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I lived in Lahaina, and I sat in that traffic. I moved away after the 2018 fire. I then lived in Pāʻia for four years, and sat in that traffic too.
I now live in Wailuku. I am writing because I have seen this road before.
Maui County Planning Commission spent two hours on the EC Pāʻia Town Project last Tuesday. Commissioners asked about water, wastewater, the aquifer, archaeology and process.
Nobody asked how 170 households get out of Pāʻia during a wildfire.
That question has not been studied. The traffic analysis in the record measures congestion at the Baldwin Avenue and Hāna Highway intersection on an ordinary day. It projects the relocated bypass will divert about 40 percent of makai-bound left turns, buttells you nothing about how long it takes to empty a town that is on fire.
Pāʻia funnels onto one highway. Everything moves through town, or it doesn't move at all.
In 2018, fires above Lahaina closed the main road into and out of West Maui for hours. And 21 structures burned, along with30 vehicles, and 2,000 acres.
Five years later, Lahaina burned again, and people died in their cars trying to leave.
Maui County Council should not act on this rezoning ordinance until Maui Fire Department produces a written wildfire evacuation analysis for Pāʻia, an actual study of how many vehicles must clear town under emergency conditions, how long that takes on the existing road network, and what the added units do to that number.
Any approval be conditioned on the real Pāʻia bypass being built, not the relocated mini-bypass inside the project.
Kacie Ogden
Wailuku