There was a dance last Sunday out on Kamehameha Highway. It was delicate, nuanced, practiced and choreographed — and it was performed in hard hats, neon safety gear and steel-toed boots.
Incessant chatter blaring from radios provided the soundtrack as a helicopter delivered giant sheets of wire netting — each 150 feet long — to workers dotting the 230-foot hillside above Waimea Bay, who in turn stretched the net across rocks and boulders to hold them in place.
The plan was pulled together in a matter of weeks after two car-sized boulders fell onto the road on April 10, kicking the state Department of Transportation into emergency gear.
Weeks before, a landslide below the roadway at the western end of the bay had looked to be a problem that would tie up traffic for days — and it did. But that problem was dwarfed by the risk the giant boulders posed to motorists and pedestrians.
The daunting scope of the job soon became clear, complicated by the steepness of the hill’s contours, its dense foliage and sheer size. Add to that hard-to-net overhangs and at least one cave that required special care because it houses iwi kūpuna remains.
So much of the greenery that would act as natural anchors was missing from the landscape, exposing a 200,000-square-foot patch of boulders and rocks. Plans are ongoing to replace the greenery with native Waimea plants, such as the Milo tree, Pōhinahina and fast-growing ‘Ānapanapa — work being done by Rick Barboza and his crew at Hui Kū Maoli Ola plant nursery, according to the state.
As part of the shoring up plan, traffic had to be halted all day on May 17, from 7 a.m. to 5 p.m., inconveniencing many. TheBus and TheHandi-Van were allowed to cross at intervals, and no emergency vehicles ended up needing to get by. Waimea Bay Beach Park was closed as an emergency landing site for the helicopter.
That 10-hour hiatus allowed for intense focus. Twenty-two loads of netting were completed by helicopter, shaving weeks off the time it would have taken to use cranes, said CEO Kevin Dorn of Vertical Worx helicopters, formerly Paradise Helicopters. Prometheus Construction provided expertise and labor on the ground.
While the road reopened Sunday evening, delays on the highway are not over. Alternating single lanes of traffic are expected to continue for a couple more months while cranes place a second section of netting and impact fencing is added to cover a 500-foot stretch adjacent to the hillside.
All that still laid ahead on Sunday, though, when worry came with every pulse of the helicopter blade and every gust of wind, each causing the netting to twist ever so slightly, like a uncontrolled 2,000-pound sail.
Yet the work continued like clockwork, interrupted only when a coconut-sized rock came loose and fell. A cry rang out. The crew froze.
It fell harmlessly, without hitting anyone or anything.
