A prolonged road blockage on Tantalus Drive has left some residents frustrated with the city and concerned about their safety.

Up until last month, residents could take one of two roads up and down Tantalus: Tantalus Drive on one side of the mountain, or Round Top Drive on the other.

But a landslide and fallen tree completely blocking Tantalus Drive has left residents with just one option. Getting around the debris is simply not possible, residents say.

“Having lived up here for well over 40 years, you couldn’t possibly get through or around or on top of it,” said Mark Bernstein, president of the Tantalus Community Association.

Mount Tantalus, an extinct cinder cone in Honolulu, is home to approximately 10,000 people, data from Point2Homes shows. The community — comprising Hawaiian homestead landowners, longtime locals and an enthusiastic bunch of bicyclists, hikers and hunters — enjoys a relatively private lifestyle, high up on a hilltop away from the fray of urban Honolulu.

Residents say that the roadblock on Tantalus Drive is too difficult to clear on their own, but the City and County of Honolulu says it is the responsibility of private property owners to address the situation. With no one taking the lead, the road is still closed nearly a month later.

“If a tree goes down on the Round Top side, all of the residents who live between those two trees will be trapped,” said Taea Takagi-Jones, who has lived on Tantalus for 31 years. “It just makes everyone more nervous when there’s only one way.”

Residents Struggle To Find A Solution

According to residents, the blocked road is the result of a series of events.

On June 25, a landslide brought down a slew of debris on the road, with more coming down the next day. Eight days later, a tree fell into the road, completely cutting off the area.

Wendy Camber, a coordinator of the neighborhood’s road cleanup events, said she went over to check out the situation soon after the tree fell.

“When something happens and it’s the road, I think, ‘Oh, our volunteers will clean it up,’” she said. “So I went up there to look and thought, ‘Oh no, this is much too big a job for the volunteers.’”

In addition to the tree, she said the road was caked in mud, dirt, debris and vegetation. Looming overhead was a massive tree at risk of falling, Camber said.

It wasn’t long before residents began calling the city for assistance. Camber said that the Tantalus community has a positive relationship with city officials, and that they typically send up a crew to clear the area within a few days.

But this time was different.

While the community has since received an update, Berstein initially said communication with the city was sparse.

City spokesman Ian Scheuring said that the hazardous conditions of the obstruction made it difficult to inspect, contributing to the city’s slow response time.

He added that clearing this particular road blockage is not the responsibility of the city, but rather that of the property owner whose land the debris came from. The property owner was issued a notice of violation on Monday, weeks after the tree initially fell.

“It is the responsibility of private property owners to maintain the trees on their property to ensure that motorists and pedestrians can safely traverse the roadway without being at risk of a tree falling down,” Scheuring said. “The city enforces that.”

The city is legally required to give the property owner 24 hours to clear the roadway.

“If they’re not able or willing to do that, then it triggers another sort of series of events on the city’s behalf where we could do the work and then charge, potentially, the property owner,” Scheuring said.

He cautioned that this work could be complicated. The fallen tree has a complex system of roots that makes it difficult to clear without leaving the area more susceptible to landslides and rock falls, he said. Removing it could put nearby homes at risk of damage, he said.

A Safety Hazard And A Growing Problem

The longer Tantalus Drive is closed, the more nervous some residents are becoming.

Camber pointed out that the closure could interfere with residents’ emergency access. She said that an ambulance or firetruck that chooses to go up the Tantalus side of the mountain would have to turn around.

“That’s just not right,” she said. “We’re supposed to have a road that delivers the care we need in a timely way.”

Camber also said that a tree could fall down on the Round Top side of the mountain, leaving residents trapped. It’s happened before, she added.

In fact, for a highly forested area like Tantalus, landslides, tree falls and road obstructions are far from uncommon. Because the mountain’s enormous trees are too expensive to cut down, Camber said that the community has no choice but to deal with the “wildness” of Tantalus and wait for them to fall.

And some residents say that the situation is just getting worse.

“We’ve seen a lot of changes,” said Alan Ewell, a former president of the Tantalus Community Association who has lived in the area for 32 years. “Even in that period of time, the roadsides have just become more and more overgrown.”

Ewell said that portions of the mountain’s road have been closed or blocked off for the past year and a half as crews have come in to rebuild areas damaged by landslides or tree falls.

The need for these constant closures has left residents exhausted, Ewell said. 

“We’re just lucky that nobody’s been injured,” he said. “It’s kind of been an ongoing concern.”