Wildfires in recent years on Hawaii Island and Maui have driven Waikoloa Village residents to seek proactive solutions to the looming danger of traffic bottlenecks in the event of a full-scale evacuation.

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Wildfires in recent years on Hawaii Island and Maui have driven Waikoloa Village residents to seek proactive solutions to the looming danger of traffic bottlenecks in the event of a full-scale evacuation.

The village is home to roughly 7,000 full-time residents with only one way in and out: Waikoloa Road.

This isolated access has earned it the nickname “world’s largest cul-de-sac,” with plans to add more than 1,000 new housing units in the next five years in affordable and luxury residential developments being erected along the community’s northern flank.

Concerned residents have become increasingly vocal about the need to build out evacuation infrastructure in tandem with this new housing. Their concerns have grown to the point of demanding that Hawaii County officials include funds in annual capital improvement project budgets to design what advocates are calling the “Waikoloa Second Road.”

They want the proposed two-lane paved “arterial” to run from the north end of the village roughly three miles west and intersect with Queen Ka‘ahumanu Highway — also known as Highway 19 — near its juncture with Puako Beach Road.

These concerns and demands are not unwarranted. In 2021, firefighters fought a touch-and-go battle against the Mana Road Fire for five days from July 30 to Aug. 3. At its peak, roughly 140 fire personnel were on the ground fighting aggressive, runaway flame fronts burning along the northern and eastern slopes of Maunakea.

It took a massive multi-agency response including local, state, federal, military and private efforts — including the use of Chinook and Black Hawk helicopters — before the conflagration was contained, but not before it scorched 40,000 acres.

A mandatory evacuation order for Waikoloa Village was issued on Aug. 1 around noon by Hawaii County Civil Defense after the rapidly moving fire jumped across Highway 190 and advanced closer to the community.

In the wake of the order going out, thousands of residents attempting to flee via Waikoloa Road were stuck in traffic for hours while smoke billowed overhead. Some relief came in the county’s opening of the steep, winding one-lane emergency evacuation route connecting Hulu Street to Highway 19, which is gated off year-round. Since then, the county has held annual — and later twice-a-year —voluntary evacuation drills using the route known as the “Hulu Holoholo.”

Almost exactly two years after the Mana Road Fire came the deadly Lahaina Fire on Maui — a charging, wind-driven blaze that consumed the town on Aug. 8, 2023, and killed at least 102 people, more than a dozen of whom burned to death inside their vehicles while trying to escape.

A $380 million fiscal year 2026-2027 CIP budget was passed unanimously by the County Council on June 4, along with its corresponding nearly $1 billion operating budget. The budget includes an $11 million appropriation for the construction of infrastructure like streets and water and sewer lines to serve the 850-unit Kamakoa Nui affordable housing project in the village — slated for completion in 2030 — but no money for the second road.

This omission has irked groups like Wildfire Safety Advocates, a Waikoloa Village-based community nonprofit working on wildfire readiness and safety policies that submitted written opposition testimony to the budget hearing. The organization’s Executive Director Matt Chalker described the issue as a matter of “priorities,” saying that adding to the population of the village without concrete plans to build out emergency infrastructure is irresponsible.

“What we are insisting on is that they stagger this — that they first do the road and then they put the people in,” Chalker told the Tribune-Herald. “The way that we structured our comment and our request is that they can spend the $11 million if they also spend the $2.5 million in conjunction at the same time to do the design for the road, and then they are not going to issue occupancy permits for any houses until the road is complete.

“It’s going to take them a few years to build the houses,” he added, “(and) we’re giving them the same amount of time to build the road. Just doing it parallel — that’s really all it comes down to.”

The $2.5 million he mentioned is a CIP budget allocation approved by the council last year to kickstart planning for the second road by funding a design and engineering study. Yet the money up to this point remains undispersed.

Chalker’s sentiment is shared by Kohala Councilman James Hustace, who said at a community meeting at the Waikoloa Village Golf Course in January that making preparations for the long-term growth of the village is critical.

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“It was important to me hearing from the community that we have public financing behind roads,” Hustace said. “If we are growing a community with county housing … we also have a responsibility to be at the table to provide that infrastructure.”

Chalker takes issue with constructing homes in a place he described as “dangerous,” saying that the people occupying the newly built units will hardly be better off.

“The families that are moving into those are low-income families, presumably with several children,” he said. “What that is is a curse to those families because it’s gonna put them in the most dangerous places. It’s not a blessing — it’s not something that they’re gonna be able to build a life on.”

Chalker lived in Waikoloa Village during the Mana Road Fire in 2021 and witnessed firsthand the chaos and delays.

“During the (2021) evacuation, when the existing (Hulu Street) emergency route in addition to Waikoloa Road were open, residents waited for more than an hour just to get to Waikoloa Road, waiting an hour on Paniolo Avenue,” he said. “I estimate that there were probably 300 to 400 cars in line right there at that one point in time.”

He said that the Hulu Street route is helpful but not enough.

“It’s useful, and it is something we care about, but it’s not sufficient,” he said. “What we really, really need more than anything else is a two-lane road open to traffic, dedicated 24/7 … out of the north end of the village.”

If the 2021 blaze had been more like the Lahaina Fire, he said that the outcome would have looked much different.

“I’m not kidding when I’m saying if (Waikoloa) burns down like Lahaina did, more than a thousand people will die — no doubt about it,” he said.

“We experienced a close call in 2021, and then we saw what happened on Maui, and we saw people actually dying in their cars in a fire and a traffic jam,” he said. “And I just was like, wait a second, we need to do something different here. We need to change this conversation, and we need to force the government to do something for the community.”

Mayor Kimo Alameda has declined to pick up the council-approved funds for the road study, instead relying on $4.5 million in state funding to move forward on a second one-way emergency route plan in partnership with the housing project developers.

“At no time did we promise that the county would build this (second two-way) road,” Alameda said. “This is a private road — negotiations have been between the private developer and the state.”

Describing the CIP budget as a “wish list,” he said that money for the second road study was never set in stone.

“The capital improvement projects list is a planning document … not a guaranteed funding schedule,” he said.

He said the dilemma has been further complicated by stakeholders acting in bad faith — something he’s trying to rectify.

“Upon review of this matter, we have uncovered misrepresentations and historical confusion on both sides,” he said. “Our administration is working to resolve those issues and to clear the record.”

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Email Stefan Verbano at [email protected].