State considers Mother's Day 1999 likely was the last day the general public legally set foot in Sacred Falls State Park.
appeal on Sacred
Falls liability
Earl Anzai says the ruling
appears to be based on a
"very subjective standard"By Debra Barayuga
dbarayuga@starbulletin.comAnd the state's top attorney is seriously considering appealing the court ruling that the state was at fault for the eight deaths and numerous injuries suffered in the May 9, 1999, rockslide.
"It would be very foolish of us if it did reopen with this kind of ruling on the books," Attorney General Earl Anzai said yesterday.
Circuit Judge Dexter Del Rosario ruled Tuesday that the state knew about previous rockfalls that caused injuries or, in one case, killed a 4-year-old girl in 1982, but failed to adequately warn visitors of the severity of the rockfall hazards, particularly in the waterfall area.
"It's very troubling because it seems to be a very subjective standard or one that requires perfection, rather than adequate warning," Anzai said.
"We believe there's some expectation that the public has some responsibility to read and to take the signs into account," he added. There were at least 10 signs warning of falling rocks and/or rockslides at the beginning and along the 2-mile trail into Kaluanui Valley, he said. Whether the signs were too wordy or too brief, were posted too high or too low or had bullet holes in them, "the point is, the person could read that (sign)," Anzai said.
Denise Antolini, who teaches tort law at the University of Hawaii, said the ruling raises complex policy issues for the state and for the counties.
"The main challenge for the state is to closely look at the risks in the areas that it makes available to the public in hiking and recreation and start to make really tough decisions about controlled access and warning signs."
Antolini suspects that after this ruling, there will be more uniformity in the signs at all state parks.
"There's national standards and guidelines on how to convey risk information, and the state obviously needs to do a better job and get up to speed," she said.
The state has already begun this effort, more recently at Manoa Falls where a landslide earlier this year prompted its closure.
The falls reopened on Mother's Day, but hikers no longer can splash in the pools and are forced to keep a distance by barricades and signs warning of possible landslides.
There is also a state task force that is reviewing signs at beach parks after a bill was passed in recent years giving the state and county immunity from shore-break accidents.
Jon M. Van Dyke, also a professor of law at the university, said the state has to strike a balance between giving people adequate warning but allowing them to experience the state's natural wonders in their natural state.
Citizens can sue the federal government for injuries suffered at Hawaii Volcanoes National Park, but they rarely do, said spokeswoman Mardie Lane.
In one case in the 1990s, two men who went past warning signs and rope barricades into a restricted area were scalded by steam, she said.
A federal court threw out their suits against the government.
In a second case in the 1970s, a man walking at night fell into a crack in the earth. The government provided assistance with his medical bills, she said.
In several other cases, some including deaths, no suits were filed.
The reason is twofold, she said. Many visitors have thoroughly studied the park and its hazards before they arrive. "They come with an arsenal of literature," Lane said.
Besides that, park officials make a extensive efforts to educate and protect visitors, she said.
Visitors can see obvious hazards, such as deep cracks in the ground, she said.
The park educates them about hidden hazards, such as acre-size "benches" of new lava at the shoreline that can collapse into the sea without warning, throwing up waves of scalding water.
Another hidden danger is methane explosions, caused by lava igniting underground concentrations of the gas created by organic matter.
Signs are posted, visitors are given brochures and rangers guide people, Lane said.
But some things are left wild. "You can't fence and sign everything," she said. "You must keep your senses about you."
One reality the state faces, however, is that state parks are "horribly underfunded, and that puts the state between a rock and a hard place," Antolini said.
In the Sacred Falls case, Del Rosario had found that the state did not do an adequate job of surveying the risks involved or evaluating rockfall incidents so future accidents could be prevented.
Doing so would have been a time-consuming and intensive effort, Antolini said.
"It's very difficult to provide safe access and appropriate signage in a park system that doesn't have adequate resources -- and that is another tragedy."
Because of insufficient funding, the state may be forced to close areas that otherwise would remain open if it had more resources, she added.
Del Rosario did note that given the unique geological features at Kaluanui Valley and the nature of the rockfall hazard at the waterfall area, "no amount of caution could have avoided injury in the event of a rockfall."
This raises the question of whether any sign would have been adequate to prevent the tragedy, Antolini said.
State Rep. Colleen Meyer represents the district where Sacred Falls and the adjacent Maakua Gulch trail, which also remains closed, are located. She said at some point individuals have to take some responsibility for their safety and that there is no way the state can guarantee something will not happen.
"How many signs are enough signs?" she asked. "If the state is going to be sued every time someone is killed, pretty soon everything is going to be off limits."
Star-Bulletin reporter Rod Thompson and the Associated Press contributed to this report.
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Hiking and conservation groups worry that the negligence ruling in the Sacred Falls lawsuit could lead landowners, including the state, to restrict access to some natural places. Hiking and conservation
groups fear trail
access restrictionsBy Diana Leone
dleone@starbulletin.comSpokespeople for the Sierra Club, Hawaiian Trail and Mountain Club, and the Nature Conservancy said they regret the loss of eight lives and dozens of injuries at Sacred Falls on May 9, 1999. But they want nature lovers to be able to choose where they go.
Suzanne Case, executive director of the Nature Conservancy, said Circuit Judge Dexter Del Rosario's ruling that the state was at fault at Sacred Falls "could have a dampening effect on private landowners who allow the public onto their land for recreational use."
The conservancy, which brings visitors onto its conservation land, is not "going to shut things down or anything, but we'll probably be a little more cautious," Case said.
Sierra Club Director Jeff Mikulina said the ruling surprised him. "In the big picture, it points to the need for taking care of our state parks. Close to 80 percent of visitors to our state parks are tourists, so there is a need for signage, interpretations and warnings," Mikulina said. "That was the whole key to this (Sacred Falls) lawsuit."
Improving warning signs in state park and recreation areas is part of the Department of Land & Natural Resources' ongoing Environmental Risk Assessment and Management Plan, said Curt Cottrell, manager of the department's Na Ala Hele trails program.
The risk assessment began after the Sacred Falls tragedy and may be finished in 2003, Cottrell told the Star-Bulletin last month.
The department wants standardized signs to warn of land-based risks, similar to those on beaches, Cottrell said. Those signs are still in the development stages.
"But we have 1 million acres of undeveloped property," Cottrell added. "It's impossible to develop signage for every single area people want to go play."
Other DLNR efforts have included a review of state recreation sites by a team of U.S. Forest Service experts and training in risk assessment for 60 DLNR employees, Cottrell said.
Since Sacred Falls, the most publicized closure of DLNR-managed land was when Manoa Falls Trail was closed three months earlier this year after a rockslide, which caused no injuries. The trail was reopened with fencing that keeps people away from the rockfall hazard area.
Officials said at that time that their caution was increased by lessons from Sacred Falls.
Chairman Gil Coloma-Agaran said several other DLNR sites were closed in the past three years due to safety questions. Kalapana Beach on the Big Island was closed permanently because of lava. Uluwehi Falls and Hanakapiai Valley, both on Kauai, now have reduced access to their waterfalls similar to the Manoa Falls arrangement.
Continuing the risk assessment work in the wake of Del Rosario's ruling is "not a matter of speeding up, but more a matter that we take all the steps we need to take (to see) that signs, management and public access is appropriate," Coloma-Agaran said. "Part of any kind of risk assessment is, you have to continually revisit areas you manage."
Coloma-Agaran said that Sacred Falls and the nearby, and geologically similar, Maakua Gulch would stay closed at least as long as litigation continues.
Hawaiian Trail and Mountain Club "hikes regularly on trails that are a lot more dangerous than Sacred Falls," said member Steve Brown, "but we're aware of the dangers."
His concern about the Sacred Falls ruling is that "the result is going to be, perhaps, closure of more trails because the state is going to be concerned about losing taxpayers' money and rightly so."
At the same time, he said, "you have to realize when you're out in the woods and the mountains, there's an inherent danger."
State of Hawaii
