Good letters
Good letters
Thank you, Sheila Nakamura, for your Sept. 21 response to Dani Stein (Your Views, Tribune-Herald). His “you get what you pay for” attitude regarding Puna seems a rather limited perspective — and Dani, is it not just a bit mean-spirited?
Daniel Formanek, thanks for helping keep the Tribune-Herald on track (Sept. 20).
Pele is giving us enough to cope with; we don’t need speculation on Mauna Loa activity.
And, thank you, Hartley Phillips of Kapoho, regarding cesspools and septic tanks (Sept. 21). We do need to clean up our act — and again, to broaden our perspectives.
Mahalo to all for taking time to voice your opinions and concerns.
Diana Korchynski
Kapoho
Call the Army
This lava crisis in Puna is causing a lot of distress.
And although the county, state and various agencies are coordinating for all the necessary contingencies … what astounds me through it all is that no one is looking to the military to construct an emergency “scissor bridge” over Highway 130.
As the flow gets closer and the time gets shorter, why are we not hearing about measures being taken to provide this short-term emergency solution to the lava crossing the highway?
With less than about two weeks to that dreaded day, there should be machinery dumping the mountains of dirt required for such a bridge.
I hate to say it, but is the Big Island so primitive that people have not considered consulting with the military for THEIR perspective on a solution?
The time to do this is now, not when the lava goes across the highway.
And, I am sorry to say, conspicuous by its absence are any plans to use “scissor bridges” or anything else the Army Corps of Engineers can come up with.
It is absolutely disheartening and possibly tragic that families in Leilani Estates, Nanawale Estates, Hawaiian Beaches and Hawaiian Shores, and all the others in between, should feel like we are going to be left on the vine to die.
I know that seems like an exaggeration, but the state and the county are to blame, because they allowed developing in this area and forgot to put a back door out for emergencies like this.
So, now I ask: What will it take to ask for the proper military assistance we need to meet this imminent disaster?
The two emergency roads do not cut it, folks, because they could be claimed too by the lava, and then where are all of us in the cut off, isolated part of Puna?
Marianne Hopkins
Pahoa