Waikōloa Needs a Second Road
Not an inconvenience. A life-saving necessity. Help fund the legal effort to require a real evacuation route before thousands more residents are added.
The Second Road Legal Fund
This fund pays for the legal work behind one goal: ensuring Waikōloa Village residents can safely and quickly evacuate and that emergency crews can get into the Village before thousands more residents are added.
Right now, the village has one arterial road. In a fast-moving fire, there isn't enough road for residents to get out or for fire crews to get in. What we need is a dedicated, two-lane arterial road that works in both directions, sized not just for today's village but for a community expected to roughly double within a decade. The new one-lane, gated emergency route the state is building now is a start, but it stops short and doesn't solve the problem for the people already living here.
Our first legal step is to require a full Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) for new developments before they advance, so the actual wildfire evacuation risk is studied and the roadway capacity we actually need is determined. County-commissioned modeling already shows that only a fraction of current residents could clear the village in the first hour of a fire. Adding thousands more people to the same single road, without studying how that affects everyone's chance of getting out, is what we're working to prevent.
This is a resident-led effort
Wildfire Safety Advocates is run by neighbors, including many kūpuna who have experienced evacuation gridlock and wildfires. We have made our case in writing to the officials who can act on it. Read our letter to Governor Green, our objection to the HHFDC housing project, and more of our advocacy in action on our Take Action page.
Other Ways to Help
Share this page with your neighbors and friends on social media. A post from someone they know travels further than anything we can send.
Attend monthly meetings and join our email list for meeting reminders and updates on our progress. We will never share your information or send spam.
Email newsletter signup
Print our flyer and post it where people gather. Your church, a community group, a small business bulletin board—help spread the word.
Download the flyer (PDF)
Frequently Asked Questions
-
Two things. First, a full Environmental Impact Statement on the new housing developments before they move forward, so the wildfire evacuation risk is studied and the roadway capacity we actually need is determined. Second, a dedicated two-lane arterial road out of the village, built for both evacuation and everyday use, and sized for a community expected to roughly double within a decade. The emergency route the state is building now is a start, but it stops short of the village and does not solve the problem for the people already living here.
-
Waikōloa Village has just one dedicated road in or out of the community. There is an additional emergency evacuation route, Hulu Street, that is a gated, one-lane road only open in emergencies. There is a second emergency evacuation road coming. But the County's own evacuation traffic study found that even under ideal conditions, with no fire, no blocked lanes, and no disabled vehicles, most residents would need three to four hours to get out after an evacuation is ordered. Applying the study's own numbers, at most about 2,000 of us would clear the village in the first hour. For comparison, the Lāhainā fire moved 1.3 miles into town in 90 minutes. A fire driven by our red-flag winds could cross the village in that same window. Adding roughly 6,000 more residents to this single road, without a second way out, puts thousands more people in cars with nowhere to go.
-
Gifts to this fund are dedicated to the legal effort. They cover attorney fees, expert review, and the legal filings behind our environmental study requests, and we track them separately from our general funds. If we raise more than the legal work requires, or once it concludes, the remaining funds go toward securing the road itself. Wildfire Safety Advocates of Waikōloa is a 501(c)(3), and Zeffy emails a tax receipt for every gift.