People who still live in the area carved a rough road through the fresh layers of lava, but nonresidents were banned from using it because of the danger the flows presented. Now the county is laying gravel over that road so more people, even those without off-road vehicles, can drive close to the flow.
Volcanic terrain presents myriad hazards. What appears to be solid rock is often a thin crust over molten lava. Steam explosions, when flows meet pockets of water, can rupture at any time, releasing toxic plumes of gases. Benches that form along the ocean often collapse or slide into the sea. Scores of people have been injured or killed in the volcanic landscape.
Mayor Harry Kim reasons that preventing sightseers from entering the area is nearly impossible so improving access and controlling their movements would be a better way to reduce hazards and costly rescues. The county will put up signs to warn people of the risks. It will also direct hikers along set trails to avoid falls into cracks and fissures.
However, no amount of warning signs and advice can prevent foolish behavior. Rangers stationed on the national park side of the cut-off road are often frustrated as visitors without protective footwear or needed liquids blithely head off across treacherous lava fields, ignoring verbal and posted warnings, only to return bleeding and thirsty.
Kim says that the improvements are "good for Hawaii, for the understanding and appreciation of nature's phenomenon." However, providing easier access will likely attract more people than would otherwise venture into the area, and a true understanding of nature encompasses not only its beauty and wonders, but also its dangers.
Published by Oahu Publications Inc., a subsidiary of Black Press.Don Kendall, President
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