by Andrew Walden

As tsunami evacuation orders sent Makakilo residents rushing home in the afternoon of July 29, 2025, many simply never got there--including yours truly.  

Gas station lines (marked by red X above) at the only station serving Makakilo blocked one of the two lanes leading up Makakilo Drive--the only road in or out of this community of 20,000.   Behind this blockage, total traffic gridlock took hold for three hours between 4pm and 7pm on the Kapolei-area roads marked in red. 

VIDEO: From 4pm to 7pm, Kapolei traffic was gridlocked on multiple streets two miles below source of Makakilo Drive jam.

Gasoline-related lines were reportedly also behind tsunami evacuation traffic jams on Kauai.

All of this comes on top of the 'normal' miles-long jam entering the Waianae Coast along Farrington Highway--which itself is partly in the tsunami evacuation zone.

Akamai readers will remember that in the 2023 Lahaina fire, 40 of the 102 fatalities occurred as cars were trapped in jammed traffic in the Kuhua Camp neighborhood. 

The Makakilo jam shows that in the event of emergency, existing single-road access communities would be primed for a Lahaina-style disaster.  Makakilo, Waianae and Lahaina all suffer from single road access.  Likewise, volcano prone areas of Puna and Kau on the Big Island.

Marked in blue is the proposed route for a second road to and from Makakilo. 

Meanwhile, if police or civilian volunteers were dispatched to prevent cars from lining up in the road for gasoline it would do wonders to ease traffic.

---30---