Maui police creating list
of suspects in cane fires
WAILUKU >> Maui detectives are gathering information from Hawaiian Commercial & Sugar Co. that could help develop a list of suspects who may have set fire to sugar cane fields, causing more than $500,000 in losses.
"Right now, what we're doing is we're going over every lead that the mill has given us," said police Lt. Tivoli Faaumu, who is leading a task force investigating the fires. "We're also asking the public for assistance."
Seven major suspicious fires and a number of minor ones have burned 860 acres of premature sugar cane, disrupting the harvesting operations, company officials said.
Police and company officials said detectives are checking to see if there are similarities between the current fires and a number of unscheduled sugar cane fires in the 1980s.
Faaumu said police have no suspects.
"We just started looking into it," he said.
The company, a subsidiary of Alexander & Baldwin Inc., operates the largest sugar cane plantation in the state, with 37,000 acres.
One fire, which burned about 460 acres along Haleakala Highway at Kehua Junction on Aug. 6, had several points of origin.
Hawaiian Commercial General Manager Stephen Holaday said at least one other fire had two points of origin and that most of the fires began in the afternoon when the winds were strong.
Holaday said the fire has forced the company to harvest young sugar cane with a smaller-than-normal yield and push back harvesting ripe sugar cane a couple of weeks, again reducing the yield.
Holaday said his company will be consulting with task force members to determine a reward for information leading to the conviction of whomever is responsible for the fires.
"The bottom-line hope would be the fires would stop and, second, whoever is responsible would be prosecuted," he said.
Anyone with information can call CrimeStoppers on Maui at 242-6966 or police at 244-6400.
