Pali commuters A tree that fell on Pali Highway sometime before 4 a.m. yesterday slowed town-bound traffic until after 8 a.m. because a road crew could not be reached to report to work early, said a state official.
chafe at slow pace
of tree removal
By Diana Leone
dleone@starbulletin.com"I think it was a matter of timing," Highways Administrator Glenn Yasui said. "If it had happened any other time, we might have been able to respond faster."
He said the Department of Transportation will evaluate the incident to see if it could have done things differently.
Yasui said the department learned of the downed tree at 4:45 a.m. when Honolulu police reported a car had knocked it into the right town-bound lane of the Pali just mauka of Waokanaka Street in Nuuanu. The tree was also apparently partially blocking the left lane.
"We do have at that time of night a road hazard removal crew, a couple of people on duty, and they responded, but it was too big for them to handle," Yasui said. That crew has a pickup truck and normally removes trash or other obstacles on the road, he said.
The Oahu district maintenance supervisor tried to reach his crew at home to bring them in early, but they all had left for work already. So, Yasui explained, the supervisor left the Honolulu base yard, near Fort Shafter, at 5:15 and arrived at the fallen ironwood alone about 5:30 a.m.
"It was a 20-foot-long tree with a diameter of 18 to 24 inches. He proceeded to cut the tree into sections himself, which took about 20 minutes to do," Yasui said. "I don't know if he used a chain saw or an ax. After it was cut up, with the help of one police officer, he was able to remove the largest section from the left lane."
The right lane remained closed until the crew arrived with a loading bucket and dump truck and removed three to four cubic yards of debris, Yasui said. He did not know what time they arrived, but said the road was clear by 7:50.
Meanwhile, traffic had been crawling from the Windward side to Honolulu. Kailua resident Lisa Kelso said that at 6:40 a.m., when she passed the tree, "I saw two policemen standing there being officious. They could have turned around and two of them within seven minutes cleared those logs and branches off the lane. It was a smallish tree, clearly something two able-bodied people could have taken care of."
Kelso said her 17-year-old son remarked that maybe they should get out and move it themselves.
"There were a lot of angry people," Kelso said. "I'm sure it was procedurally correct, but it didn't show any initiative."
Ingrid Steinwascher, who passed by about 8 a.m., said the equipment she saw used to pick up the tree seemed like "overkill" and that "even then no one had urgency. There were six or seven guys standing chatting, pointing, nobody hustling to clear the lane."
