Winds topple electric pole in Manoa, aiding brush fire in Waipio

by: Nicole Napuunoa, Bryce Moore

Posted: Aug 8, 2023 / 07:25 AM HST

Updated: Aug 9, 2023 / 06:09 PM HST

HONOLULU (KHON2) — Hurricane Dora is not passing directly over Hawaii, but its effects are still being felt across the Islands.

Get Hawaii’s latest morning news delivered to your inbox, sign up for News 2 You

It was a smoky day across Central Oahu due to a brushfire at Patsy T. Mink Regional Park. One person said off-camera that he thought it was set on purpose at first.

“It’s tragic, I thought it was a controlled burn at first,” he said. “but clearly after I saw the fire engines just coming in, I realized that it wasn’t.”

Battling brushfires during the dry season is already hard enough, but it becomes a different ballgame when high winds are added to the mix.

“In a canopy area like a forest, you’ll actually, in hazardous fire conditions, you’ll actually see fire leaping from treetop to treetop before reaching the ground,” said National Weather Service lead forecaster Jeff Powell. “It’s very dangerous if you’re a firefighter on the ground, you need to know as a firefighter not only how to fight the fire, but where it’s moving.”

The wind is just not helping to burn things up — a tree fell onto a pickup truck on Monday, Aug. 7 in Makiki Heights.

Wind is also believed to be the culprit in knocking down two utility poles in Manoa on Tuesday, Aug. 8. Daniel Cheng said he was still gathering his nerves.

“I was pretty nervous because we’re just up the corner, so it just like each utility tower kept going down, huge spark, coming down and it looked like the last one just landed on the car and started a fire,” Cheng said.

The pole set a truck on fire and forced the road to close while crews deal with the pole.

The Wahiawa exit on H-2 northbound was also closed just before 2 p.m. due to a brush fire.

HFD said, “As of 12:33 p.m. today, there have been ten downed trees, five downed powerlines and two blown roofs that may be weather-related.”

Power was out in the Ala Moana area, which was affecting traffic lights around the mall. HECO said it was affecting less than 300 customers. However, they have not said that the outage was directly caused by high winds.

City officials are looking into what caused a bronze statue of Ghandi to fall over near the Honolulu Zoo but did not confirm wind as the cause.

“It was pretty windy last night, more so than usual and there were some pretty strong gusts,” said Waikiki resident David Simmons. “The foundation looks like it’s pretty rusted out, so it’d be pretty easy to knock over. Well, easier to knock over.”

Copyright 2023 Nexstar Media Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.