Zip line reform sought

By COLIN M. STEWART

Tribune-Herald staff writer

The mother of the man killed in last summer’s collapse of a zip line tower in Paukaa says she is “appalled” at Hawaii’s failure to regulate its zip line industry.

In an attempt to call attention to that lack of oversight, Ted Callaway’s family, including the four mothers of his seven children, are working with Maui personal injury attorney Michael Tateishi to file a lawsuit against the parties responsible for the 36-year-old’s death, said Ilene Callaway. She spoke with the Tribune-Herald in a Friday afternoon phone interview from her home in Kennewick, Wash., where Ted Callaway was born and raised.

“We don’t want money, and I’m not out to get anybody into trouble,” she said, “but what I am out for is that if somebody’s responsible, they need to be responsible. … I want to make sure that Ted doesn’t just die and everybody says, ‘Oh well.’ … I do want to make sure that the zip line industry is a safe one and that no other family need suffer as we have.”

Callaway said she was not sure who would be the target of her family’s suit. That’s something she and the family’s lawyers are continuing to discuss. But ultimately, she said, she would like to see as a result of their action stricter regulations on Hawaii’s rapidly growing zip line industry.

“The way I look at it is, we legislate seat belts in cars, driving down the street while talking on a cell phone, but when we have something as potentially dangerous as suspending someone hundreds of feet in the air, and that doesn’t have any legislation? That doesn’t compute to me,” she said.

“I wrote the governor recently and told him that, now that I understand that the state of Hawaii is not concerned about the safety of their tourists and the people who construct the tourist attractions, then I am willing to be a mouthpiece and do what I have to do so people understand that when people get on these zip lines … they are at a risk.”

Callaway said that initially she was happy to see that legislators had taken up the issue of stricter regulation of zip lines at the start of the session this year. But, she said, she was spurred to action when she saw that House Bill 2060 had been deferred upon reaching the House Committee on Economic Revitalization and Business and the House Committee on Tourism.

The bill sought to require operators be licensed by the state Department of Labor and Industrial Relations and their zip lines inspected annually.

“What was upsetting to me was that in (his testimony), the state’s director of (the Department of Labor and Industrial Relations) thought it was too costly to pursue licensing zip lines,” she said.

In his testimony presented to the House committees on Feb. 7, Sen. Dwight Takamine, D-Hilo, Hamakua, Waimea, said that his department opposed the measure, “as it includes recommendations that are too problematic to implement and would entail higher costs.”

Takamine recommended that the Office of the Auditor undertake a “sunrise review” and the Legislature complete “further study.”

State Rep. Mark Nakashima, D-Kohala, Hamakua, Hilo, was one of the legislators to introduce HB 2060, and said Friday that he is working on other options.

“There is another bill moving through the Senate, and we expect it to come over (to the House for approval). Hopefully, we can work on it then to perfect the bill,” he said.

On Friday, the Senate Ways and Means committee recommended passing Senate Bill 2433, which would establish standards and regulations for operators of zip lines and canopy tours. It, too, requires that the Department of Labor and Industrial Relations oversee inspections and permitting.

Nakashima suggested that one way of addressing Takamine’s cost concerns is to “find a way to create oversight on the industry without going through a licensing procedure.” By requiring insurance companies to be in charge of inspections of zip line operators, the state can bypass the high cost of hiring inspectors and find a way for the industry to effectively “police itself.” A similar approach is used to inspect boilers across the state, he said.

GoZip LLC employee Ted Callaway of Lahaina, Maui, was killed and a co-worker was critically injured on Sept. 21 when the 30-foot zip line tower they were working on collapsed. They had just finished tightening zip line No. 8 on Lava Hotline’s newly constructed course for Hilo-based eco-tourism company KapohoKine Adventures. Callaway was riding across the 2,300-foot line to test it when the tower gave way. He fell 200 feet to the rocky stream bed below.

Curtis Wright of Miamisburg, Ohio, was standing on the tower waiting his turn to ride across when the incident occurred. He was taken to Hilo Medical Center in critical condition with several fractured ribs and vertebrae, as well as a collapsed lung.

Email Colin M. Stewart at cstewart@hawaiitribune-herald.com.