Granting Eruption Recovery Wishes

Dear Editor,      September 29, 2025

Exploring the Hawaii County disaster relief effort for the 2018 Kilauea East Rift Zone Eruption is like hiking into a huge gorge where layer after layer of fossils tell the story of life through the geological eras. And when you finally reach the cataract at the bottom and look back up, you suddenly realize you're stuck in a giant rut.

Immediately after Pele went postal on Leilani Estates in the summer of '18, Hawaii County Mayor Harry Kim sprang into action mode and decisively decided to study the situation. An "Executive Team" of important people was formed to advise him on all matters related to the disaster, and a 168-page Interim Recovery Strategy plan was delivered for County Council approval a year later. An apparently in-house published guidebook to rejuvenating Lower Puna and encouraging people to move back into Lava Zones 1 and 2, it was a comprehensive report containing historical fact , detailed charts of data, insightful observations, and in-depth analysis. And what did the consultants ultimately recommend we do? Create another entity to study the problem some more.

And since consultants have become a successful, self-replicating, parasitic sub-species that sucks common sense out of politicians, our County Council couldn't help but hire a whole new team to accommodate them. And thus we have an entire Disaster Recovery Division grafted onto the County Planning Department, an agency renowned for its ability to expediently process paperwork.

These salvage specialists eventually ended up with a budget of $294 million in federal, state, and private funding to facilitate the long-term recovery of Lower Puna. Of that, the Community Development Block Grant from HUD provided them with $107 million to pass out to residents who lost property, but as of the spring of this year only $80 million has been given away. Jeepers, I'm no accountant, but I'm pretty sure I could have found a way to have gotten the other $27 million to trauma victims within six years.

Sometimes criticized as being too granular, the USDA-funded Revitalize Puna initiative fosters resilience specifically "through grassroots action, cultural revitalization, and collaborative planning". Following the six-fold path of resiliency- Social, Cultural, Economic, Built Environment, Natural Environment and Youth- communities will. . .. well, I'm not sure just what they'll do, but I think it's supposed to be something real good.

FEMA gave a lot of money to restore the Puna roads to the way they were before and a waterline to a way it never was. But at this time only one of the four remaining road rebuilding projects is underway and the ditch for the waterline still hasn't been started. But then again, it's only going on seven years since the eruption ended.

(Construction Update: The Pohoiki Road bulldozing has, for now, resumed. It seems our congenitally amiable Mayor Kimo was able to convince the heir of a legacy missionary estate to accept a reasonable extortion fee for the right to proceed with a project that will increase the value of the scion's trust's vast real estate holdings in the area.)

If the waterline to Pohoiki does get finished before the next lava flow, FEMA has promised to kick in $3.1 million to improve Isaac Hale Park, but that depends on potable water getting there first. And yes, it's true that some of that money's already gone to buying maintenance equipment for a Hilo golf course, but I bet a lot of Pohoiki fisherman regularly stop in at the Muni to play a round.

Succumbing to the Darwinian urge to replicate, the Disaster Recovery Division has spawned two distinct genera of grant money distribution systems. So far, the County has committed over $2.6 million of State money to Puna Strong, a program that's provided funds to more than 30 community organizations. This is much different from the Kilauea Recovery Grant Program, for which the County has committed over $6.9 million of State money to a program that's provided funds to 16 community organizations, but nobody can figure out how.

And what were these grants for? Here's a sampling of the proposals chosen to receive funding:

• Increasing food security through urban gardens and permaculture modeling,
• Wellness events led by social workers and faith leaders, Virtual space of community resources development,
• Networking and learning opportunities in mentoring, yoga, and hula circles, Healthy diet education,
• Biannual virtual resource fairs targeting LGBTQ+ individuals,
• Pet rescue operations,
• Community feeding and food distribution,
• Life skills for youth taught through hands-on gardening,
• And a whole voyaging canoe full of Hawaiian culture curriculums.

This wasn't just a woke election panel of experts, they were on a two-pots­ of-Kona-coffee buzz. Sadly, bipolar opihi with diabetes weren't awarded a grant to increase awareness of their situation, but at least we can all agree the limpets got a fair shake.

Right now the only eruption recovery wishes I want granted are that the road construction projects get completed and some type of public ocean access be opened up on the Puna coast. But I think that's asking the current County Planning Director for far more than he's capable of delivering.

Timothy Athens

Pahoa, Hawaii

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Confirmation Bias Danger

Dear Editor,

So why is the country so divided? Or why is the other side so dumb and/or evil? LOL!

The truth is that people have a strong natural tendency to believe what they want to believe. It is called “confirmation bias”. The brain naturally screens out a lot of input and selects feedback that confirms what we already believe.

One theory is that it evolved in us to protect us from distraction, otherwise we would be frozen by the infinite world input our senses perceive.

Then there is the prehistorically evolved “fight or flight” instinct. In prehistoric times, if you perceived a sign of a Saber Tooth Tiger near, it was immediate fight or flight, not “let’s think about this”! In other words, cave men that made quick imperfect decisions became our ancestors. Prehistoric hominids that took too long to make the perfect decision became lunch!

Today, information technology has evolved far far past human brain evolution. There is so much electronic information bombarding our senses, we cannot process the information tsunami properly. So, our primitive brains go to default: we believe what we want. We lapse into confirmation bias. “I saw it on the internet”, “I saw a video” ,”a website said”.  The reality is that you can find almost anything you want on the internet to validate what you want to believe.

And, in general, the internet is not policed for truth and obviously can and is hacked. When it is "policed", can you trust the internet police?

Who would have thought that having unlimited instant information at our fingertips or voice command, would actually make us dumber?!!!

Know what you want to believe and be a practiced skeptic of that.  Practice reading the best articles on what you don’t want to believe.

Here is another novel way of looking at how well humans choose their beliefs: 

No religion has a majority of the world believing in it. So, no matter what religion you believe, most of the world believes you are wrong.

Conversely, you believe that most of the world is wrong!

So, what does that tell you about humanity’s ability to discern truth?! 

(But the main thing is that we ‘know’, we have the one absolute truth!)

Hypothetically, confirmation bias could lead to electing a senile old man, a word salad addict, or maybe even an off the charts ego maniac for President.

You just never know!

Leighton Loo

Mililani, Oahu