CRAIG T. KOJIMA / CKOJIMA@STARBULLETIN.COM Grace Pacific worker Robert Abila stood near a boulder that fell onto the H-1 freeway near Makakilo yesterday morning, sending two motorists to the hospital. The boulder, on a trailer in the Grace Pacific Corp. Makakilo Quarry, was being weighed.

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Boulder causes 2 crashes

Rocks tumble onto the H-1
during prevention work
at a Makakilo quarry

A 3-ton boulder rolled down the Makakilo hillside yesterday morning and landed on the H-1 freeway, hospitalizing two motorists who crashed into the rock.

The boulder fell in the westbound lanes, about three-tenths of a mile east of the Makakilo offramp, at 8:31 a.m., Kapolei police said.

Both female motorists who struck the boulder were taken to the Queen's Medical Center in serious condition.

One of them was identified as the oldest sister of University of Hawaii starting quarterback Timmy Chang.

"She was on her way to work when it happened," Kalei Chang said of her sister Leighanne Siaosi, a student counselor at Nanakuli High & Intermediate School. "She's OK but she broke her right leg. She had to have a pin inserted."

After the boulder tumbled down the hill, it stopped in the second lane, police said.

Siaosi's Ford Explorer and a Subaru four-door vehicle driven by the other victim tried swerving in opposite directions to avoid the boulder.

"One vehicle hit on one side, and the other hit the other side," said Kapolei police Capt. Greg Lefcourt. "The injuries were non-life-threatening."

The boulder was the largest of several that had rolled down from the property of the Grace Pacific Corp.'s Makakilo quarry.

Company officials said the boulder had dislodged while workers were trying to make improvements to prevent such rockfalls.

Sidney Quintal, Grace Pacific's vice president of marketing, said in a press release yesterday that "this activity was being conducted due to the recent heavy rains as a means of helping to prevent rocks from rolling loose in the quarry."

"Safety is a priority at all times for our operations, and we have launched a full investigation of the incident to determine what occurred," he said. "We are also fully cooperating with authorities in their investigation."

Grace Pacific workers acted quickly to remove the boulder and smaller rocks from the freeway after police rerouted westbound traffic at the Kunia exit to Farrington Highway.

Police reopened the highway at about 9:45 a.m.

State Department of Transportation officials said they were aware of dangers at the hillside. A survey conducted last year that identified and ranked Oahu's most hazardous areas for potential landslides rated the Makakilo landslide area 95th out of 112, they said.

"Even so, we were looking at natural landslides, not man-made ones," said Scott Ishikawa, Department of Transportation spokesman.

"We're still investigating, but the department is going to require that the company put their safety plan in writing if they do similar work in the future so we don't have a repeat of what happened."