WAIKOLOA VILLAGE — Hawaii County officials announced Tuesday that construction of a third evacuation route for Waikoloa Village is scheduled to begin this week. The announcement came during a community meeting at the Waikoloa Village Association Golf Banquet Room, originally planned as a presentation of a traffic evacuation study.

The meeting followed a 200-acre blaze that started last week at the edge of Waikoloa Village, prompting partial evacuations. The June 10 fire began around 4:20 p.m. south of Waikoloa Road, and the partial evacuation order was lifted by 7:15 p.m. with no reports of injuries or structural damage.

Rebecca Cohen, Program Director of Evacuation and Emergency Planning at KLD Associates, presented results from the Waikoloa Village Evacuation Traffic Study at the meeting. The Civil Defense Agency contracted the study last year, which aimed to improve emergency planning, identify ways to shorten evacuation timetables, guide future development projects, and provide data-driven justification for building more access roads. The study was informed by a survey completed by 501 households and funded by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development through a Community Development Block Grant for hazard mitigation.

The study found it would take roughly four and a half hours to fully evacuate Waikoloa Village, which has approximately 7,000 full-time residents. "That does not mean when you get in your car, you're going to sit in your car for four hours and 35 minutes," Cohen said. "That's how long it takes for the last vehicle to exit the area being evacuated."

Cohen stated that at the busiest point of a hypothetical evacuation, it would take individuals between 35 minutes and one hour on average to get to safety. "That's peak," Cohen said. "That's your worst-case scenario. That's if you leave at the very worst time." he said the evacuation model assumed roughly half of residents in the nearby Waikoloa beaches and resort area would also be escaping along Highway 19.

Waikoloa Road is currently the only primary access route for Waikoloa Village residents. The meeting featured exchanges between residents and county officials. "Don't be argumentative with a community that is terrified for our lives," one agitated attendee said. "We are scared that we are going to burn to death in a fire... let us express our emotions, please!" another attendee said.

One county official threatened to stop the meeting, stating, "I'm not the one yelling." "Go for it, and see how that goes for your boss," another attendee said, referring to Mayor Kimo Alameda. "Okay, you people need to just settle down — just calm down," one county official said. "The study is the study."

Residents raised concerns about past evacuation experiences and notification systems. "The village — this community — has been evacuated three times," one resident said. "In 2021, we all experienced it, and there was longer than one hour wait for many people," one resident said.

"What upset me was that my phone didn't ding to tell me there was a fire in the village until 5:01," one resident said. "This whole traffic study is wrong," one attendee claimed. "You did it wrong."

The third evacuation route project is a partnership between Hawaii County and the state Department of Transportation. "This evacuation route will provide a third way out during a disaster and reflects our commitment to public safety," Mayor Kimo Alameda said. According to the Hawaii County news release, construction of the third evacuation route for Waikoloa Village is scheduled to start this week.

The county currently operates a steep, one-lane emergency evacuation route connecting Hulu Street to Queen Ka'ahumanu Highway (Highway 19). The county holds regular voluntary evacuation drills using the route known as "Hulu Holoholo." Advocates are demanding the county include funds in annual capital improvement project budgets to design a second road, referred to as the "Waikoloa Second Road."

"Without built-out escape routes, village resident and fire safety advocate Matt Chalker recently told the Hawaii Tribune-Herald that he had 'no doubt' that if the community experienced a conflagration on the scale of the 2023 Lahaina Fire on Maui, 'more than a thousand people will die.'"

The Lahaina Fire occurred on Aug. 8, 2023, killing at least 102 people. More than a dozen people died in vehicles while trying to flee the fire.

The Mana Road Fire, which firefighters battled from July 30 to Aug. 3, 2021, scorched 40,000 acres. Roughly 140 fire personnel responded to the fire at its peak.

Civil Defense issued a mandatory evacuation order for Waikoloa Village on Aug. 1, 2021, around noon during that incident.