‘Suspicious’ brush fire
threatens Ewa Hongwanji
A brush fire that burned five to seven acres off Renton Road and threatened the Ewa Hongwanji Mission was brought under control at 3:47 p.m. yesterday, Honolulu Fire Capt. Dennis Yamada said.
Twenty firefighters with four engines, a tanker truck and a ladder truck responded to the 1:59 p.m. alarm. An abandoned pump house was burned in the fire, but the mission, at 91-1133 Renton Road, and nearby homes were spared, Yamada said.
The fire is "really suspicious" because it seemed to have started in three different locations, Yamada said. No one was at the mission at the time of the fire.
"We were able to stop it before it advanced," Yamada said. "If the wind had caught it and it went towards Barbers Point ... there are a lot of old homes, wooden structures."
Firefighters also put out at least four other brush fires yesterday: on a trail mauka of the end of Waimano Home Road; at Schofield Barracks, where a controlled burn went out of control; on Kili Drive near the Makaha Valley Tower; and in Sunset Beach.