Big Isle brush fires
nearly contained

Evacuated residents
return to find their
homes sooty but safe

WAIKOLOA, Hawaii » Caution stopped Big Island firefighters short of saying they have contained two huge grassland fires.

Firefighters continued to mop up the 25,000-acre fire that ran along the mauka edge of Waikoloa village starting Monday. Yesterday, firefighters shifted efforts to complete fire breaks around a 2,000-acre burn that started Tuesday along Akoni Pule Highway, 12 miles to the north.

Only a single house, easily protected by firefighters, was within the area of the Akoni Pule fire, Chief Darryl Oliveira said.

In the meantime, residents who evacuated the 2,200-home Waikoloa community Tuesday returned to find homes untouched by flames but sometimes heavily dusted with soot.

Resident Jan Sears closed windows and shut doors before leaving at 3 p.m. Returning at 8:30 p.m., she discovered soot on everything in the house.

During the afternoon, Sears had watched one block of the town after another disappear in dense smoke. "We grabbed our animals and our laptops, and off we went," she said.

They formed a caravan of four cars, herself and neighboring family, two men, three women, a 5-month-old girl, four cats and a dog.

Her little kitten Lilo was "totally freaked out," tears pouring out of her eyes.

They drove past police wearing masks to protect themselves from smoke. Firefighters were in the thick of the smoke.

Coastal hotels offered refuge, especially the Hilton Waikoloa Village, which put up 43 people on beds in a ballroom and provided meals, said American Red Cross representative Barney Sheffield.

But the refugees in the caravan could not take their animals to a hotel, Sears said. They drove to a friend's house, stayed for a few hours, then returned home.

Police let them through. The evacuation was officially lifted at 5 a.m. yesterday.

By midday, firefighters realized the Akoni Pule fire was a bigger hazard than the Waikoloa fire, which was boxed in between Waikoloa Road fire breaks.

Six helicopters were used at Akoni Pule, including for the first time two National Guard helicopters, a UH-60 Black Hawk and a CH-47 Chinook.

The Black Hawk carries water loads of 640 gallons, and the Chinook carries 2,000 gallons at a time, the National Guard said. County helicopters carry only 125 gallons at a time.

The military helicopters took water directly from the sea, a quarter-mile from Akoni Pule. The Waikoloa fire, four miles from the sea at its closest point, was too far for them to fly, and the 1,000-gallon "frog ponds" used by the Fire Department could not come close to filling the 2,000-gallon Chinook water container, Oliveira said.

At the end of the day, 23 county firefighters and other personnel were still mopping up the Waikoloa fire while 52 were fighting the Akoni Pule, Capt. Gary Sturdy said. Some of them worked 36 hours straight.