{"id":570594,"date":"2026-04-07T22:24:16","date_gmt":"2026-04-07T22:24:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/570594\/"},"modified":"2026-04-07T22:24:16","modified_gmt":"2026-04-07T22:24:16","slug":"disaster-debris-coming-soon-to-a-park-near-you","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/570594\/","title":{"rendered":"Disaster Debris: Coming Soon To A Park Near You?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Some park users are getting in the faces of city crews and leaving ugly voicemails, demanding the debris be taken elsewhere.<\/p>\n

Neighbors were taken by surprise last month when more than 5,000 tons of Kona low storm debris<\/a> \u2014 from wet, rotting furniture to carpets and wood \u2014 landed on a grassy field above the baseball diamonds at Patsy T. Mink Central O\u02bbahu Regional Park.<\/p>\n

City officials said they had little choice; they had to move fast. Waialua flood debris was quickly piling up at two makeshift dump sites after a historic storm dumped more than 2 trillion gallons<\/a> of water across the state. They needed to get all that wreckage to the best available site as soon as possible.<\/p>\n

The Waipahu park, known as Corp, for short, fit the bill. It had been designated for alternate temporary storage of debris after a disaster such as a hurricane or major storm, along with 19 other parks across the island. That list includes prominent locations such as the Ala Wai Golf Course, Ala Moana Beach Park and Kapi\u02bbolani Regional Park.<\/p>\n

\"SeveralSeveral dozen loads of flood debris pile up at Honolulu\u2019s temporary site at Patsy T. Mink Central Oahu Regional Park. (Craig Fujii\/Civil Beat\/2026)<\/p>\n

Those 20 parks are not widely known and there is a reason for that: they were just added to the city\u2019s debris management plan last year, without public input or City Council approvals. Previously, the city had considered using i<\/a>ndustrial yards, agricultural lands and military training sites<\/a> instead.<\/p>\n

The city\u2019s Environmental Services Department told Civil Beat it recently posted the debris plan<\/a> to its website.\u00a0A review of that city site using the Wayback Machine, an internet archive tool, shows it had not been posted as of March 12, around when the Kona low storms struck.<\/p>\n

The debris plan, city officials say, is updated every 10 years or so.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t believe the City and County, or the state, has ever come to neighborhood boards to just kind of message this,\u201d Danielle Bass, who chairs the Mililani-Waipi\u02bbo-Melemanu Neighborhood Board, said of using parks to manage disaster debris. \u201cSo I very much understand where the community is coming from where that was a surprise,\u201d she said, when the debris first started appearing at Corp.<\/p>\n

Still, using public park lands to collect and sort debris after an extreme disaster on an island with limited space makes a lot of sense, Bass added, and it\u2019s a way for communities to help neighboring ones nearby. <\/p>\n

\u201cOne of the benefits of a park,\u201d she said, \u201cis to help sort the damage and collect it so that the impacted communities can move on.\u201d<\/p>\n

More:\u00a0North Shore Flood Will Add A Month\u2019s Worth Of Debris To Landfill<\/a><\/p>\n

iFrames are not supported on this page.<\/p>\n

The public parks in the city\u2019s debris plan are now listed as potential alternates to six primary sites that are either privately owned or controlled by the military. The plan envisions a Category Four hurricane hitting O\u02bbahu, with damage far more catastrophic and widespread than the Kona low storms, which flooded isolated areas. <\/p>\n

State and county officials started creating these advance plans on how to handle debris after the Category Four Hurricane \u02bbIniki pummeled Kaua\u02bbi in 1992.<\/p>\n

Dole Field in Wahiaw\u0101, owned by Dole Food Co., is the nearest of the city\u2019s primary sites to Waialua, where the debris now at Corp originated. However, city officials were so surprised by the extent of the flooding, Environmental Services Director Roger Babcock said, that his department didn\u2019t have time to arrange access with Dole to its property.<\/p>\n

\u201cI basically looked at it and said, \u2018OK, what properties do we have \u2014 that are city properties \u2014 that we can quickly activate,\u201d Babcock said, \u201cthat would be of adequate size and close to this event?\u201d Corp, he said, made the most sense. City-hired contractors could drive their trucks right off Kamehameha Highway onto an 8-acre grass field there.<\/p>\n

In the future, he said, the city could look into whether there\u2019s a way to more quickly gain access to the primary debris sites in an emergency before resorting to taking rubbish to a park.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think if there was a really big event,\u201d he added, \u201cwe would be activating these bigger sites for example, Dole and Campbell Industrial Park.\u201d<\/p>\n

\niFrames are not supported on this page.\n<\/p>\n

The city expects to use Corp for debris storage, sorting and hauling for another couple of weeks, Babcock said.<\/p>\n

Its contractors, DRC Emergency Services and Tetra Tech, will have to leave the site the way they found it, he added. They took soil samples from the field when they started depositing debris there, he said, and the state health department will have to certify that their soil tests come back free of toxins when they\u2019re done.<\/p>\n

The contract crews have hauled all the debris from Waialua to Corp to be sorted, separating out any remaining hazardous waste, Babcock said, which are brought to a city facility for proper disposal. Crews have also laid barriers on the ground around the debris pile to help contain any runoff.<\/p>\n

\"RubbishThe city has brought in contract crews to help separate the massive amounts of debris. (Kevin Fujii\/Civil Beat\/2026)<\/p>\n

\u2018Ugly\u2019 Confrontations<\/p>\n

Despite assurances that the debris is temporary and the park grounds will be restored, not all local residents have been as understanding as Bass.<\/p>\n

Honolulu Parks and Recreation Director Laura Thielen said Corp staff received nearly four dozen angry voicemails at their on-site office the day after debris started appearing there. Some messages, Thielen said, called on the staff to die.<\/p>\n

Other park users have angrily confronted park staff in person, she added, demanding that the debris be removed.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019ve had threats, they\u2019ve had all kinds of things. And that, to me, is the thing that\u2019s so disheartening because it\u2019s not like when you have a disaster anybody wants any of this to happen,\u201d Thielen said. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe folks that are yelling and leaving the ugly messages, it\u2019s like, \u2018Where is the aloha and compassion for your neighbors?’\u201d she added. \u201cBecause if the next disaster were to strike your home, you would want a similar help and assistance.\u201d<\/p>\n

Thielen said her department had been included in city emergency planners\u2019 talks when the decision was made to add the various park sites to the updated debris management plan.<\/p>\n

\u201cInformation is passed around and discussions had, but there\u2019s a limited number of open sites,\u201d she said. \u201cWhen you have a disaster of the size that they are planning for which, God forbid it ever does happen, they\u2019re going to have to have multiple sites to be able to stage debris while people recover.\u201d<\/p>\n

Added Bass, who also works as the state\u2019s Sustainability Coordinator, \u201cWe have to be creative. We\u2019re an island, right? So we have to have dual uses for things.\u201d<\/p>\n

Civil Beat\u2019s coverage of climate change and the environment is supported by The Healy Foundation, the Marisla Fund of the Hawai\u2018i Community Foundation and the Frost Family Foundation.<\/p>\n

\"Civil<\/p>\n

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