County Council - Regular Meeting

You guys ready? Good morning, everyone. Welcome to today's committee meeting. Today is August 19th. We will start off with our planning committee. Mr. Bulasan.

Hello, everyone. Welcome to, I'd like to call the planning committee to order. Let the record reflect. All members are present. Council Member Kaneshiro just stepped up. Just for a moment, we'll be right back. Could I get the first item, please?

Item number PL202601, communication from Committee Chair Bolasan requesting the presence of Derek Alconis, Senior Research Program Manager, Fire Safety Underwriters Laboratory Research Institutes, and Elizabeth Pickett, Co-Executive Director, Hawaii Wildfire Management Organization, to provide a briefing on the Lahaina Fire Incident Analysis Report Phase 2 and the Lahaina Fire Forward Looking Report Phase 3, and to share the implications for wildfire vulnerability and the built environment on Kauai.

I'd like to suspend the rules and welcome up Derek.

Move to receive.

Second. Move to second it. I'd like to suspend the rules and bring up our... Would you like us to sit here? Yeah, we'll have you sit right in front. And we'll get your presentation. Thank you so much for joining us today and being able to provide us this information. Just so you know, what you'll do is you press this button here and when it turns green, that means it's on. Please introduce yourself first, and then we'll have you guys do your presentation. Members of the committee will do presentation first, and then questions after. You have the floor.

Well, good morning, committee. My name is Derek Alconis. I'm the Senior Research Program Manager for Fire Safety Research Institute as part of Underwriters Laboratory Institute. I come by way of assignment from our Executive Director, Dr. Steve Kerber, and also our director of research, Dr. Gavin Horn. We represent an independent safety research institute that does independent research on things such as community configurations, what we experienced in Lahaina in 2023, and then also what was experienced in 2025 in Los Angeles. We're part of that as well. I'll go ahead and let Elizabeth introduce herself.

Good morning, committee. It's nice to see you all again. Thank you for having us. I'm the co-executive director of Hawaii Wildfire Management Organization. And if you've forgotten or you're not familiar, we're a statewide nonprofit hub of wildfire science and planning and mitigation programming and community programs.

Okay, we can start the slides. So just to give you a brief history of who we are as an independent research institute. We've been around since 1894, a long time, 130 years under Ryder's Laboratory. And our research institute focuses on addressing emerging and unresolved fire risks. And those can expand from batteries, as we know, the lithium ion battery issues and what the prevailing fire situation that exists from those, but also community conflagrations. And we've been called in to do an analysis on the Lahaina fire and the three other fires that existed on August 8th that day. We also bring, you know, as we get called upon to do these independent analyses, we bring a multitude of different professionals from policy to engineers to fire safety professionals, law enforcement folks, and even people that have had experience with the legislature. And we bring them in to help us study the entire system, because it's really important to not only look at the response of the incident, But more importantly, how can it be prevented? And what type of systems were in place at the time to prevent and to prepare for such an event? And so we roll back the clock quite a bit. And we investigate what existed in terms of policy, procedure, regulation. Were they compliant with those best practices or evidence-based practices? When we came to Lahaina just after the incident, we understood that it was a Obviously, we all know it was a serious situation. 102 people lost their lives. Over 2,000 structures were destroyed. This was a significant conflagration. And we felt the criticality of making sure that we understood everything. And to line us up, to make sure that we were on the right track, The first thing we do is we talk to the locals on the ground, and we get a feel for who's doing the research, who was researching the system even before we got here. And that led us to Elizabeth Pickett as co-executive director of the Hawaii Wildfire Management Organization. And what she provided was a lot of the data that existed before this event, understanding the wildfire risk that existed well before this incident occurred. She provided us with maps. the data that is necessary to really do an in-depth, independent analysis. And we use that information to conduct a full investigation analysis of the system, both in prevention, preparedness, and response. So I'm going to turn the time over to Elizabeth so she can share more about what that system includes and where their focus was even before this incident.

Thank you, Derek. I just want to say I'm really grateful for the opportunity to have worked with FSRI when they came in to do this analysis. Because as an organization, we were founded in the year 2000, 26 years into focusing full-time on wildfire. And I've been at the organization 18 years. My entire adult career life has been focused on wildfire in Hawaii. And even though we were... We were having programs on the ground. We were collecting data, tracking fires. We launched a fire science program at the university. We really thought that we were working across the system and that we were covering all our bases. And we couldn't figure out why we didn't have liftoff and why we didn't have more awareness and recognition and investment and policy and all the things we knew we needed. And being able to work with practiced researchers who look at systems and who really unpack all of that really helped me to see where we're at in Hawaii in a new way, in a more academic zoom out way. And so what it really revealed is that we had a reliance and a mentality where fire suppression was the main, we thought that firefighting was the answer to the whole system. And that's where the resources were going. That's where the expectation and responsibility was. was able to be shuffled so that it was like, well, fire, isn't that the fire department's problem? We don't have to think about fire. And we're like, no, no, no. We have to manage land. We have to work on the built environment. We have to work on education. We have all these other things we need to do across the system. We need to think about water. We need to think about... a lot of different parts of what's going into this. And I think intuitively we knew that. We had made this wheel. You can look at this diagram that we created actually before we met FSRI. And this was more about thinking through who all impacts the fire outcomes that we see, and how can Hawaii Wildfire work with each of them to address the things we need in Hawaii. And then it turned into actually a way to analyze what was going on within each of them. And so you'll notice there are people, like on the bottom right corner, that's what we have in place already. What's going to burn? Are people managing land? Are they managing their homes and yards? What are recreationists doing? Who's starting fires, et cetera? What's really on the ground? And what do we know and what do people care about? That's all on the bottom part of the circle. And in the analysis portion working with FSRI, it was clear we had a lot of that going on, but it never could be at scale. because there was no investment and no policy support. But at least there were people linking arms trying to get this work done, trying to get awareness. But what was missing was engagement on the prevention and preparedness side from what's on the top of that, which is policymakers, community leaders, neighborhood boards, and then planning, engineering, developers, utilities. There's a whole built environment part of things that also needed to be involved. And even though we knew that, we couldn't figure out how to crack that nut. So we've been able to analyze a lot of that. We've been able to take a zoom out approach. We've been able to understand where Hawaii needs to go next. And I'll get to that at the end of the presentation about where we're going on the system side of things. But once an incident happens, once there's fire on the ground, It's a different part. It's not the preparedness part anymore. It is what's there to burn and what's there to try to solve that. And so the rest of the analysis looked at these things. It was, what did we know about fire weather? What could we forecast? What was going on with communications and evacuation and incident management and fire and emergency response? Next slide. And then that's on the response side. And that's a lot of what FSRI did their analysis into. And then they also look deeply into the built environment. So I'm grateful that we had a chance to see all of that, because a lot of that is outside of what Hawaii Wildfire Management has worked on until now. But this is the most kind of illuminating piece of it, was that we'd always thought wildfire, we thought about it on the landscape. We worked with large landowners. We worked with farmers and ranchers. And we really thought of it as a wildland fire situation until Lahaina burned. And really, what the fuel was was not the grass. It was the town. And so that is what their analysis really unpacked. And we've learned a lot since then. And so I'm going to hand it back to Derek, because he can detail all those things that we've learned and that now I think Hawaii has an opportunity to understand and then do better moving forward.

DEREK T. Thanks, Elizabeth. So I'm going to take you through our experience very briefly. This would require a full day of really explaining how things occurred and what were the conditions leading up to the event of August 8 in 2023. But let me preface this whole discussion about Lahaina. And let's first talk about the weather you've received recently with Lala moving in. And obviously, you got a lot of precipitation. There was a lot of rainfall, a lot of wind, and a lot of devastation around the state. In 2018, in August, which is your fire month, in fact, if you look at the red flag days in August, that's where you have the most fire weather days. And that's where you're getting the biggest fires typically right around in that August period, although you get big fires in other months, but mostly in August. In August in 2018, you had Hurricane Lane that pushed south and spun and didn't provide as much precipitation as it did. It provided a lot of wind. And you also had a 2,000-acre fire in Lahaina, a very similar footprint that you had in 2023, which that also was generated from a hurricane that passed south of the island chain in Hurricane Dora and created a lot of wind. What I'm saying is that from our perspective, You're just, depending on where that system resides will depend on what kind of weather system you receive, of course, and it could result in significant wind during your driest month, and you have plenty of fuel, and not only in the way of vegetation, but also in the way of the built environment and the way it's configured. So we're going to talk about that. So the Lahaina fire was one of four fires on... Focus on that... Oops, sorry. I'm pushing the wrong one here. And it went down around 3 o'clock in the afternoon is when it really started to develop. As Elizabeth mentioned, you have limited capacity in each one of the county fire departments to address a community-wide conflagration. You had 12,000 people standing in the way of this fire, wind driven, hurricane force winds, toppled numerous utility poles, created evacuation challenges for 12,000 residents. And we only had about 60 firefighters on duty. Just to give you some comparison, the fire in Los Angeles, the Palisades, it went down. And you had hundreds of firefighters in there within an hour. And you've got aircraft flying, because they could fly it initially, within 20 minutes. Here, you don't have that capability. Very limited capability with response capacity. And you're not getting anything from the neighbors either, because they can't get it over here. So that's a challenge, which leads us to discuss prevention and preparedness and the criticality of those two elements in these type of incidents. So for the Lahaina Fire, this is where it started. So you see this right in this area over here, Mauka, right? You go up Lahaina Luna Road is this road right here. And this is where it all started. And it started in a little tuft of grass back in here. And it ended up taking a course with that downsloping wind, 80 mile an hour wind, going straight Makai, and catching as much fuel as it possibly could. And so here's where it started. It actually really, and that was at 6.30 in the morning, and it started punking around all up in here. And this is your buffelgrass. That's what you see there, right? Buffelgrass, guinea grass. You've got some halicoa in there as well. This is a culvert. You also have some power lines in there. Huge challenges for emergency responders to get back there because they have overhead transmission lines. And you don't want them there when it's 80 mile an hour winds. It's too dangerous. So the fire was able to just kind of make its way down in this type of grass. When you have a day where the humidity is very low, and red flag days are at 45% or less relative humidity, which is 30% higher than anywhere else in the country. But nonetheless, you don't need that much dryness to put you in red flag here. And that firewood would end up ripping through this type of grass. And that's what created some of the initial embers to get into that built environment. In this map on the upper right-hand corner, you can see the high concern for fire in Lahaina, in Matlea, and some of these other areas as well. This map was created by HDWMO. This is one of the things that we looked at as data to suggest that, wow, they've had a significant problem. That was created in 2014. These things are known, right? This is what the condition looked like. right at the point of ignition, which, again, is right up in here. And it's going to move this direction. You have this blue here. That all resembles vegetation, that south flank vegetation and that north flank vegetation, which is green. And that would figure into it as well. So this is interesting. So this map on the left-hand side shows the general fire progression direction that the fire took from Malco to Mackay. Again, it starts here and moves down. But fires of this type, they don't move in a progression or a fire front. You don't use fire front to describe these type of fires. Because what's happening is they're actually pushing the embers into the community. And as those embers land in certain areas, and all it needs is a little piece of dry vegetation or a house that has a lack of resiliency, let's say. It's built with combustible materials. It doesn't have good fire resistance. It does come down to that. I mean, those are codes and standards that If they don't exist and you have combustible materials that are next to each other, in this case that's a highly dense area, this is what you're going to get. So I need some help for somebody to push that animation on the right, please. Yeah, you can see it there. So what we do in this case is we gather as much data as we can, timestamp, geospatial data. And you can see as it moves out, can you stop it real quick, just pause it? Sorry about that when you do things. So you can see it pushes right to the coast initially. So that's the direction of the wind. But it's sending embers forward and igniting structures, which will create more embers. And an ember from a structure is much larger and retains much more heat. And that's why you have these significant fires that push through these communities. Lahaina is one. We saw Palisades, another. The Eaton Fire, that was 16,000 structures in both those fires that killed 31 people. But what happens is these embers get thrown into these communities out in front, and they start to burn out here, and they burn out here, and they burn out there, all because of a lack of fire resilience in the built environment, in the residences. There wasn't laws back then to build a certain way. There wasn't even vegetation management rules. even as recent as 2023. Unless you were to call somebody, then the fire department would come out and actually look at it and ask the resident to do some vegetation management. But in this case, go ahead and let it roll. You can see how it starts to spot in certain locations, expand out, and so forth. And as the fire makes its way to the coastline, it actually widens because it starts to take out the vegetation. And as it takes out more and more vegetation, it's sending more of those embers from that vegetation into the built environment, which eventually will ignite those structures if they are less resilient. So managing an incident of this significance is challenging even for the most trained, well-experienced professionals. Maui was inexperienced with this type of event. You just don't have community configurations requiring the evacuation of 12,000 people. You don't get a lot of practice in that. Kauai is in the same situation. And really, the reason why we're here, and I mentioned my bosses. is because this is an important moment to give the firefighters a fighting chance. Because they can't do their job when the construction is not resistant to fire. It's dangerous to the residents. It's dangerous to the firefighters. But we can do something in policy. So At the time of the fire, Maui was doing what they could to prepare for vegetation fires, and keeping the fire narrow when it starts to burn in the vegetation, getting on the flanks, putting type sixes, that's what you see there, and that type of firefighting apparatus, along with dozers from private landowners who so graciously contribute to the firefighting effort. And that's what it looked like on the day of the fire. Hours into the fire, you had all of that equipment rendered disabled because it was overwhelmed. Burned up, utility pole fell on top of it. Fortunately, no firefighters died. Some were seriously injured. Undercarriage damage, broken pump. They could no longer get on the flanks of the fire and keep it narrow, which resulted in the fire making its way very quickly through the built environment And what you see here is the street of Kahua, which is this street right here, which goes to Lahainaluna Road. Remember, the fire is coming down this direction. You're getting wind from the northeast, and it's pushing downslope, breaking utility poles, ripping off roofs, and exposing more area to this showers of millions of embers. And what you see on that bottom right is what existed before the fire, and this is what existed after the fire. 80% of the people who died died right in this area. And I'm sure many of you have been here. You've been to that area. Old plantation homes, multi-generational homes, doing their best. to provide a living for their family, numerous vehicles in that community, narrow roads. And it's a challenge to resist fire in that area. This is what existed in terms of this is what we're evaluating when we're looking at the built environment and how it contributed to the fire's growth. What kind of construction? In this case, I mean, you did have a lot of CMU, but you had a lot of just wood. the concrete masonry. But you had a lot of just wood construction, basic wood construction with T111 type siding. Roofing that was, it's a comp roof. Most of it gets blown off, exposing the sheathing underneath where embers can embed and ultimately ignite that sheathing, get inside the attic space. And once it's in the attic space, that home is gone. There's no defending it. You had hundreds of homes in that same situation. And because of the building density and how close the homes were, it's just one building, one structure after another in a very quick succession. And, of course, the adjacent vegetation, many vehicles in the roadways. At times, you know, we spoke to the responders. They said, at nighttime... If we get a rescue up in those areas, we can't even get our apparatus in. We have to walk in. The roads are so narrow. These things all have to be addressed in planning for the future. You can see on the right-hand side where most of your destroyed structures were, and I said over 2,000 destroyed structures, the ones on the northeast end right here that have that blue shading, that was wind damage, mostly from the roofs. What we saw is that the roof material peels back and it exposes the underlayment. And now you have the sheathing, the wood there. And that's where you likely had many of these roofs suffering the same type of damage before the fire made its way into those areas, embedding those embers into those spots. creating the problems that we had. Here's what you had before the event. This is that Ahua area. As you can see, all of those structures were destroyed. Nothing survived. Most of the people lost their lives right here during the evacuation process. This is what it looked like back in the 30s. So you can see this is 1936. This is the initial plantation camp, and the separation distances between each one of those structures is roughly 700 to 800 square feet, very small. Some of those that are off of Lahaina Luna Road were a little larger, about 1,000 feet. But there was a separation distance between them, which is really important in this case. I mean, if you want to defend, keep your community from burning, you've got to separate the structures. And this shows you what happens when they're not, and they're not built to a higher standard. So when we go into these communities and evaluate the burned parcels, and we're really interested in those that partially burned because that tells us, it gives us a clue of how the fire got started in that area and then how to progress from one part of the structure to another, but it stopped for some reason. And these are the questions that we ask or we seek to answer as we do our assessment, as we're on the ground, we evaluated every single parcel in Lahaina. We walked every part of the burnt area in the Los Angeles fires in both Palisades and Eaton. We walked almost 900 structure parcels evaluating pictures. We have a terabyte of information from those to really understand how these fires move. And it always brings us back to What can we do to prevent it? And it's this standards, codes, regulation, policy, ordinance, and it's the reason we're here. Cahoma Village was built 2018 to 2020. This was right in alignment with the fire's ember cast. So this is further west. It's actually a little bit northwest. The fire started like right up here off of La Jolla Luna Road. As you can see, this community did really well. It did lose for the structures, but what we discovered was the built to a higher standard definitely contributed to the survival of this community. And ultimately, we looked at all the communities, like I mentioned. In our phase two report, we came up with 84 findings and 140 recommendations. Some of those... pertain to policy, some training, some prevention, preparedness, all the different aspects of the system, as we call it. And we also provided recommendations on how to move forward. And the state and the county are both taking these and addressing these findings and recommendations. One of the things that the governor asked us to do is like, wow, that's an overwhelming number of findings and recommendations. You know, how do we get started? And so in our phase three report, we put those in buckets, essentially, in priorities. We took the 84 findings, 140 recommendations, said, okay, there's 10 priorities that you really need to address. And this allows you to track what's going on in each one of these priorities. So our recommendation to the governor and the attorney general was to bring on Hawaii Wildfire Management Organization, which we were very impressed by their fact-based scientific approach in things and their validated data that they provided to us. And we felt that they really could be in the driving seat to help address these priorities, especially in priority one, which is getting those state agencies on board. So I'm going to go ahead and turn it over to co-executive director Elizabeth Pickett, and she can talk about her work in these priorities.

Thank you, Derek. So after FSRI provided the 10 priorities, the attorney general and governor contracted Hawaii Wildfire Management Organization to carry the findings forward into real life on the ground progress. And I feel grateful to our state leadership because we were brave enough to unpack and try to understand really all the gory details about what went wrong. And then we have these recommendations on how to make it better. And then they're following through with, they have funded us to now carry those findings forward and action plan and strategize moving forward. And so our contract is to work at the state level. But I do want to note that while it's not up here, there is a county level 10 priorities. And there's an opportunity for each county to look at those and come together and do something similar to what I'm about to describe. But what we've done so far, recognizing that every single agency and department of the state has a role to play. You can imagine, Department of Education has a role to play in preparing their campuses and their students and their faculty, preparing for evacuation, managing their land, education, to Department of Health programs, to Department of Transportation. And as you start to think about that, you realize that there really is a role for everyone to play. But it was new. Many of these agencies and departments had never really been asked to think about wildfire in this way before and start planning out how their department was going to serve preparedness and prevention. and do pre-planning and be ready and to build this into all of the services they already provide as part of our reality that where we face this for the long term. So in order to be aspirational, which is what we were encouraged to do for the state strategy, We had to do a lot of knowledge building so that folks could even learn about fire in Hawaii and learn about what their role could be. So we did a knowledge building webinar series. And then we've met with every department in the state and every agency and done strategic planning. And so we're pulling all of that together. And there will be a state strategy in February. That's the goal, to sort of roll that out. final stages of pulling all that together just so that you have that for your own awareness. But again, there's opportunity to do that at the county level, too, and to look across departments. A lot of that is already happening because you're so collaborative here anyway, but just letting you know that that's the case. So the other thing is, as an organization, Hawaii Wildfire, not on contract with AG, not the contract, but just our organization has also been moving forward many of the findings and recommendations in each of those bottom priorities that you see there, in addition to the fact that we worked really hard with many lawmakers and state fire marshals from other states to develop and get past the Office of State Fire Marshal at the state level. So a lot of progress has been made. We have a lot of work to do to make sure that all of that is ongoing and functional and optimized, but at least the state has really learned its lesson, and taken action best it can. And we've had the honor, probably of my lifetime, to be a part of that chapter. But I do want to say the whole state is moving from awareness that this actually is a big deal, and it's worth our time and attention, and it matters, and it's not something we can dismiss any longer, to owning their roles, and understanding, and doing the learning, to planning, and then implementing. And this is across the whole system, and this is what we need. I feel very hopeful with where we've started, and I'm just really hoping that this momentum that we have can continue to really build it in where we live with this as our everyday reality, and we're planning accordingly, and we all know we have a role, and we're all doing our parts. That said, I want to call your attention to the fact that in fire, we always have to think about the whole system. And then we also have to think on two timelines. We have immediate risk out there right this minute that needs to be addressed. We have fuels to manage on the landscape, in the built environment. We want to make sure our response is optimized. We have a lot of work to do right this minute. But we also have to be thinking for the long term. And that what we experienced in Lahaina, in other places that we were seeing these fires, it was decades in the making because the planning took place a long time ago. And we didn't know then, but we know now. And so we have to do better now moving forward with what we've learned and what we know. And that also needs to happen in addition to the immediate risk reduction. We need to be planning for the future so that we can bake resiliency into our future generations and decades to come. That said, on the immediate risk reduction side, I just wanted to give you an update that a ton is happening. We have state-funded grant programs to support large landowners in doing mitigation. We have lots of education and training programs for best practices for managing larger landscapes. Some of that, we have some examples of that even taking place on Kauai. We have a lot of work in the utilities area that's happened. Hawaiian Electric and KIUC have really done a good job moving forward on their wildfire resilience planning. Lots of education. We have over 60 firewise communities in the state. We have... I could go on and on, because that's our main thing as an organization. But there's tons of education happening. It's finally happening at scale, because it's finally funded. And then there's so much happening in our response world with fire department and DOFA. And so there's a lot of progress made in this area. This is your first gathering of your first Firewise community on Kauai. So you're finally on the map. So I put that picture in there just to say there's a lot of progress happening. locally and statewide. But there is still work ahead. And there's still gaps in the system. And this is what we've been talking about the other times that I've been able to meet with you. But there's work still ahead that has to do with the built environment. And once, I don't know if you said it, Derek, but Lahaina only had 200 yards or less of grass that burned. But what burned was the community. And that's the part that we have not addressed yet in Hawaii. and that's the work ahead of us. And so you can see the list of the work still ahead when it comes to land use planning, planning, building and site design, dealing with our vegetations around homes, and really putting that into codes and standards, and then thinking about maintenance and accountability over the long haul. So that's the work still ahead. That's where the gap still is, and the status quo we already know is dangerous, so we really have prioritized working on that. But what the whole thing is going to take moving forward is to not let the lessons of Lahaina come and go, but to really remember that this is an ongoing risk and threat. That 2014 map is really hard for me to look at because we couldn't get lift off with it no matter what we did. And it's like now we have this chance and we're just hoping people don't forget because we lost 102 lives and we don't want to see that happen again. And we've been trying to shout from the rooftops and now we have data, we have science, we have expertise all coming together to help Hawaii move forward. in a stronger way. And so what that's going to take, though, is policy and funding and changes from the status quo. But I think we're there, and we're seeing a lot of progress on that front. The idea here is just to think about the preparedness and prevention and getting that baked in from the start as we move ahead. So I don't remember what slides are next. Oh, yes. So that's essentially a Very fast summary of the findings of Lahaina. We can go more into depth at any time if you're interested, but we wanted to just give you what we learned and then where the state is at in terms of trying to work on a better future.

Mahalo, Derek and Elizabeth, for your presentation. Committee members, what we'll do is we'll do questions first. Anyone have questions? Also non-committee members, if you have questions, feel free to ask questions. Then I'll take testimony, and then if there's any follow-up questions, I'll still keep the rule suspended, and then we'll conclude the briefing. Any questions? Council Member Holland?

I'm just wondering how you allocated the numbers of those priorities, if they're in order, those 10 priorities. Okay. It seemed like the last one might be the most important, so I was just a little confused.

Yeah. Well, we... We feel like the first two were very important. That's why you see those more broadly. But in terms of the others, you can't have equal priorities in all of those. But we assign these numbers to them. It's not to say that you have to start three and get to 10. You may have to start with 10 to get back to three. You may be doing more in three. and not as much intent. So that was our understanding from an outsider's perspective.

Thank you.

And I can follow up as well, which is, as being part of the process, the fact that Hawaii's major issue in all of this is people weren't taking it seriously or were not aware. Our fire risk increased exponentially in less than a generation. Number three was educational programming for all sectors, all divisions, all agencies, all public, everything. That was number three because we had all the information available, but it was never funded to be pushed forward. So community, not just community, all everybody education was put as number three because that was going to be what it took to have the whole system lift off and start taking action. And as I recall, our conversation about putting land management as number 10 is we already know what to do. We already have data and maps and plans. We have really worked on that side because of this bias in Hawaii was any wildfire was land related. So actually, the whole program at the university is already land management. We already had economic analyses trying to figure out which best practices we could employ, what kind of tax incentives we could get in order to encourage better land management. That was already, that just wasn't funded and we didn't have policy support, but a lot of the foundation of that had been the main focus of any work for the last 26 years. And the other things just weren't even on people's radars yet. So as we were trying to sort that out, knowing that that's still essential and it matters and it's not bottom of the list, the 10 priorities don't even cover everything in their findings and recommendations. It was just like, at least do these to start. That's kind of how it got sorted out, but not saying what matters more, but just the state where things were at in terms of putting time and attention into it. Thank you.

We have a follow-up question with Council Member Cowden.

Yeah. Mike, please. On the priorities, like priority two, Office of the State Fire Marshal, it says complete process to hire the State Fire Marshal and the Office of State Fire Marshal's staff. I thought we'd already hired somebody. Is that person still there?

So just real quick, those findings were provided right after La Jolla. And that's the progress we've made since then, was we actually succeeded in getting, number one was hire someone to facilitate this. They hired Hawaii Wildfire. Number two was get an office of state fire marshal passed in terms of statute, and then get somebody hired, check. So this is all. Those findings are not right now what is being said. It was actually right after their analysis what rolled out, and then we've been working on that since then.

And then I have fresh questions, but it seems like he has one too.

Go ahead, Council Member Cotton, and then we'll go to... Okay.

Go ahead, Council Member Cotton. So I, first of all, thank you so much, and we're really lucky to have your organization come and work on Lahaina. Thank you deeply, and Elizabeth, thank you always for the work that you've been doing. As Committee Chair for Public Safety, I met you right as soon as I... uh, came into office eight years ago. Um, what I see here that like, I appreciate we got a bill coming up on our wildland urban interface, a density. I'm not hearing too much. You showed the one map when we have too much density, we have passed a number of bills to put additional dwelling units and just to increase the density. Most all of this happened before the fire. Um, How do you feel about density, meaning a lot of houses on a small lot?

Density is OK, as long as you have fire resistance and address in the building construction of that developer. In the National Institute of Standards and Technology, they have a wildfire mitigation methodology, which basically talks about things that you can do. There's 40 vulnerabilities in a structure. And if you address Hub 41, of those vulnerabilities, then you can increase the density, meaning that the fire will resist moving from structure to structure. Not that you would be living in a bunker, but however, if your design and materials are such that you're resisting fire propagation, then you bet you can increase. We understand you have a housing challenge here. And building density is important because you can build more for less, essentially. But it does, from our perspective, it comes down to those materials that you're going to be using.

So I was blessed to be able to really get a very good tour of the Lahaina fire landscape since they happened. And I want to just talk about stranded neighborhoods for a moment. We have three particular ones that really concern me here. Hanapepe on Moy Road, Hanapepe Heights. I don't know if you've had a chance to take him around our community, but I'd love it if you can. Wailua House Lots, and then Keohuna Plantation Road, which is in Poipu. These are what I would consider 1,500 house cul-de-sacs. And so in my view, I have roads on all of them that we need to put to take them out. But that probably doesn't increase the conflagration, but it certainly increases the crises by stranding people and just the difficulty of getting down those roads. I don't see that directly addressed here. Can you speak to that a bit?

Yeah, in terms of access, evacuation, road widths, and those sort of things.

Just being able to just get out. Yeah, because we have, I call them lollipops, really big areas with one road that in the best of circumstances is hard to get out. get out unless it's the middle of the night trying to take a left-hand turn.

I'll relate it to what occurred in Lahaina. You had the same conditions there and it is the reason why some people were unable to get out. Lahaina Road was one of the major egress points and then coming off of the lower highway and then of course the bypass. Those were the basic ways that you were going to get out of either going north or south in Lahaina. What happened was, because of those narrow roads and limitations with the number of people that can be on those roads, is people started taking the dirt roads, the cane haul roads.

At least they had them.

At least they had them. That's what my point was. Some were fairly undeveloped, and yet they were still able to drive on them. Since then, they've made those more developed. And they also had gates on them, which created more problems. I guess the point is that if you have a one-way in, one-way out situation, obviously you need to address that. We would say that you need a couple different ways to be able to get people in and out of the community. And based on the number of residents you have and anticipated the number of vehicles you would have on the road, that would determine how many egress points you would have.

So we could probably call that priority seven, evacuation. But I would say that's something on our island that we really desperately need to do. I have two more questions, but I'd like to let others ask questions first.

Thank you for being here. I had a question. Looking at slide number 21, if somebody can put up slide 21. Right there, I think that was it, yeah. I'm sorry? Yeah, so I cannot see your pointer here, but so this village, Cahoma village, was pretty much untouched. It lost a few houses and some fire damage. And then, if I go to slide 17, I just kind of want to get an idea of where this village is in relation to the other Sorry about that.

So this is where the ignition point is, right up in here. It pushed down toward Makai down here. And the ember cast started to impact these areas as it widened its flank on the north and widened its flank on the south in that vegetation. More and more embers were tossed into this built environment, thereby igniting more structures as it made its way to the south, as it made its way to the north. But that area right there is Cahoma Village. And we saw that the wind direction is basically right in this vector.

So were there just less embers there? Because there's that whole area right in that middle, not just Cahoma, but if you go up and to the right, that whole area is all green.

Right here, yeah. Right, so initially you had the ember cast impacting this area right here. This is where the initial structures ignited and started the conflagration moving this way. So the more and more structures you have, the larger embers, which you can get them the size of a plate. An ember, when you burn a piece of vegetation, is very small. It's like the tip of a pen or something. But when you start to burn structures and cars and trees, the embers turn out to be very large. They retain more heat. And so you had a lot of that happening as the fire moved to the southwest and even to the northwest. So right here, you can see there was a break. So there wasn't as many structures. And there's also the Cahoma stream that flowed through there. I mean, that Cahoma stream is 100 feet wide. It's fairly wide. That offers a fairly large break, which helped. And then also you had, I mean, these structures right here were igniting, and they were throwing embers into that area. However, it was more resistant to the embers.

I guess the question is, if Cahoma Village was up in that area up to your right where the concentrated red dots are, would you say that the result would have been the same? Right here? Is that like that?

Oh, yeah. If Cahoma Village... Yeah, if it was... Would the results be the same? I think you would have... better performance of those structures. You do have, I mean, in all honesty, these structures right here, Como Mai, that's what that road is. Those structures were built 2017, 2018, fairly recent. built to a better standard. However, they are close to one another. They are right up next to this area that suffered a lot of damage. And there was a lot of heat energy coming out of here. And so these were right next to that area.

OK, right above that, that little section with all the green structures, right above where you were just pointing, right here, what's that?

That's the commercial area. OK, and nothing was damaged there? Yeah, very little. Yeah, right there are a few structures there, but that was it. Yeah, this is the, that was, oh, that's that apartment complex. I'm sorry, this is the industrial center here, right here, all that area. And then that one, can't stop, that one right there, that is that big apartment complex that was in that commercial area that burned down.

And then what was the difference in construction standards for Cahoma and the rest? We obviously know the old towns, small plantation homes. But what was the one thing that you attribute that, aside from the location? Because I think the location is critical. in a different place. But what would you attribute the changes?

I wouldn't say the location is critical. I would say that the embers that were being generated from the surrounding area was definitely impacting that location. And but the type of construction that existed in that area, which is built to a stand like the noncombustible siding, the double pane windows. But Maui didn't have any codes. This was done voluntarily? This was, yeah. This was done pretty much voluntarily. I mean, at that time, they were operating off the 2006 building code. up until October of 2023, which is after the fire. And then they went to the 2018 building. So that was built to, I would say, best practices building standards. A lot of people are using hardy board siding, like I said, dual pane windows, without a tempered pane, which would be better, which is which is being suggested in this bill.

I also just wanted to add that it was a new enough development that it had real baby little trees and vegetation. And it was irrigated. And the landscaping was different, because in the older neighborhoods, there was mature, dense vegetation touching everything and creating connectivity between things, and also then producing even more embers from that. like newly planted little brand new vegetation. There was lots of space between things. And so it was the building materials and the spacing, but also there was that additional factor in other areas with all that dense old growth kind of vegetation that hadn't been managed with lots of leaf debris and all that sort of stuff that wasn't present in that area. So even though it was still getting, the wind was the same the whole area, so it was still getting the wind, it was still getting all the embers, but they're just, with the combination of the building materials and the vegetation, the status of the vegetation, those embers just weren't able to ignite things.

And that was actively irrigated?

Yeah, it was just a, I mean, it's like a little complex, you know, sprinklers and stuff, yeah.

I have a follow-up coming from Kaneshiro, and then you come in.

Yeah, leave this one up. Yeah, I was curious, what came out of the study with some of these houses that didn't get affected In those bottom areas, was it or was it? Right down here, like ? Or even more up, like within all those type of areas, was it a newer house? Or did they have a built environment versus the other ones? I'm just curious.

Oftentimes, we've seen the pictures of the red roof house, right? It's a miracle. However, when you look at the spacing of the Red Hood House between the other structures, I think we measured it. It was 50 feet to the north and almost 100 feet to the east. And there was significant separation distance from the other structures that definitely contributed. And then also, there was no vegetation around it. And the vegetation that was around, which is the grass, was well maintained. And so the maintenance of the vegetation definitely plays a role. So I appreciate you guys looking at it to that level of detail, because I really think that's what you need to do. And I think some structures that were built to a higher standard, but because of where they were, didn't perform as well because they were in a more mature area, more in a next to structures that weren't built to a higher standard or weren't maintained. And it only takes one structure to ignite and to start burning to impact that neighboring structure. Even if it's a lot of those structures, the separations distances are about 12 to 15 feet. from one wall to the other. And if you have 81-hour winds that are now burning that one structure, and the flames are sideways, it's like a blowtorch going into the neighboring structure. And that flame length can extend up to 30 feet in wind conditions. So that's where the challenge is. That's what the research shows. Once you start putting wind on these fires, the flame light turns sideways, and you've got a blowtorch going in the community. So that's something that, because Cahoma did catch those four buildings, which was significant, but those four buildings weren't adjacent to others. Had they been, maybe it would have been a different story.

Just to touch on that and to come back to your question about density, it happens with vegetation as well, where people ask if they need to clear cut the whole thing or if you can still have density and spacing. And when we're giving mitigation best practices for both, it's about design. So you can have clusters with lots of space around it. It's about how you position those on the landscape, whether it's a cluster of your trees and your bushes and then you leave lots of space around it, that's a good best practice for vegetation management. So you could still have vegetation, but it should have space around it. And then similarly, you can have multiple structures and serve a greater population so long as there's spacing around it. And the spacing that we talk about for both of those has to do with flames laying down in wind conditions and giving it room in between things.

Any other questions? Follow-up question to Council Member O'Connor and then Council Member O'Connor.

Follow-up to what Chair said. When we drove through Cahoma Village, it looked like that probably had a homeowners association or something with conditions, covenants, and restrictions that didn't allow people to have things around it, because I would describe that as a tidy neighborhood. where a lot of Lahaina has quite a bit of culture with all kinds of life and things. When I mean life, I mean things that support people's lives, canoes or kayaks or machinery, that area that burned pretty hard is dense with a lot of stuff. And so I don't have a problem with stuff, but do you think that was also part of what probably made one area more combustible?

Yeah, the non-combustible zone around structures is a real thing. We're finding all over the place that when there's stuff right around the house, or the structures, the stuff actually contributes if it's combustible and embers land in it. But I might point down to Puamana, because Puamana, similarly, is an organized, tidy... Okay, so Puamana on the southern end is a tidy HOA kind of community. And tidy... but shake shingle roofs, and it burned. It largely burned through Puamana. And also, the wind ripped off roofs and whatever else. And so that's an example of a tidy community, but really old building materials. And it was all wooden and wooden roofs and things like that. And it's still wet, even though their vegetation was tidy.

SPEAKER 1- Follow-up question to Council Member Holland.

SPEAKER 2- Yeah, just while we're on that, the red house that you talk about, did that have a hardscape? A five-foot barrier, like hardscape around it? The red house miracle?

Or just distance?

It was clear. It was grass and dirt. There was no vegetation around it. Right, but it was clear.

And it didn't have that hardscape buffer, right?

No.

How far can embers go? Because you're saying that one of the factors is that 50 foot to 100 foot, but I'm under the impression that those embers actually go a lot farther than 50 feet.

Oh, yeah. I mean, yeah. I mean, with the wind, depending on the... the density of the ember, and its ability to retain heat. And it can be carried a mile.

So spacing out the houses isn't really an option, even though you said that it's very beneficial.

There's two ways that fire spreads. So we're talking about two different things. Embers are the little bits that are flying a mile at a time, and they're going to land. and then maybe ignite something. That's one way that fires spread. And so what Derek was saying was that the embers might have started things. But once you have something burning, it's the flames that can touch other things. And so what we want to do is have ember resistance so it doesn't ignite in the first place. But if there is something on fire, when the wind is blowing the flame, it cannot heat and ignite what's next to it. So we're sort of talking about two different parts because fire travels in three ways. So we have the embers that can ignite. We have direct flame contact and even just superheated air. All three of those things can ignite something. And so you have to have a package of things to make something resist embers in the first place. But if something nearby should ignite and you weren't able to seal it all off if it's burning, you don't want fire to be able to spread by the other two mechanisms, which is superheated air and flames.

So it's both. Is this not kind of an argument for larger lot sizes?

I don't know about lot sizes, but spacing for sure.

Yeah, spacing between homes and adjacent homes. And then out of those greenhouses that council member Kaneshiro had flagged that were kind of like spotty within the red is there any kind of data on how many of those were built post 2018 or 2016 code or how many of those had the filters or the structure or I mean out of all the ones that remained in the middle of the burn I'm sure there's some miracles I'm not saying that there isn't but I'm just wondering if if there's any data on the percentage of those that had either hardscape or the things that particularly we're looking at in our wildfire bill.

Unfortunately, no. Part of the reason for that is that there wasn't really good records on when a renovation was what took place and then what kind of materials were used. Oftentimes, what we found is some of these small additions, modifications to the structure. A permit wasn't pulled. And so it was just a lack of records out there to really show us what really attributed to that structure not surviving or that one surviving and the time period that that modification was done. So that was one of the questions we asked ourselves. That's what we want to know, right? They made this modification. Did it work or did it not? Unfortunately, the data does not exist.

Thank you.

I have a couple of follow-up questions, and then we'll go to Council Member Cowden and then Council Member Carvalho. Again, thanks for your presentation. In your research, did any of the pieces look at vegetation as regards to having either native plants instead of non-native plants? Or was that a research point that could lead us to make better decisions in the built environment in addition with vegetation?

So that research may or may not have been a part of the FSRI analysis, but that is part of what the fire science work that has been happening at UH has been looking at. And so we have a list of native plants that meet certain requirements to be ember resistant and firewise and fire adapted. And mainly what we're looking for, whether it's non-native or native, we're looking for in times of less water, do they drop their leaves? Because then you get piles of leaf debris. How much maintenance do they require? How fast do they dry out if they're being preheated with hot air that might be coming nearby? We look at all these different characteristics of plants. And so the same characteristics might be true for native versus non-native. But what we know is that the most drought-tolerant species that we've come across are native plants because they know how to grow and live in these conditions. And so they don't require as much maintenance, and they don't drop their leaves and freak out when they're not getting so much water. And so we have a list of those that's been developed. And it's always being refined, but it's up to date as of the end of last year if you're interested in it.

Yes, please. Council Member Connon, then Council Member Cavalli after.

I have related questions that are inspired by letters that are resistive of our wildland urban interface bill, which is part of why you're doing this presentation. So I'd like to ask them.

Just to clarify, Council Member Connon, are you asking questions for the bill or for the presentation?

I'm asking questions for the presentation because I would think you, but especially Derek, might have a good understanding on this, is I want to know about fire insurance. I happen to have a wooden plantation house. The year before last, I almost couldn't get any insurance because my insurer is the same one that was the main insurer in Lahaina. How is the impact of insurance happening as a result of, certainly, the California fires? We're having fires everywhere, by the way. But behind all of those, can you speak at all to insurance?

I'll start and I'll send it to Elizabeth. I'll start and I'll send it to Elizabeth. She has something to share on this as well. In the case of California, California has undergone some significant challenges with insurance. I think in 2017, they had about 165,000 residents or property owners. on what they call the fair plan, which is the insurance of last resort. You can't get in fire insurance. You have to go to the state. And the state says, OK, this is what you have to pay, which is significantly more than market rates, unfortunately. That was in 2017, 160,000 or so. Now they have almost 700,000 property owners on that insurance of last resort. It is really creating a challenge, which affects the real estate market, of course. Because now if you're paying, you know, double, triple what everybody else is paying, that it's going to impact your real estate costs. That is kind of the trend line, as we know. As we've seen what's going on in California, it is a concern in other states, as well as this one. Will this ordinance impact that insurance crisis? It is moving the needle, for sure. As more communities are getting online and shoring up their building construction practices and requiring new construction to abide by a more fire resilient code, that is being embraced by the insurance carriers. And even if a community goes to Firewise, which I know we went from 16 before the fire, now you're up to 50 statewide, which is amazing. 60, not 50, that results in California, it's resulting in a reduction in your insurance premiums. Depending, and it's a variable amount. It could be as low as $100 to as great as $1,000 or so. So it is making an impact. for sure. And obviously, the more that is being done to implement evidence-based practices into your standards and ordinances to make your construction more resilient, that's going to be received positively by the insurance.

MARTHA MINOWSKI- And we actually have put together additional information in detail. And we have an expert that's in the room, but that's not part of this panel. But we can talk about it when we go into the next. part of the agenda. But what I can say is we've been working locally with Hawaii Insurers Council, which has representatives of all our insurance carriers in Hawaii, with the insurance commissioner. There's been a lot of discussion about this in Hawaii. And they're still going through the learning curve on what it's going to look like in Hawaii. But what I can say they're looking for is science-based pre-vetted metrics and standards that are already established, that are built into communities from the start and are done in an obligatory way, not voluntary and not scattershot, piecemeal individuals, but rather whole neighborhoods or whole regions that are now meeting those standards. science-backed performance-based metrics for resisting ignition. And so they're starting to understand that they need to look for that, and then they're looking to the standards that are established already, and that's what's going to help them feel more confident insuring. And that's basically where the conversation is at that I am aware of with many of our insurers. So what we're trying to do is, from here forward, get those things obligatory and in place so that we can stay insurable.

And so similar to talking to the insurance industry, thank you so much for that, because I think they really need to be at the table. Because even affordability, mortgages can get called if you no longer have insurance, if people have a mortgage. How about contractors? Are contractors a part of your whole process with how we're looking at laying out Firewise communities, and well-designed, what we call defensible communities.

KATHLEEN SULLIVAN- Yeah, we're looking out in some ways, because after Lahaina, we had folks reach out to us who are thinking about it more from a liability perspective. But voluntarily, they're going through their own learning curve, too. This is why education was priority three, was because people are trying to really learn what would it be to be EMBA-resistant, to be fire safe from the start. And so we've had a lot of voluntary design shifts so that it does have more than one way in and out, so that it does have ignition resistant building materials, so that the vegetation is removed from right against the home. So we've had builders and contractors and developers all reaching out to learn that information so that they can maybe build it in. And then we have some design and engineering firms who For instance, G70, Group 70, they're designing a lot of Hawaiian homes master plans for new developments, and they are building that into the design to be fire-safe from the start. But it is not obligatory yet, so it's just voluntary, so I'm not sure how that will impact insurance. But we do have participation from that industry.

Okay, and I have one small final question, follow-up question. You mentioned lithium ion batteries. And that's something that I think we saw deeply in the Lahaina fire. And then there was one in the kind of Monterey Bay area and big power plant in California caught fire. Can you just speak to how significant is the threat of lithium batteries from lawn mowers and tools to cars to whatever, like a Tesla wall?

It's an emerging risk.

you. It's an emerging risk, lithium ion batteries, and it's something that is the focus of our research portfolio. They, you know, understanding how they go into thermal runaway and how we can best guard them from doing that, from igniting, is the topic of our research, and I know the manufacturers as well. We have a testing protocol that Battery manufacturers subscribe to to ensure that their batteries do meet a certain standard, safety standard. That's one thing we can say is that if any batteries that are being used in the state of Hawaii, in Kauai County, meet that standard, that you're not importing something that doesn't meet our UL standard for battery testing. It's here. It exists. We're not going backwards. From this point forward, it's all about operating in a safe manner and making sure that we're using safe products.

So sitting in the garage of one of these houses that's well designed and in a defensible area, having a significant, I won't say what kind of vehicle, but a vehicle that might have batteries in it, or a power system that has it on the wall, does that undermine that standard that the house has? If you've done everything right, but you've got the batteries at the house.

Right, right. I mean, there was a lot of battery backup systems that were installed in that Lahaina area that burned. We saw many of those. Now, it was difficult to say if those contributed to the burning or not. We couldn't tell based on... the significance of the burn patterns, it was difficult to tell where it contributed. Was it later in the burn? Was it earlier in the burn? You couldn't tell. But there was a significant number of those there.

In California, probably, too.

Same, yeah.

Council Member Cavaglia.

I appreciate the discussion. Thank you for that. I just have a quick question on the system analysis. And you had 84 findings and 140 recommendations. So I kind of wanted to ask about that and how did that resonate to others or what information you had on that?

You know, the question is 84 findings, 140 recommendations. And then how do we identify those? I guess that's the process of identification. So a finding is a significant element, component of the analysis that we discovered what could be positive or negative and boil down in one sentence to state that maybe there is an issue that needed to be addressed with a recommendation. I know that's a lot of words. But basically, if we saw a deficiency, it was identified as a finding. If we saw something that maybe is best practices and needed to be exposed as a finding, we also included that in the finding list. So when you have these, a number of, we'll call them deficiencies, either in policy or Execution of, in some cases, you didn't have a policy to address certain issues. In other cases, there was no, the policy was insufficient or not maintained. In other cases, maybe there was a decision that was made that determined the outcome of something either positive or negative. That was also included in a finding. A deficiency of equipment was also identified as a finding. So that's how we came up with the list. And it tracked back from prevention even before the event, what were they doing to prevent and to prepare prior to the event, and what was on the books from the state, what was on the books for the county, and so on. And then we basically have a committee within the analysis group that vets those, that discuss those, and ensures that, yes, that belongs on the list. We can share that information. Yeah. Thank you.

Council Member Haaland, question?

Yes, thank you. I have a couple questions. I'm wondering if the water access issue that happened on Maui, if you could share a little bit about what you guys learned about that. I've been a little worried about, obviously, electric pumps. And when the electric lines go down, we may or may not have access to enough electric to pump water. And we've looked at that with generators and pumps and some. But there was also conversation about some of the infrastructure and pipes actually melting. And I'm just wondering if you could add some clarity to what your findings were from the Jaina.

One of the challenges with conflagrations is that once you have several structures that are burning all the way to the ground, your supply lines end up burning as well, like your plumbing lines. It goes to your shower. It goes to your sink. Those melt. And because there's no shutoff, or there is a shutoff at the curb, but that can't be shut off because nobody can make access because there's fire everywhere, and then basically you have this house, that house, 1,000 homes just leaching water into the streets with no ability to shut them off because there's so much fire and so many downed trees and so many downed utility poles, access was difficult. So with that loss, your plumbing system is designed to be able to handle people taking showers at a certain time, a certain number of people using the municipal water system. If you have that distribution system that was designed to have, I don't know, 500 people using it at one time, and now you have every single plumbing fixture that is open in flowing water, the pressure in the system will just be reduced to a point where If you open up a fire hydrant, which is like a four-inch outlet, it just kind of drips out because you've lost all that pressure. It's just leaching out everywhere. In order to maintain pressure, you can only have so many usages at the same time.

Were there infrastructure or response recommendations that came out of that finding, specifically related to our infrastructure and how we prevent that?

So one way to prevent it is to have interconnects or shut off areas where you can grid the system. And so you can isolate the system that's under impact and thereby keep water in portions of the system that are not burning that need the water. That's one thing. The other way is to separate the... the treated water from hydro water. Right now, the whole system is treated water, which is not unusual in any system. And that's what was happening in even Palisades. The drinking water is the same as the hydro water, same system. The problem with that is that once you start losing 1,000 homes, and you reduce your pressure, you can't get water out of the fire hydrant. And water makes a difference. Chair, you made a point of the Cahoma Village, and why did it survive? And it's not only because of the building construction. It is also because they had firefighters in that area. And even though they only had a couple hose lines, and the hydrants were working down in that area at the time, and they were able to hook up to a fire hydrant and take a 50-length of hose, and there was an ember there, and they put out the water. And they moved out, and they put out the fire. I mean, they weren't able to do it in all cases. In some cases, we can see that the construction actually resisted the fire. But at times, because we spoke to those firefighters, we know where they were because we have their AVL, too. What's the AVL? Automatic Vehicle Location. Okay. So they told us, like, we were here, we were there. Yeah, we use this water, we use this hydrant. So in certain cases, when they did have water, it made a huge difference to their ability to do some good firefighting. In those more densely, more mature areas, down up behind Luna Road, down in that plantation mill area where you've got those homes that have been there since the 30s, that's a different story. It was dangerous. And you were losing so many homes. So isolating the system, I mean, now that we hear that the manufacturers have been coming up with a automatic shutoff at the curve, where if there's a certain flow, it automatically shuts off. That would help.

Was water catchment, tanks, or potentially the restoration and salvaging of our reservoirs a part of those recommendations or conversation?

Water access, like water tanks. Improving the catchments and the reservoirs.

Or just having catchment, like having catchment tanks that are designed for fire suppression, say, above Kalmakhani or, say, in fire-prone communities to ensure that there is that kind of water that's specifically just held for fire use. And I'm only asking. if it came up, because I'm interested. And I'm just wondering also about the reservoirs. There's been a huge push on the state level to decommission our reservoirs. And I personally have concerns about the fire access to water that reservoirs provide, in addition to the obvious agricultural and water needs as we move in through climate change. But I'm just wondering if there was any kind reservoir conversation, or tanks and water storage conversation?

Let me comment on the research, and then I'll kick it over to Elizabeth. So what we found, too, was that there was plenty of water. It was the distribution problem. So much loss in the distribution. The pressure drops. You can't get any water out of the hydrants. That is the issue. They had sufficient water in the reservoirs and in the supply system, which they take it from the reservoir, then they treat it, and then they send it out to another tank, which then gets distributed. That system was working. It was the distribution that was failing. And in terms of having more water, more water available for firefighting purposes, we know that firefighting suppression, even in the worst of conditions, can make a difference. But you have to have water.

Water is part of the utilities priority. So we've been working on that at the state level. And there's a few things. One, you don't have to think of those down the line, what to do once all the houses are burning, all the water's spilling out, if the houses aren't burning. So the very first answer is, how about we don't burn a town and then try to fix the water as it's all leaking out? So that's really where a lot of the answer needs to lie, making sure things aren't igniting and burning in the first place to create that scenario. But the second thing is we do have a lack of water in some of our more sort of rural wildland locations. And that's come up quite a bit. And so I can't speak exactly to reservoirs, but I know that a lot of the conversation at the state level is, of course, the more access to water, the better. And so we're looking at establishing systems of dip tanks for helicopter suppression so that we can do bucket drops and things like that in more places where water is harder to access or you're dealing in that scenario. But the limitation to that is in those heavy wind conditions. We can't have aerial operations. And so a lot of that is on everyone's radar. And I think everyone's trying to come up with the package of solutions that you can use in different scenarios. But ultimately, this is why the prevention side of things matters so much. Because by the time you're down the line trying to solve that, it just gets more and more complex. I don't know if you shared the definition of prevention. But I think that all comes down. That comes back to this when we're talking about, how about we don't burn in the first place?

I got a follow-up question with Council Member Tanashiro.

That is, maybe it's a new question. Go ahead. It's regarding evacuation and access. I think we learned a lot about when we were young, if your house isn't fired and you have a fire escape route, but when an entire community's on fire, Like, what are the recommendations for people to do? I would have no clue what to do at my house. I mean, obviously, try to get out of the area, but then if, you know, telephone poles are down and there's no access, then, I mean, what are, like, the ideal recommendation? And then as you go down the line, like, you can't get out of there, then what do you do? Like, I have no clue, so... Do you guys have any recommendations or what? Well, yes. Your house is all prepped.

Yeah, but you need to get out of it.

Do you stay in the house? Run me through it because I wouldn't know what to do at all.

So that's why number three is educational programming because that's a part of it is we need everybody to really know that so that they're prepared ahead of time. So Hawaii has adopted the Ready, Set, Go program, which is from the International Association of Fire Chiefs. It was instituted after Australia had a stay and defend program, where their houses were perfectly shored up and fire-wise and all that stuff. And as long as all those features were in place for the entire neighborhood, they could stay in place and shelter in place. But they had mega fires, where people at the last minute decided they needed to leave because of smoke. and because of air quality, not necessarily because of flames. But they all died evacuating. And so the US took on a policy of like, we're not going to stay. First of all, it would take having a very perfectly hardened neighborhood to even think we could resist ignition. But then we have all those other secondary things we want to get away from. So ready, set, go is to be ready, to have your house ready, to make and practice your evacuation plan ahead of time. We can walk through all those exercises where you think through, what are my decision points? Where would I turn? Where could I walk and run to? Where could I drive to? What am I going to do at each turn? Where do I go? You do that ahead of time when you think of your neighbors and anyone else who might need assistance. And you do that ahead of time. But the set is situational awareness where you're paying attention and you're not waiting to be told to evacuate. If you see fire, or you notice it, or you're scared, or your spidey sense is like, this could get bad, you just leave on your own. You can always go back home if it's nothing. But you leave early so that you're not a part of evacuation traffic. so that responders can get in. You don't stay and use the hose at the last minute. You take water away from firefighting operations. You may become a search and rescue because you stayed too long. So the answer, at least right now in Hawaii as we sit, because we don't have great access out and you don't have that many options, is to leave early. And that's where the education comes in. And over time, we need to develop areas within neighborhoods as places of last resort where it is a safe refuge, where it's cleared and it's safe. But we don't have that yet. So for now, neighborhood by neighborhood, especially our Firewise communities, are developing their own evacuation plans and they're practicing. So Waikoloa Village has a practice twice a year where it's a big event day and everybody drives the secondary evacuation road, or they figure it out and they all practice as a community. But they have had a lot of evacuations. And so it's front of mind. So there's a learning. There's a practicing. There's a planning ahead. And then there's what to do if an incident is actually happening. And you get out early. You don't wait to be told. I think people think they're going to have knocks on every door and that people are going to help you pack your bag. I mean, we run into a lot of misunderstandings about what's going to happen when it's go time. But it's a complicated decision if you're going to evacuate or not, because people also have heart attacks, and they get scared, and they get injured during evacuations also. So it's a really hard call to make. So while that decision making is happening, you can always just go and get out early. So that's kind of where we've landed so far.

I guess, like, how far do you go? Like, where do you go? Like, even for me here in Liguia, I'm like, I mean, where would I go? Like, is Laguna Stadium, like, a safe parking area? I don't know. I mean, it's still, like, Makaya, where the fire would be heading. Like, do you head, like, North Shore or West? Like, where do you stop? Like, I wouldn't even know what to do, you know?

You're not alone. That's how most of our communities feel. And so that's why we need to, we really need to go place by place to do the pre-planning. and to do the practicing. But in general, it's hard to predict where a fire's going to go, and what the weather's going to be like, and what the wind is going to do. So you kind of have to plan out, if it's doing this, then I go there. Sometimes you only have one option, and so you just have to do it. But of course, don't drive into the fire, drive away. You just have to use the common sense, because we don't have things perfectly planned at this point.

So on that is .. And then, so if you're stuck in the fire, what do you do? If you can't get out, it's too late, The roads are down. Cars are all backed up. Like, what do you do? Just get out and run somewhere? I mean, what is the, I don't know, I mean, what?

We never want you to be in that scenario, because you've been paying attention, and you got out early. But if it does come that fast, this is why we need safe refuge areas, so that it's like the place of last resort. And you need to know about it ahead of time. And you can already look. I mean, Chief Ventura has said two things that have resonated with me, because we've been teaching this a long time. that I had never thought about before, which is you don't have to have your best behavior to stay in the right lane. You can also drive in the wrong lane. You can also drive through gates if it's really that sort of situation. But this is where the prevention and education really matters, because we never want to get into a situation where anybody's having to make those real-time decisions like that. This is where we have to be prepared ahead of time. And that, again, those two timelines, all of this discussion is so relevant because we're stuck with what was planned out decades ago. But moving ahead, we don't have to leave people with only one way in and out. We don't have to make it so everything would be burning all around you. And that's what we're trying to get to is to buy you time. because the ignition resistance, when fewer things are burning or nothing is burning or it's just small enough that fire suppression can actually extinguish it, it all buys you time to get out safely and have more time to get out so that the fire is smaller and actually suppressible. And that's really what we're trying to get to. We're not going to have no fires. But if we're able to make ignition resistant areas, we will have less igniting. The fires will be smaller. You'll have way more time to get out. Fire department will have way more time to get in and to keep things smaller. And I think that's really the best we can ask for moving forward. But like every other community, everybody's kind of scared looking at how the setup is currently. And so we have these. Even Lanikai, they're fire-wise. And they have gotten creative. And it's like on that end, they'll go out the golf course. And on this end, they can drive out toward Kailua. And then in the middle, they're all gathering at the, the plan is to gather at the park and launch all the six-mans. So they'll be paddling out. I mean, every neighborhood is trying to get creative with what is in place currently. But this is why we have to make it safety built in from the start so that we don't have to do it like that.

Two follow-ups. Follow-up, Council Member Holland and Council Member Cobb.

I'm just wondering, you know, Council Member Panashera brings up such a great point, and you guys have talked about it as well, we just don't know what to do, and I'm wondering what the efforts are to educate people in that way, and like, are there mailers planned? Are there, I mean, are we prioritizing that? Are we funding, you know, education? I mean, I got a crazy mailer last week, I don't know, he doesn't even say who sent it, and it's kind of gnarly, I won't even talk about it, but I mean, there's all kinds of mailers that come out. So if you guys could mail everybody and then people understand this is your community or customized by them, probably precinct or something. I'm just wondering, how do we share as leaders in our community, how do we share this information to our constituents?

Yeah, so we collectively, there's like 36 different agencies, every fire department, every emergency management, and National Weather Service, DOFA, everybody's in on this drug season campaign. And we're actually in our 11th year of pushing it out. It's always limited in funding. And so we have some PSAs going out statewide. We run the campaign for several months. All of us are pushing it out through our listservs, but it's always underfunded. And so it's whoever can have access to whoever else. And for about eight years, I want to say, or something like that, we actually sent this information to every single elected official in the entire state with maybe one or two, OK, thanks, coming back. And then after Lahaina on the same threads, people were like, ah, now I need it. And so we've been trying to make that much more available. I was going to follow up anyway, which is that some of the questions that came up, insurance, batteries, built environment, land use, all of that, we have recent webinars. So I could just send somebody the list so you guys can have access to all that education we've just pumped out. But also, you have constituents who are probably interested, at least, in this information. And it actually is all available. We just need help distributing. So we do it in all the traditional ways. We have it at community events. We have workshops. We have webinars. We post it, social media. But I don't know that it's reached into every place it needs to yet. And I think that's what the everyone has a role. That could be, that educational role could really be something we could use our help on to get it out to every district.

It seems like we need access to the everyday people, like maybe commercials and mailers, because that seems to be what we all do.

Mailers are super expensive, so we haven't ever had funding for that. So we're doing all the things that we can do with not so much funding. But this is where that first finding, this is a system-wide problem and Hawaii hasn't invested in it yet, that's why. I mean, that's why we have limited understanding and awareness of all the things to do ahead of time around your home and during an incident is because the education piece has just never really been funded.

And if there was one place that somebody could go right now for that education, Can you please plug what that website would be?

HWMO.org. So we have created our website to be a clearinghouse. And so we have for homeowners, for teachers, for all these different sectors, on that wheel that I showed, we have information and materials for everybody. And I will say, I say we. as our organization has maybe taken the lead on putting it on the website. But all of the materials have been co-developed with our fire departments, forestry and wildlife, and emergency management agencies. So they're vetted, and it's all of the bigger we that has created those materials. It's just housed on our website. And I think emergency management and fire department probably also have easy access to the same ones. Yeah.

A question with Council Member Cowden.

And I am just going to acknowledge our fire prevention team in the back of the room there, and all the Firewise meetings and attendance at different homes, and neighborhood association meetings, and at the Philippine Cultural Center. You guys are around all the time, so thank you for all the ways you went to do that. The ocean and the golf courses, to me, are the real obvious things, because those are mowed well. for where people can run to. But when we saw Lahaina, of those 102 lives lost, was there a count of how many of those lives were lost in the ocean? We saw a lot of videos of people leaving their cars, which created even a harder time for those left in cars to get out, but leaving their cars and going in the ocean. Did we have a high survival rate of those in the ocean? Much loss?

No, there was a highest revival rate for those who are in the ocean. Those individuals, I can only recall one in an area, and I can't remember where it was now, but I think most of the folks that went down Front Street and jumped in the water were recovered.

A lot, recovered a lot.

Those folks resting, those folks that were trapped in vehicles along Front Street, there was quite a few that unfortunately perished. They were right next to the water. So, yeah, we actually have pictures and spoken to the rescuers that were in that area.

That's important to hear, because I know there was almost like what we call rumors and stories during the aftermath. And so people were saying that there was bodies out being picked up by boats, but perhaps that's not correct, that they survived in the ocean. Because to me, that would be my instinct is to get in the water.

Yeah.

Yeah. The one thing, oh, I said that there were two things. We have water everywhere here, so. Well, and the two things, I only mentioned one of them, which is like the regular rules of civil society. It's OK to break things down and drive on the wrong side of the road if you're in that last minute situation. The other thing is that there were fatalities in an area where had they thought about safe refuge. Actually, it was really close, but it was like behind them. And so there were areas that could have been used, but they hadn't really thought about that ahead of time. Like, if I'm really in dire straits, I probably could go to the golf course or whatever else. So that's an education thing, but it's also when you're making and practicing your plan, you should have your plan A through Z. And maybe that's Z, but at least it's on your radar so that if it comes, you don't have to think of it right then when you're stressed. It's already thought of. And so there were fatalities that maybe could have been avoided had they been thinking like that already and then utilized a big parking lot and field that were nearby.

Let me, can I? Go ahead. I'm sorry.

How about pools? Jump in the pool.

Yes. So I wanted to comment a little bit about the, I made a comment about giving the firefighters a fighting chance. And then I related a story of firefighters in the area of Cahoma Village. There was also firefighters down in Puamana. But in Coma Village specifically, because that was fairly early into the firefight. And what I mean by giving the firefighters a fighting chance and not having people run for their lives is the potential of ignition either next to a structure or by a structure is lowered because of increased standards. If the wall is made of and the window system and the roofing system and there is no vegetation around and it's more ember resistant, you're just not going to get the ignitions. You may get some because there's a tarp left out or whatever. But for those communities that are built to a higher standard, more well-maintained. And this goes for Lahaina. It goes for California. Before I came on with Underwriters Laboratory, I was with Los Angeles County Fire Department for 31 years. So I was involved in many of these type of conflagration events in the middle of it. I saw it. I've witnessed it. I've watched people be rescued. I've rescued them themselves. I've been burned inside of these things before. I mean, not too bad. But nonetheless, I've seen a lot of the activity. So what we find is that firefighters are more capable of performing the work if the construction and the community is such that it's more resistant to ignitions by embers. And that is the common thread. I think that's why we're here today is looking at this Ruby ordinance and finding where does it fit and how could it contribute to improved safety. And wildfire prevention is about vigilance to addressing the emerging risks and also persistence in implementing changes to the community by individuals and also community-wide. It's vigilance and persistence, because you will always have an advancing wildfire threat. You've got all this growth because of the rain you've received. Now it starts to dry out. Boom, it's back. It's here. Now we just need a storm to pass through or wind conditions. And we've got another wildfire condition where we got 30, 40, 50 mile an hour winds. You always have winds in the islands. And so it just exists. And so vigilance toward addressing those risks and persistence in dealing with them is ongoing. It's just the cycle that we live in to protect our communities. Thank you.

Follow-up question? New questions? Go ahead, Council Member Holland. And I just want to point out, we will be approaching a caption break in about 15 minutes, so we'll keep going.

Yeah, you don't have to give me a long answer. I'm just wondering, on Maui, what the status of them considering this bill is, if the council has considered it, and if the planning department there is working on something similar to what we are?

So just real quick, we're still on the presentation.

Yeah. Well, I'm just wondering if you guys are working with them on this conversation to address this specific stuff.

I can take a stab at it. I think there is an appetite to start to think this through, but it's much complicated by the fact that they're in recovery. And so the speed at which they're able to address the recovery needs, the infrastructure needs, they're kind of looking at everything. So there is work. Doug is in the room here. He's been working with Maui. We're at the table on some parts and pieces, mostly on the prevention aspects. Every county is kind of trying to find its way and figure it out. But you have been the most proactive in being sort of eager learners. I thank you for that. Because that's what we need to do is to sort of learn and figure out where we're going to go next. 200 over 200 findings and recommendations can be overwhelming and so everyone's kind of started in a different part I will say on Oahu Where they have started is that they have a countywide working group with every single agency and they're working on how Every one of them can know their role and do their part and have it all in alignment across all departments and entities so that is where they've taken it is to really address the ten priorities and And then on Maui, they're working on figuring out a home assessment program. They're ramping up the fire waste program. Where they ran ahead was on vegetation management on large landscapes. So they're inspecting them more proactively. So that's where they put a lot of energy. And then now they're talking through what they might be able to do when it comes to ordinance. So each county has kind of run ahead in one piece of it, but not so much. No one has made as much progress, actually, as you guys have so far. Thank you.

Best management practices, when I look at those priorities that she's talking about, those would frame out in best management practices. Is that correct? Is that opposed to necessarily in laws? Are we defining best management practices for across the state?

Per priority, that's what's going into the state strategy. So for fire weather, how do we monitor? How do we track? How do we communicate? How do we change our operations according to different forecasts? So there's best management practices for fire weather. So for each of those categories that you see, there are best practices. And that's informing how the state will proceed on all the priorities, actually.

I want to follow up on what you were saying with the apparatus part, the specialized apparatus, maybe. I want clarification on that, on the counties and what we should make sure we have available.

Yeah. So the example that we gave is the, they call them type six apparatus that were designed to address the vegetation component of of the firefight. They could be used in structure firefighting as well, especially when you have configurations where you're bouncing from one structure to the next. But those more nimble, capable apparatus that can get in and out of areas quickly and address smaller fires before they start does have an advantage in these type of events, for sure. And we've seen that in Lahaina. We've seen it in other fires around the Western United States, especially in the last incidents in California. So I think there is a larger push, I believe, in this. I know that Maui has purchased more. And to pursue the purchase of those type of vehicles. Thank you.

Members, any additional questions on the presentation? I do have one more. On your research, again, thank you so much for all your work. On the prevention side, was there any points, and I'm going back to vegetation, about restoration of place and restoration of revitalization of existing environmental things that we can do on the front and aside from the built environment so that We have more drought-resistant, more native plant vegetation that allows us to combat on the front end.

Yeah, there's a large chapter on vegetation management. And the bulk of it was that anything other than letting it sit there and do nothing is already less risk of fire. So we have lots of needs in our state and in our communities. We need food security. We want to protect our natural and cultural resources. We want restoration of native forests and native plants and ecologies and watershed forests. So protecting our watershed forests, protecting our water availability, and then protecting food security, basically, Conservation, restoration, and food production are some of our best ways of managing land to reduce fire risk. So it's not just getting out there and mowing and weed whacking. That is what we do at the bare, bare, bare minimum. But of course, we're not going to be able to keep up with it and clear-cut everything constantly and have it be nothing. That's not healthy for the soil anyway. So really, the best thing is to put it into active use and active management and active stewardship and caretaking of some type. That can be small-scale traditional agriculture. It can be larger commercial for fire risk reasons. And conservation and restoration are a really big piece of this too. So the more we can... And the hard part is we have a patchwork of private and public lands. The good news is that DLNR has received more funding to actually manage its lands. DHHL is really trying to manage its lands. all in on wildfire mitigation. So our state agencies are now having a little more capacity to do better. And they're in the throes of figuring out and making that happen. We have to work on the private side to figure out how we move forward so that that land is in use, whether it's tax incentives, whether it's penalties. We don't know how that's going to happen. But the University of Hawaii, EUHERO, Economic Research Organization, they're helping us figure out where we go next in terms of enforcing that. But really, active management of land is where we need to get to. And whatever it takes to get that happening on the private large land holdings, to support it, to fund it, to incentivize, whatever it's going to take. But that's what we need. We need food and native species.

Thank you. Follow-up question from Council Member Cowden. Mike, please.

I have follow-up that's actually in from the public watching. when this is a more senior person who was around when very often they had the cane fires. It was a regular practice. They're saying, how come that didn't burn things? And maybe you've already answered that with saying that vegetative embers are smaller than a roof falling apart that's on fire. But I will let you answer that, because they're saying the cane went all the way up close to the houses, and they burned them on the regular.

When cane was being burned, they were very careful about the conditions, about when, about positioning people ahead of time. They had water resources in place. They had dozers in place. And they only did it at the times that would be the safest. And everybody was skilled. And there was adequate control of that fire on low hazard days. And that's very different than an out of control fire no one was ready for. Often when the conditions are really severe, it's a whole different thing when it's unintended and it's moving at 80 miles an hour versus when there's no wind and everybody's positioned and set up to keep it under control. Two totally different types of burning is happening.

And the same goes for prescribed burning that happens in any area. I mean, it has to be what we call under prescription. So prescription means the relative humidity has to be such that the wind has to be a certain level from a certain direction. And you have to have some assurance that those parameters are going to be able to be maintained throughout the duration of the burn. And having the adequate resources in the event that it does spot on the other side of the line, that you have resources to get in there and to put those fires, those small fires out. So those are, yeah, extremely monitored, I would say. And it's a measured event that you're looking at all the parameters to make sure you can do it safely. And that's the reason why prescribed burning works, is that you can control the fuel under your conditions, under the conditions that you're dictating. Whereas, during these large conflagration events, they're happening under Mother Nature's parameters. And that's a tough place to be.

SPEAKER 1- How many members or any other members have any additional questions? Seeing none, with time, I think we're going to take a caption break now, and we'll take a 10-minute caption break, and then when we come back from the caption break, we'll open up for testimony, if there's any public testimony, and then if no testimony, then we'll close with our discussion and close this item.

Mr. Chair, can I, just a real quick moment of personal privilege? Yes. We have Mayor Kawakami here in the house, and today is his birthday. Yay! So, Mr. Cavalli, would you lead us in? Let's go, let's go. Happy birthday to you.

Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday, dear Mayor. Happy birthday.

Is it ready? And Derek's birthday. Hawaii, Hawaii, there you go. Aoli, Aoli, Aoli, Aoli.

We'll take a 10-minute cap.

Thank you. I'd like to call the Planning Commission meeting back to order. I just want to make a real quick correction for attendance for Planning Committee. We do have one excused absent, if you haven't noticed. Council Member Quilley is not here. So we're back here on the presentation. And with the rules suspended, we'll do public testimony. And I believe we have two registered speakers.

First registered speaker is Doug Hague, followed by Donna Rice.

Thank you. Just make sure to press the button. Oh, you know the drill, Doug.

Yeah, good afternoon. I'm Doug Hague, representing Kauai Habitat for Humanity and introducing the president of the board for Kauai Habitat for Humanity, Donna Rice.

Thank you.

Maybe you can start with the Habitat board's position in following up on the wildfire threat.

Yeah, the board of Habitat has looked at the fire issues. And they feel that being able to support materials and building out homes that would make them safer to help prevent wildfires would be very important going forward. It also affects their insurance once they get into the home. So if they do have materials that are more fire resistant that the insurance companies are looking at, then this keeps their insurance down, their overall costs down. So the board is very supportive of putting in some type of wildfire prevention.

And speaking for the Quiet Habitat for Humanity, We feel as though in developing the bill, the planning department had been very receptive to our concerns and our challenges to affordable housing for Kauai. That's our goal. I think that's all of our goals here. And fortunately, with Kauai Habitat and my involvement with them, we've been able to actually achieve some of it. And they've been very supportive. And the floor amendments that you see will be reflecting lots of our discussions with the planning department. Stepping back, though, as a past building official for the County of Kauai, now is the time for wildfire. When I was with the building division, I was on the State Hazard Mitigation Forum. I was at State Building Co-Council. And we gave a lot of time to wind hazards. We've always had FEMA for our flood hazards. So we've really focused on those. And I remember the meetings. When the wildfire came up, we gave them five minutes out of a two-hour meeting because we just didn't, we weren't aware. And it's kind of counterintuitive that on Kauai, the wettest spot in the world, you have wire fire hazards. And so we didn't pay much attention. But clearly, with the Lahaina fire, that made us aware. And I personally grew up in a canyon in the Santa Monica Mountains in Southern California where we had wildfires regularly. And we had the fire chief come by once a year. My dad sent us out there to pull weeds, plant ice wood, ice plant, and do prevention. So I'm aware of that. But I went to Pacific Palisades High School. To me, it was totally counterintuitive that Pacific Palisades would burn like that. There's no idea. I never imagined it would do that, even after seeing all these fires that I grew up with. And that's the key. It's counterintuitive.

Sorry to interrupt, but is there anyone wishing to testify? Oh, yeah. We can do an additional three minutes. Doug, give him another three minutes.

And so my point is, while it may not seem within our life experience that there's a hazard and we need to respond to it, I'm ready to listen to the experts, because it's been very surprising to me how wildfires have affected us. So that's the testimony.

And I would just like to sort of go on that as well. I've seen wildfires even come very close to my own house, not here, but in California, where we had to evacuate. And those areas you would think wouldn't burn, but they had a fire. And they were there. So we never know what's going to happen. There are so many disasters now that is happening constantly, and fires happening. And some are even being lit. They're not natural. So I think the more that we can put in place for fire prevention, along with everything else, as Doug said, with the flood prevention we've been focusing on in the past, I think it's the right direction.

Thank you. Anyone else wishing to testify? Seeing none, I'd like to call it back to order. Final discussions, members, on the presentation.

I just want to say thank you for the very interesting presentation, very informative presentation. And I think, I guess the main thing I learned today is get out, you know, as fast as you can. If there's a fire hazard, then just get out of the area as fast as you can is the best thing you can do. Once you get stuck in there, I mean, it's life or death situation. So, yeah, I mean, if there's a fire hazard, don't be niele. If everybody tells you to get out of the area, then get out of the area as soon as you can. Get your family and get out of the area as soon as you can. So, thanks.

Council Member Cowden.

I also want to really thank the team who's put this work together. I thank the mayor for being here and a lot of the water department, many important people, certainly the fire department and planning. that are here. Elizabeth has been doing just great work. So she's deeply appreciated. And it's thank you, Councilmember Bulasan, for getting this great team together in front of us. And I take fire very seriously. I grew up in an area where the Rockies, where fires were just powerful. And really, even this season, we're having a lot of loss of our firefighters in that area, which is really tragic. I think it's important for people to be listening to this and to be willing to make these changes. As I've been watching this bill move through, I look at how to get that fire mesh for my own house and how to make my own house more fire safe. It's never worth it to have your place burn. And then I think this insurance issue is a very big deal. And especially even all the apartment buildings and condominiums, they're getting very hard to insure. So if people are worried about the cost increase for some of the building, I think we need to think about what does it cost to not do it, whether that is that you can't get the insurance or when we have these increasing challenges as our population and our built environment is growing. So thank you so much.

Council Member Holland.

Yeah, thank you so much for the discussion. I find this such an interesting conversation. As an ecologist, I constantly talk about our invasive species. But throughout my lifetime, I've watched our landscape largely become an Australian landscape. And going in through and being from areas where fire is a part of life, watching that change and us not being prepared for the ramifications of those changes and highly flammable plants and completely different ecosystems. I think that we really need to work across the board. I think there should be a little bit more, my personal suggestion for the priorities that were discussed is that there's some delineation between the conversation around vegetation management and the conversation around restoration because it doesn't get enough highlighted need for the loss of our wetlands, the loss of our systems that have led to this. Lahaina was once a wetland. And I think that there's a lot of conversations about long-term diversions, long-term loss of our native systems that needs to be happening. And I think that there should be more weight on the state to manage these systems. Even in wake of Lala this week, I have been thinking about what the cost and the investment upfront is in removing these invasive species. Imagine if every water course or half a mile was the priority to remove albesia, where we didn't see these albesias coming down and destroying our infrastructure, right? There's a lot to be said about that side of preparation. And I think there's a lot of failed there's a lot of failure, especially on the state level, whether it's our rivers right here in Wailua, our ditches that are now getting filled up with invasive mangroves and the water is not flowing. There's just so much that needs to be done around that restoration part of it. And unfortunately, I feel like it comes back on us as individuals because we're the ones that have to deal with it, much like I feel like a lot of things land back on the county as a responsibility for us to band-aid when the real solutions are above our level and above our weight. Yeah, I really appreciate the education. I think some of the stuff about the water and some of these things about automatic shutoffs, some of these potentials for the future to ensure that we can fight back is important. While I totally understand let's not let it burn in the first place, we are really, really long way away from that. And for me, the priority is How do we manage the existing threat? How do we cut down the existing threat? And how do we respond if that does happen? Because I think that because we've failed to manage this problem for so long, we are in a situation where that response has to remain the priority while we do plan for the long term and plan for the development of systems that are not as fire prone. But I'll have more discussion on the next bill, but I just wanted to summarize that on my list. Thank you.

I appreciate the discussion and of course just hearing all the different issues and concerns which is applicable to all of us the whole state all of our items I think and just hearing all the information and how to address issues how to bring the information to the table I think that was a big thing for me prevention preparedness and response was the thing that resonated overall so I think you know Having these kinds of discussions, obviously, is important. It's about Lahaina, but it's not only Lahaina, it's all of us. And all the information that was shared today, I think we can, is applicable, like I said earlier. So thank you for the opportunity and look forward to more options and connecting and making sure that we can support each other statewide. Thank you.

Chair Raposo, do you want to add anything? Thank you. I'll just enclose... Mahalo Elizabeth and Derek for being here and making the time and doing this briefing with us. It's a wealth of knowledge and to have your expertise here with our community. I'm very humbled and appreciative of your time and effort. Three years and 10 days ago, I remember where I was and some of the pictures that you had in your presentation. had a little bit of flashbacks and some PTSD going on and it's happening right now. Friends and family in that space. It's important for us to, when we have these experiences that we, one, take a moment to heal and do the things that we need to do, but the second and most important piece is to learn and learn as fast as possible. And then lastly, to implement as fast as possible. As mentioned in the presentation and as we heard from the community, there is no better time than now. And with all the information that we have and the practices that we see throughout the world, it's important for us to gather this information, bring the experts in, hear from you, but secondarily, Get some soup from Council Member Kauai.

Fourth soup.

We have a rule here. The phone goes off, you've got to provide soup. But circling back, the information is information, but once you get a call from somebody, it's a whole different experience. And with all the necessary information that you provided today, I hope we take them seriously as we do. And I know our county and I have utmost respect and honor and excitement for the activity of our organization as a county and our community and how we respond to disaster. And it always comes down to one of those quotes that you hear often is that we don't rise to the level of expectation, but we fall to the level of our preparation. Whatever we can do to front end our team, our community, is the most important things that we can do and learn from these experiences. So a presentation like this goes a very long way. And without to say, probably saves more lives than you even realize. So thank you so much for the presentation. With that said, the motion was to receive. All in favor, say aye.

Aye.

Any opposed? Motion passes. We'll have the next item, please.

Next item is bill number 2998, a bill for an ordinance amending chapters 15, 12, and 8. Kauai County Code 1987 is amended relating to wildfire and wildland urban interface. County of Kauai applicant ZA-2026-6. Move to approve.

Second. It's been moved and seconded. We have the presence of the mayor who will provide a brief presentation with his team. Then after the presentations, we'll go into questions and then testimony and then discussion. So I'd like to suspend the rules.

Thank you, Council Chair, Committee Chair, Council Members, and then to the hardworking folks at Council Services, thank you for your hard work. My name is Derek Kawakami, Mayor, County of Kauai. and I'm going to try something different. I actually have written notes. Usually I'll just let my testimony just wing it, but when you start getting old, it's best to take notes and write things down and stay on script. But in all seriousness, I want to thank Derek and Elizabeth for that important briefing, for helping us understand what actually happened in Lahaina. and what we can learn from it here on Kauai. Across the country and here in Hawaii, we have seen how devastating wildfires can be. They're becoming larger, more destructive, and harder to contain. And increasingly, they are not staying in the wildland. They are moving into our communities, threatening homes, neighborhoods, businesses, and the people who live there. We saw that in Lahaina. We saw it in Los Angeles, and Kauai cannot afford the scale of loss, and we have a responsibility to protect our people and the place that we call home. The risk here is significant. Wildfire data show that Kauai faces greater wildfire risk than roughly 91% of counties nationwide. We saw that reality in July of 2024 when a brush fire between Hanapepe and Komakani threatened our historic Komakani Plantation Camp. Our first responders worked tirelessly and conditions were favorable enough to limit the damage. But we cannot always count on favorable conditions. That is why preparedness cannot begin when the fire starts. Wildfire science tells us one of the most important places to start is the home itself. Embers travel ahead of a fire, enter through vents, and ignite the materials around the house. The way we build our homes matters. With that, we introduce bill number 2998, which would establish Kauai County's first wildfire wildland urban interface standards, including home hardening, defensible space, and setback requirements to reduce our community's vulnerability to wildfire. This is not about eliminating wildfire. It's about learning from Lahaina before we experience a disaster of our own. And I believe we have a responsibility to do so. You know, folks, and this part is from the heart. I don't come in front of you folks unless I feel that there is something that rises to the magnitude of the utmost importance from our administration. And you folks know I have a track record to nitpick every single building code update that comes across our desk for approval. I have a track record of removing some of the building codes that I felt would increase the cost of construction when I felt that it didn't rise to that priority when it prioritizes life, health, and safety. This is one of those bills that I showed up in person. And there will be an increase in the cost of construction. But I think it's an investment that's worth making. Usually, as elected officials, myself included, we tend to have knee-jerk reactions whenever we have something catastrophic happen. And Council Chair knows because we served alongside him, but former Council Chair Jay Fafaro created the best phrase that creates this imagery of ready, fire, aim. This bill is a complete opposite of knee-jerk reaction. This bill is a complete opposite of ready-fire aid. We clicked up with our partners, both Elizabeth and Derek, to really take a look at the data and the science between wildfires and what happened in Lahaina. And we didn't want the tremendous loss of Lahaina and West Maui could be in vain. And a number of our constituents, residents, have come up to us to say, please, please make sure that this doesn't happen on Kaua'i. So we took a methodical approach. We onboarded the subject matter experts to take a look at where we could make significant changes that actually have an impact to reduce wildfires and to protect our communities and our people. And we feel that we have encompassed most of those suggestions reasonably in Bill 2998. I want to thank you folks for hearing this bill. You're going to hear and you're going to be faced with very tough decisions because, like I said, this is a change to our building code. This is a change to how we build our homes. But I do believe from the bottom of my heart that these changes will help save lives and will help prevent the type of tragedy that Maui had faced. I'll be the first to admit that I myself am gonna have to make significant changes to my home. And it's not gonna be overnight because some of them are gonna come with a level of expense that I hadn't planned for. But these are the type of changes that I think most people would be willing to do. And I think at the start of construction is the best time to do it. And with that being said, we have our team up here to go over the fine details, to answer any questions you may have. But I want to thank you for this opportunity to testify on this matter. And I want to thank you for the hard work that you folks do and the tough decisions that you're going to have to make. Thank you very much.

We're going to go through presentations, and then we can ask questions after. Go ahead.

Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Chair and council members. From the fire department's perspective, this really comes down to life safety, firefighter safety, and community survivability. We cannot prevent every wildfire. We cannot control the wind, the drought, weather conditions that cause fire to grow so rapidly. There are things we can do before this fire ever starts. If we look at history of the fire service, many of the protections we take for granted today come from lessons we've learned through tragedy. We required exits to remain accessible. We improved exit doors and means of egress. We adopted smoke alarms. We required fire sprinklers in certain occupancies. We strengthened buildings and fire codes. At the time, many of those challenges or those changes came with concerns about cost, regulation, and whether they were really necessary. Today, we would never consider removing any of those precautions. I believe wildfire resilience is another evolution in fire safety. We now understand much more about embers, especially today. Thank you, Elizabeth and Derek. Vegetation, home ignition, and how wind-driven fires transition from wildland fuels into communities. Question before us now is, what do we do with that knowledge? Today, and of course, I had this quote on my phone, and it just went off. Those of us that are old enough in the room, probably except Megan, can remember in 1992, Barcelona Olympics, the USA dream team basketball team. an assembly of exceptional talent put together for a common purpose, to bring home the gold for the United States. We have, in this room, that talent assembled for this cause, with Elizabeth Pickett, Derek Alconis, Doug Green. Not here today, but will be here soon, Dr. Kimmy Barrett, which you will know a lot more about them when they speak. We have heard their testimony and their reasons. And a fire chief's dream of people putting together this information that some fire departments have to do on their own and do not have the staff to do that. I have been so fortunate to be your fire chief for the past four years and to be supported by an administration and a team for one cause, to protect the community. After the fires occurred on Maui, everybody's hair on our ears went up. Some of us have more. How come when you get older, you get more hairs in your ear, but your eyes go bad and you can't see them? Kind of sucks. But it made those hairs stand up. Sorry, I have to go there. But it made those hairs stand up. And then when we had our own Kanepipe Heights Kamakani Fire, we knew it was a reality for us. The mayor assembled all the department heads, all the directors, and said, we're going to put together a work group to fix this. And I will say immediately, Ka'anahou, he was the Herb Brooks, the hockey coach, of putting everybody together. learning, and researching, and attending conferences, and getting this information, and teaming up with Elizabeth to make this bill a reality, starting with the plantation camps. For any firefighter, I told this to Derek earlier today, if they could have sat in the room, a first year, second year, third year firefighter, and listened to the testimony, the knowledge and experience from Elizabeth and Derek, that's almost an associate's degree in fire science worth of information. It would take me three careers to learn and put together that information. And I can attest to what you heard today is real and what you heard today is necessary. So please consider this for us, for our firefighters, safety that need to show up in the heat of the moment. We've got to do everything we can to make the environment safer for them. And I will close with this. You as a council have supported our department in putting these things into place. We have three of those type six, they're actually type five, very similar, brush trucks that will be delivered by the end of the year that you've approved over the last couple of years. We'll be receiving a third front line four-wheel drive crew cab water tender this month also that was by this council. Fire engines are finally coming too, not related to wildfire, but badly needed. So we have started to put the strategic pieces in place to fight the war, but we need to make the conditions safer before we get there. Thank you.

Aloha, good morning. Council Chair, members of the County Council. Solomon Konoho with the Kauai Emergency Management Agency. Thank you for allowing me to be here this morning to talk a little bit about what's being presented here today. Our agency, the Kauai Emergency Management Agency, is tasked with assisting our county partners and setting up our emergency operations center, especially doing red flag warning or wildfire weather events. And we feel that following the research that Chief Alconis and the team at FSRI did and the ten priorities, this is a key part of those 10 building blocks, as I like to call them. Agencies here since La Jolla Fire have been meeting, going out, doing public education, meeting with partners, including the private sector, to address our wildfire exposure and risk on the community. The biggest part of it is having this type of bill or ordinance to come through to help work on that other end. to be proactive instead of a reactive phase in that response. As was mentioned, I think earlier in this year and also last year, our agency is actually also looking at extending and coming up with additional ordinance that kind of falls in line with the no burn days that the Department of Health issues and having something that will curtail or limit outdoor activities so that similar to what the utility companies do with a one-shot, where they either turn off or, if there's an issue, that power generation will be discontinued. So we'll also follow along that same lines, which is to have landscaping or welding or other aspects that are done outside, roadwork, to curtail that during extreme fire conditions, which is already done throughout the country already. So we are definitely in support of this. Anything that's going to assist with public safety, as well as first responders' safety. So thank you for this opportunity.

Good morning again. I had slides. I don't know if they're projected.

One moment. They'll bring it up in just a moment.

Most of what I have to say will reiterate some things that were already said. But I did want to show you the US Forest Service map for our country actually has a searchable field per zip code and per county. And I wanted to make sure you're well aware of where Kauai County sits in relation to the rest of the country. So you can see that we have very high risk of wildfire, higher than 91% of counties in the US. And then I pulled out some of the pieces of that and how they get there. And so you can just see the map for yourself in terms of the risk to homes and the likelihood of wildfire occurrence. And you can see that we clearly have something that's a big deal to address. And it's vetted. This doesn't come from anyone in the room. This is from a whole other outside research entity that really understands wildfire and what contributes to it. In looking at that, of course, there's a whole package of things that needs to happen. We've talked a lot about system-wide roles and responsibilities. But overall, this is part of our standard educational slide. The things that we need to do to address this risk is to reduce human-caused ignitions. 99% of our fires in Hawaii are human-caused, mostly by accident, some intentional. But about 75% are accidental. So we have ignitions to reduce. We have a lot to do to manage our landscapes. We have to work on making our houses and communities safer and fire resistant. And then, of course, we have to prepare for evacuations and response. That said, there is ongoing work in all the other pieces except this portion, which I talked about in the earlier session, which is what are we going to do from here forward to adapt to this risk, especially when the most vulnerable areas with the highest loads of fuel that actually impact human lives is in this part of the system. And so what we're proposing today was a very substantial and deeply researched attempt. You can see we have fire safety folks, in addition to planning, building, engineering, local and from afar, all who have come together to figure out what this could and should look like. here, very specifically here, adapting to a lot of different considerations and needs that go beyond wildfire. And the result of that work, with all of us working together deeply for two years, is the bill that's proposed today. And it's probably the strongest effort any of us could come together to actually produce toward long-term resiliency for wildfire.

Do you think I hand it off to you?

Good morning-ish, Chair, members of the Council. on behalf of the Kuwait Planning Department. So thank you to Derek, Elizabeth, Mayor, Fire Chief, Saul, kind of giving the big envelope of wildfire resiliency. We'll go over the metrics of the actual bill itself. The way we kind of wanted to lay this out is first we'll go over the actual regulations themselves. And myself, Alan, and Elizabeth here are to give that set of presentation. kind of do any questions you have on the actual regulations. The second part would be the interface of the regulations with the insurance industry, because that is a huge component of what is proposed here. And then lastly, to go into the cost of construction, because certainly there are questions and concerns. Whenever you adjust a building or zoning code, that will result in cost implications. So for the regulations themselves, the team spent a considerable amount of time after Lahaina figuring out, is there a role for planning and building in this space? Reaching out to Elizabeth, her organization, and others, and finding out that, oh, there's a major component to the built environment's resiliency to wildfire. And our next reaction to that was, how on earth can you stop a wall of fire from burning a community? That's not possible. And that's in what most people say is that that's not possible. It's a moving inferno that swept through these communities and burned them out. How can a zoning code actually create resiliency in the face of that? And I was beginning to find out and understand, and Derek and Elizabeth went into it, and I don't want to belabor the point, It's not the wall of fire that's burning these towns. It's often, and in most cases, about 90% of the time, it's the embers. Often the wall of fire will move through a town, and the town is still standing. But 13, 14, 15 hours later, the forensic analyst says, oh, but the town started burning 14 hours later. Or the wall of flames isn't even at the town. It's a mile, two, sometimes three miles away, and the town starts burning. And it's going back to, it's the embers that are causing and starting these community fires. And when we're talking about embers, there are actual reasonable measures that the built environment can adopt and adjust and be calibrated to that will resist ember penetration into the structure, and the structure being the fuel supply. So if you just start down the slides up here with different metrics, if you start down the house, the first primary area of vulnerability is going to be your roof. And so wooden roofs are a definite problem when it comes to ember ignition. So the requirement is that you have a non-fired roof, whether that's asphalt shingles or metal. We're going to get into the cost later. Asphalt shingles are cheaper than wooden shingles, so there's no cost adjustment there. And then you work down the house. When you look at the vents, if you have vents, some homes have soffits and don't have the vent issue, but if you have vents, The embers getting into the vents and getting into that space that Derek talked about, the attic. I mean, once the embers are in the attic, it's over. How do you prevent embers? It's a very small adjustment. You put this fire mesh right over the vent, and that prevents the embers from getting into the attic. Moving down the home, while certainly noncombustible siding is optimal and is in some codes, working with wildfire science folks, having the combustible wall is fine insofar as you're able to mitigate ember accumulation at the base of that wall. And so having a six-inch metal flashing around the base of a wall is all that's really required in many of the codes that we looked at, as well as being proposed here, is just that metal flashing. If you have an elevated house, the embers getting under the home can be a problem. So post-impure house. If it's less than four feet, it's been proposed to have this mesh as well to prevent the embers. Above four feet, it's readily accessible, and you can clean those areas out. And then the last point I'll touch on is kind of the five foot around the house. And that is what some areas call zone zero. some people call the noncombustible zone. But it's that five feet. Things accumulated in that five feet definitely create a problem for embers igniting that and providing prolonged flame contact on the building. So having a hardscape perimeter on the house of five feet. And that five feet, my understanding from the science of it is when you have a high wind event, you have an eddy around the house. And so that creates an eddy of wind where the embers are just accumulating within five feet of the home. And that is basically it from a home hardening standpoint. I know when you talk about just building code and the thought that you're going to have to do a building code that retrofits and totally redoes the way we build homes, it's actually not. You're talking about a little bit of mesh over the vents and this six-inch base of metal at the wall base. a little bit more screening if you're on post and pier, and some gravel. We're talking about mesh, metal, and gravel. That's all that's required to mitigate against ember intrusion. So that's the home hardening aspect. I'll let Alan jump into lot one. depth and lot width. This is just for new lots. And I think the question we got into with Derek is, are we looking at reducing density? And when we first read the Lahaina report, there was so much about looking at setbacks. And planners, I think, equate setbacks to density. And I asked the team, I said, let's try and decouple the two. We don't want to decrease density. But what wildfire science is saying, in new locks, we're going to subdivide new locks, that we should look at having larger setbacks. Can we have existing density while increasing setbacks? And so Alan went through an exercise, and I'll turn it over to him.

Good morning, committee members, chair, council members. I kind of said everything I had written out already. But what you folks have in front of you and what we will be going through is three different evaluations that we took a look at to evaluate different lot sizes and dimensions within our subdivision code. and what those structures could possibly look like in a variety of different configurations. We'll be going through the three different items. The first one I'll point out in the bottom left of the slide is actually analysis that was done by Optikos Designs. They are a architecture and planning firm that we work with oftentimes to help us make sense of our town core areas for our long-range plans. The top right area is a example of potential lot configurations and rather small lot sizes as far as our subdivision code is oriented and how some structures look in that instance while still adhering to the different setback standards that we're proposing here. And the final slide there on the bottom right that we'll be going through a little bit more is an example of actually the LALA Illuna subdivision that Habitat has built out and the lot dimensions and how the existing homes could fit on those existing lots with these new setback standards in place. So we'll first go through the set that was put forth by Optikos. And what we were predominantly looking at here was 6,000 square foot lots and 10,000 square foot lots, and how these different rules applied in the ordinance could still allow configurations to occur where we can accommodate ADUs, guest houses, whether or not they are attached or detached, and using a series of architectural features to ensure that they are still in compliance while ensuring that we also simultaneously still have parking and room for the variety of different dwelling unit configurations that we allow for here on Kauai. So starting from the top, going down, the top is an example of a single story residential dwelling with an attached ARU on a 6,000 square foot lot. This is about the smallest that we would regularly see from a lot of our subdivision process. Item number two is an example of two detached single-story structures that are connected by a shared covered parking area. And the final one here is similar to the top one, but it is a two-story example instead of just one. And so we provided an overview as well as a bit of an example of a street-level view of what that could look like. Option four, five, and six here start to get into some new types of configurations that we haven't seen too much of here on Kauai. The option four is an example of similarly a two-story detached residential structure on a 10,000 square foot lot. And it's actually number five here where we have something new that we want to draw your attention to. Number five, we have these two-story residential dwellings with also attached ARUs. But in this instance, they share the setback on the side property. The setback on the side of the property is at zero feet. And this is an example where a fire rated wall would be proposed to allow structures to be right next to each other. that cross over a lot line. And this is another way that we could preserve density by being mindful of some of the new building characteristics that we're proposing. And the last one on the bottom, item number six, is another 10,000 square foot lot with a combination of detached structures and also exhibiting the scenario where you have zero lot line building to still accommodate density and maintain the setbacks that have been recommended by the fire scientists. As I alluded to before, this is sort of a back-of-the-envelope 3D modeling exercise we went through, taking the existing lot lines of the Eliali Iluna subdivision that was built out by Kauai Habitat for Humanity. And we tried our best to show how you could still accommodate 1,200 square foot structures on those particular lots and also still indicate that ARUs are acceptable and that they could still fit on the lots. And the last thing I would want to draw The committee's attention to on this slide is by being creative with the organization of how a subdivision occurs, you can use roads and driveways as a way to help maintain some of that space to accommodate those setbacks, but also still allowing that density to occur, helping achieve a more full build-out. And the last example here we'll just highlight is sort of something that was a bit inspired by YMA 400, some of the lots that are being proposed out there for some of the single family construction. We were looking to ensure that similarly we could still fit appropriately organized homes onto those lots while still preserving those setbacks. And so this is simply an aerial view and another view of what that could potentially look like, even if we have lots that would customarily be much smaller than our current subdivision allows for. So I'll stop there, and I think the next item is working right now.

Yeah, I guess we'll take a pause for the actual regulations and the metrics, how those interface, and if there are any questions from council.

Council members, any questions on the current presentation?

Next we'll go into insurance, but I want to see if there are any questions on that.

I do. Can we look at slide eight? I'm probably not understanding something. When we look at, like, you know, options four, five, and six, I get nervous. Are we saying we have, like, that's how future building has to happen, where it's all crammed up right against each other?

They're saying you could use shared lot construction. Right now, you can't have shared lot line construction. You can across CPR lines, but not across lot lines. And what this says is you can, from a wildfire science standpoint, you can have duplexes and still make sure that that duplex is mitigating embers.

So this is just you can have these duplexes. If you want duplexes, this hasn't happened.

It's not a mandatory requirement.

OK, because sometimes shared flag lots create a lot of community conflict. So it's not everybody has to do that. No. They can.

Yeah.

OK. And then these setback changes, are they going to result in higher cost outlays for land? Or you're saying that you're showing us how they won't?

It's showing how you can take existing lots, and if the houses have been situated On those lots, you didn't have to shrink the house size or the lot size to accommodate these setbacks.

OK. And then the material for the hardscape does not have to, because this has come up a number of times, does not have to be concrete. It can be gravel.

Gravel, recycled concrete.

Gravel and recycled concrete.

Coral.

And then the metal for the metal flashing. On my house, it's copper. But that's not what everything has to be, right? Because copper is kind of expensive. But that's maybe just because it's an old house. Do I have copper?

You can use copper for that six-inch van, but it's not a requirement to be copper.

All right. And this was the question I was going to ask, just for clarification from what the mayor said. He talked about what it will cost him more to make his house. This whole bill just applies for new building.

It's only for new construction.

It's not retroactive.

No.

He might be choosing to do some retroactive, like I will be choosing to do some retroactive. And the metal mesh isn't available yet on the island. You have to order it special.

Yeah, I mean, we've been talking to vendors that have said if the bill were to pass, they would start stockpiling the mesh.

OK, because I don't want to buy a whole big roll. All right. All right, those were my questions.

Council Member Holland and Council Member Kozik.

Just while we were on that and the hardscape was brought up, it seems to be one of the things that's the most controversial about the bill. Obviously, the other things are pretty straightforward. The five-foot non-negotiable combustible zone, I see that there's some gravel, crushed rock, protective barrier. There's also, and I shared this with you, Director, but there's some evidence that irrigated grass or irrigated landscapes are also utilized in those codes throughout Australia. And I was just wondering if that's a consideration or if there's any opposition to maybe. I'm not on the voting committee, by the way, so I'm just asking for my interest.

Yeah, for larger projects, it certainly can be a proposal within the defense of space action. The defense of space action, our review is really in the larger projects, 10 units or more. So that certainly is an option. how you would enforce on landscaping. You can enforce on landscaping installed. Enforcing on landscaping being used is a bit of a different piece for zoning offices. And while I think it can be proposed, I don't think it would be feasible for our team to assume it as an enforceable action.

OK. So when you say 10 units or more, Every new house that's built would require these changes, regardless of whether it's a new subdivision of 10 units or more, right?

So the home hardening aspects would be required of all new construction. The defensible space on how you maintain 5 feet to 30 feet is only on the larger projects.

And I'm talking about the 0 to 5 feet.

The 0 to 5 is on all new construction.

on all new construction, regardless of which, whether your whole subdivision is built out or not, and you're the last lot in the whole subdivision, you're going to have to do these things. And that five foot surrounding for the non-combustible immediate five foot zone, is that irrigated landscape, irrigated grass, that maintained irrigated grass an option?

Again, it would be hard to, because when you get into that, that would be enforcing on when you use the irrigation as well as when you mow the grass.

Yeah, but to be fair, you're also, it's the exact same thing for five feet if somebody stacks their brooms up against the wall. So at some point, it's like you can mandate from one thing to the next. But if people aren't going to follow it, they're not going to follow it. I think there's something to be said for that.

That's it for now.

I actually had a follow-up on Council Member Cowden's first question about the shared line, shared property line construction. And you said it's not mandatory. What would the option be, though? What would be the other option for small homes?

They'd have to set it back. Right now, there's 5 to 10 foot setbacks. They'd have to set it back 15 feet from the property line.

Right. So you would basically have to reduce the size

What we're showing with the, if you could do the slide for LLA. We're showing in the LLA situation, the houses that are there, they could accommodate those setbacks if they had been sited differently. So if you wanted to build in this scenario, if they were proposing instead like 2,000 square foot homes instead of what they proposed at 1,200, they might have to reduce the size.

And then follow up to Council Member Holland as far as the enforcement. I don't know. The bill is, I cannot find whose responsibility is to enforce this.

The home hardening aspects is they just do it during construction. So when the inspectors are out there inspecting during construction, they're just looking to see, are the vents being meshed up? And is the gravel in place? And so you get your certificate of occupancy through that mechanism. And then enforcement of the defensible space standards ultimately fall back on the planning department, but that's only for larger projects.

Yeah, but that's not in the bill.

It is for the ten or more units. Okay.

Any other questions for the presentation as is our Council Member McLeod?

If it's not in this piece, then tell me. My memory from when we did this with the plantation, cottage, the plantation camps, is that there was a lot where you couldn't have plants, and like a crazy amount of plants. But my place is vibrantly green relative to everything around it. And I live in a pretty green place. Green abundant plants, are those something that we'd have to clear off?

No. There are defensible space standards on how plants are maintained for larger projects.

OK. Just clarify on that. So you're saying from 5 to 30 feet? Yeah. You would not need to manage the vegetation unless you're in the unit lots that have? A larger project. Thank you.

What is a larger project?

10 or more units.

OK. New construction. Any additional questions for the presentation as is? I'm sorry.

I'll just add to that. Subdivisions of terrarium units, it's pretty standard to have landscaping conditions through the subdivision process. So while we have had landscaping conditions to kind of make things look pretty, it's saying, like, let's do some landscaping conditions to ensure defensibility with ember intrusion and wildfire.

How is that enforced after the property and the lot is sold? I mean, I'll tell you, if I had 30 feet of grass, it would quickly not be driven grass. How is that enforced in perpetuity moving forward?

It'll be a mixture of either through the planning department's conditions or through the HOA, the respective HOA, when there is an HOA.

OK. Okay, so the planning department in the approval would say that that maintenance is required in perpetuity, and then if somebody goes ahead and doesn't, then we follow up from the planning? It's like a planning violation?

It would primarily be through the HOA where the HOA is held responsible.

What about in cases where there's not an HOA?

Then it does follow the planning department.

Interesting.

Okay. And just follow up on that. They would get that normal notice of violation with the very intensive... Fine.

This would be more of a compliance-based action, because there's no intention of us being the broom police, if you will. But if there are persistent issues within a large project subsequent, we certainly would give notice. But it's really on a compliance basis. And we'll really be interfacing with the fire department on that.

OK.

Any additional questions for the presentation as is? Seeing none, continue.

OK. And then moving on beyond the actual regulations themselves, I'll ask Doug to come up. How this bill interfaces with the insurance industry. So insurability is affordability. And a few months ago, at the end of 2020, The Appleseed Foundation, the premier, let's keep affordable housing and construction costs down and looking at affordable housing, released a report specific on climate hazards and the insurance industry, in which they noted a 200% exodus of insurers from the Hawaii market between 2018 and 2020. A 200% exodus means they're not negotiating the premiums with the holders. They're basically saying, we're out. This place is far too risky for us to insure. A few months ago, Allstate Insurance categorically stated they will no longer be insuring single-wall construction in Hawaii. So as we see the loss of the insurance providers, that directly affects the affordability of housing. If you're in a house that you lose insurance and nobody else is willing to provide you with insurance, you absolutely will lose your mortgage if you have a mortgage on it. And what the Appleseed Foundation was pointing out in their report is when you lose insurance and you can't pay that mortgage, and the only way to purchase that house is now through cash, this feeds directly into the speculative nature and beast that has been affecting housing prices here in Hawaii. Cash buyers coming in and scooping up these homes. So when we drafted this ordinance, we did so specifically with insurance in mind. We used the IBHS model, which is the Institute for Business and Home Safety. It's an insurance umbrella organization. So that is kind of part and parcel why we drafted the bill. It 100% is attempting to address wildfire resiliency, but it also is part and parcel for insurance in that Yeah, we are going to have wildfires in the future. And certainly, built environments will be affected. But we can also say not every built environment is going to burn down. And what the bill is trying to also say is you may not experience a wildfire in your actual neighborhood in the near future. But everybody, everybody is susceptible to the insurance market. And we will be, essentially, proverbially screwed if we don't begin trying to address this with the existing departure and the anticipated ramp-up of departure of the insurance organizations from Hawaii. Sorry. With that, let me turn it over to Doug Green and Elizabeth, who know far more about the insurance industry than I do.

Good morning, Chair. Good morning, Council. My name is Doug Green. I am owner of Doki Wildfire Solutions. We help communities reduce the risk of urban wildfires through the lens of land use planning. My background is a stint as a land use planner, and then I spent 27 years working with the Structural Fire Department up in Oregon. presentation I'm going to give is not mine. So thank you for the accolades, Elizabeth, that I'd be an expert on this. I'm pretty good, but I'm not the expert on this. Dr. Kimiko Barrett is the one who submitted this. She couldn't be here. She's probably one of the leading experts on wildfire and insurance on a national scale. So I'm going to present this in lieu of her, do my best to stay in the lanes, and answer questions you guys have on this. So I think three things that underpin everything that Elizabeth and I are going to say here. First of all, we understand that wildfires are getting more expensive and more devastating. And insurance companies know that too. Like Kayano was saying, they understand the risks. They understand that to remain solvent, they have to pull out of high risk areas. Homes are fueled. When a wildfire enters a community, it's the structures that end up bringing that fire from structure to structure to structure and end up burning down a community, as Derek was talking about earlier. And because homes are fuel, homes are part of the problem. And because homes are part of the problem, homes need to be part of the insurance solution. And this has to be done at parcel neighborhood level risk reduction. Because as was mentioned earlier, if you have a hardened home, it's resilient to wildfire. But if it's surrounded by unhardened homes, that home is still at risk and is still exposed. So this needs to be not only at the parcel level, but the neighborhood level. And that's what insurance companies need to see. And we'll talk about that here in a little bit. First of all, making sure we understand what insurance is and isn't. And this could be a whole day. Really boring class here if we had to do it, but we're going to keep it super quick. So insurance is a pooled risk. Any potential loss across the country translates into increased premiums to all policyholders through spreading that risk. So insurance companies understand that if there's a high risk area to remain solvent, they'll pull out of there because they have other places they can be and make that money. So it's a pooled risk. It's also financial resiliency. A healthy insurance market benefits everyone because it reflects the ability for individuals, local governments, and the state to absorb a financial shock. We know that people who are insured rebound, rebuild, and recover quicker than people who aren't. And what insurance isn't, and this is crucial here, it is not risk reduction. Insurance is the price signal of risk already on the ground. is a key piece of the solution, but it is not the solution for this. We need to bring them into the fold. We need to provide pathways, solutions for the insurance companies to continue to stay here. So the wildfire insurance crisis. There's two parts of this. So what homeowners need in Kauai and across the country is reliability, affordability, and availability. As I'm sure you're aware, this is a crisis that we see in states. I work out across the country here. Every state has this. Not only California, but in Oregon where I'm from, they're pulling out of the entire state because they can make money elsewhere. So homeowners need reliable, affordable, and available insurance. But what the insurance companies need to stay into a market is verified risk reduction to homes and neighborhoods. And verified is underlined here, because that's what's crucial in this. And that's what's missing. And these two are not mutually exclusive. There's just not a connection between these two currently, except in a few rare instances, that helps them work together on this. And so the verification criteria is that homeowner mitigation must be validated for an insurance company to agree to it. There's four parts of this. It has to occur at both the parcel and neighborhood level scale. It's got to be demonstrated to and agreed upon by the insurance providers. It's got to be approved by the state regulators, which I think Elizabeth will touch on here in a minute. And it's got to be maintained and monitored. And going back to number three here, This committee cannot say anything about the approval of the state. That's up to the state to approve this. But by adopting the wound code, by making changes in what the county does, we can provide pathways and avenues for the state to approve a verification model that the insurance providers will accept that keeps insurance on the island. Again, the state regulates insurance. We don't do that here at the county level. But the county controls the risk. The county has the ability to adopt building standards for new construction. The county has the ability to require defensible space and vegetation management. That is in the bill in front of you. And the county has the ability to support a certification pathway. So the homeowner can prove what they have done, submit that to the insurance company. The insurance company can buy off on that and retain insurance on that property. Again, we are not talking about reducing insurance premiums. That is in the past. That is not going to happen. We're talking about retaining the ability to have insurance without going, like Derek was talking about, to a state level fare plan. They're expensive. And they are not something that is sustainable in the long run. It has been proven not to work. It just covers people in the short term. We need to come up with a solution ahead of time. Because I guarantee you, if we're going to come up with a solution at the county level, the insurance companies will. They'll do what they need to do, like they're doing in other states right now. So homeowner certification works on two levels. The ordinance in front of you reaches new construction and major remodels. It provides a pathway for them to meet this criteria. The certification model reaches everyone else who's already here. 90% of the housing stock or whatever that's already on the ground right now that is at fuel load, that danger that's already here. Certification process allows those people to do the things necessary to retain insurance. It creates this pathway. Because a hardened home and an unhardened home on an underwriter's desk look identical, unless there's a certification to go with it that's going to say, OK, these guys have done the right thing, they meet our requirements, and we're going to retain their insurance. So that's what a certification does. And I'm not going to go into this, but it's been proven successful in a number of different scales. National scale, IBHS model I kind of touched on briefly. California has a Safer for Wildfire certification process. And then even at the county level in Colorado, Boulder County, Colorado has wildfire partners, where insurance companies agree that if homeowners need a certain certification checkbox, they meet that, they submit it to the insurance company, they retain insurance coverage. So it can be done at different scales. My comment I touched on, if we don't do this, it erodes the market downstream. The risk on the ground remains the same or becomes worse. And policies rise. Policies are not renewed. Premiums rise. Then homes can't be insured. And if a home can't be insured, it can't be mortgaged. If a home can't be mortgaged, then it doesn't sell. And so then insurance becomes this housing cost problem, not just a homeowner problem. And that's when you get housing markets to destabilize. And that's where you run the risk of county revenue and recovery capacity weakening. And that's what we don't want to see. So it can go from the homeowner level and affect the county at the broad scale. I don't know if that's the last slide I have.

MARTHA MINOWSKI- We didn't have that slide, I don't think. You just did.

I threw Alan a wrench and added a couple slides here and there at the last minute.

I'm going to keep you guys on your toes. You skipped a few.

I also probably reordered them. So with that, I'm going to pass it to...

It is my last slide.

I don't have slides. I just want to follow up for just some clarification. Doug was talking about certification pathways so that we can meet the vetted standard-based requirements that insurers are looking for to feel confident that a place is safe enough to withstand risk and be insurable. Sort of proactively, I want to separate that into two buckets. The first one is not on the table, and it's not in the WUI ordinance. But for existing housing stock, there is a lot of effort going on to figure out what kind of programs we can put into place to do like a pre-assessment and then recommend actions to the homeowner and then have them take those actions, and then a post-assessment or some kind of verification mechanism where they've done that work and have that acknowledged by insurers. And so there is work to build out the programmatic offering of that. Some of it may even, we put in proposals to the green fee for it. It's on everyone's radar. We are building what that program could look like over the course of this next year and trying to put those pieces together. for existing homes. And I just wanted to make sure you know that that part is in the works so that we can have those standard-based vetted mechanism to deal with the existing housing stock. But then as we move forward, I mentioned this as a response to your question about insurance in our information session earlier, which is just that our Hawaii insurers are going through the learning curve right now, and it is I can confirm it is just as Doug has said is happening across the country where they're looking for verification. What did you call them? Criteria? And that in my language, I would call it these science-based vetted metrics that are being met that are well-established, well-documented, that lead to safer communities and better fire resistance and better outcomes. And that is all of what we use in order to develop this this bill, or this ordinance that we're proposing, so that it would naturally match up with the insurance questions from the start without having to retrofit later to make it match. That's all I have.

Questions from the council members regarding the existing presentation? Council Member Holland and then Council Member...

Help me understand something. If you hired in your house and you get a certificate, you're saying that the insurance with a certificate may provide you less cost, right? Like your insurance would go down. But you just said that it's scaled at the neighborhood level, that insurance is looked at at a neighborhood level. Because if you are the last house in a subdivision and the entire subdivision is built, and you build your house, you're not in a neighborhood that has this established protection. So why wouldn't it be an incentive for them to just do it independently and get that insurance break rather than us mandating it when it doesn't actually change the neighborhood rate?

There is a tension there between what you can also answer. But I was just going to say between if we, as we're trying to program plan for what this certification process could look like per house, over and over again we're being told, And then we'll only count it if the whole neighborhood has that in place. So we can't get away from the regional scale or the neighborhood scale at the current moment. It's not looking good for just house by house. It really is something that's being asked for to be at the neighborhood or the regional or the county level. So that's, yeah.

So why then would we not be mandating this only for new subdivisions? Why would we be mandating this?

Well, the insurance companies, you're correct. The insurance companies understand that if the house they insured here does maybe the right thing and other things around it, they may still lose that house. They also understand that if that house meets a certain criteria, that it has a reasonably good chance of surviving a normal 90% type wildfire that moves through there. The catastrophic wildfires we see and Mahaina in California are this small percentage of these urban conflagrations that move through. And like Derek said and other people said, sometimes no matter what you do on those type of huge fires, nothing you could do to a house is going to save those. But the other 90%, 95% of normal wildfires that move through communities, home hardening does make a huge difference at the parcel level. okay so that's why insurers and they realize that if they can do that to enough of the homes that they have in that community that they can still make money in that community because that's their ultimate they want to be in a community they can make money there but so they're willing to do it if it meets certain standards in that community and because they know that most wildfires are not that catastrophic 70 mile an hour wind wildfires moving the community it's ones where a hardened home can survive. Hardened homes that meet wildfire standards can survive a wildfire that moves through there. They're designed for that. What they're not designed for is multiple structures burning around them with radiant heat and flame impingement for hours at a time. That's what they're not designed for. So if they can design a house that meets those, it's just like in structural firefighting. A house next to it is designed to meet that short-term fire piece, and operations gets there and knocks that fire down, and that home survives. The beauty of it is, with the certification process, is you're not at two birds with one stone. Because when these homes start needing the certification, they also need all the requirements to stop urban conflagration. You build these homes so they don't ignite the next home and the next home. So it knocks down, not only does it save people money and retain insurance on the island, but it makes Hawaii safer. I don't know if that answered your question. Like Elizabeth said, it's a tough one. It is tough, but they are throwing their bets like most urban conflagrations are not what we see, like we saw in Lahaina, like we saw in California.

I'll also say, Councilmember, that while it would be good practice to require all homes to be retrofitted, we'll get into the next part of this presentation. The upfront cost of construction is nominal. The retrofit for many of these homes is not. If you've got a wooden roof.

I'm not suggesting that. I'm asking for clarity as to why we would mandate it within a single home in a single street that doesn't have any chance of that being done compared to moving forward.

We're hoping in 20 years, when my kid's there, that enough homes in that neighborhood will have been. change, where then it's going to be safe for them. So it's a future bet by doing it here and there.

Follow-up question, Council Member Cowden?

So yeah, mine actually does follow along what she's asking. My question follows along what Council Member Cowden's asking. I know who I am. So I'm thinking about water. So we have a lot of areas, especially in the more rural areas of Kauai that don't have fire flow protection, that there aren't hydrants or standpipes. And so what's missing for the two mile stretch is that I would think those wouldn't be able to get that insurance

From what I understand, they're looking at a whole package of things, and it's not just can it be suppressed. It's more like that would mean that it's defensible, that firefighters have a standing chance to come in and defend that home against fire. If there's a fire. If there were a fire happening. But the other piece of this is that actually what we're going for here is homes that can withstand fire ignition in the first place. So it's more survivable on its own without any response. And so that's the kind of measures we're trying to put in place so that they're survivable, that they can stand their own when fire is coming through. And even the National Cohesive wildfire management strategy is talking about in the built environment. We want to be able to resist ignition and have the home on its own without suppression survive the fire so that the recovery after is also very simple. That's what we're aiming for. I understand that.

And there is two buckets to that insurance piece. So there is what's called the ISO, where they insurance companies.

What is the ISO stand for?

Insurance Service Office. Thank you. And they look at hydrants. And they look at where fire stations are and what apparatus are in fire stations. And are they a volunteer station? And they look at that. And they rate communities with different ratings, 1 through 10, on that. And that is one piece of the insurance. And that's how they'll rate a community. Like, are you a 5? Are you a 3? Are you a 10? And that's built into certain ratings. Insurance cards. The certification thing is, like Elizabeth said, a different piece. That is a single parcel homeowner insurance. I want to retain my homeowner's coverage, and this is what I've done to do it. So you're right. The hybrid piece can play a part in some of the insurance, but it's not in the certification process.

Although it may be in the certification if they have their own water tank right there. There might be sprinklers.

Again, you can do what you can do, and you make agreements with the insurance companies that that's something they'll buy off on. As a mitigation measure.

And I understand that... You know, this bill is looking house per house. It's being built new. But I really appreciate this feature on the insurance because I've brought it up a number of times over the years. And when we go to National Association of Counties, we have been being told insurance is going to be leaving different areas. And we've been warned since I've been in office that insurance will leave. So that's why I'm wanting to ask that. So are we as a county considering a certification pathway? Because I see that's under county controls, the risk. So is that something that we would anticipate as coming up in a future action?

As Doug was pointing out, primarily is a discussion at the statewide level. But this is a path towards that.

But this is under the county. So I saw that. So I... appreciate what you're saying. And when we have these inabilities to get insurance, it's the cash buyer who gets the house. So when I'm actually asking for the people who are sending letters that they are resistant to this, the outcome of resisting us moving towards this is that we end up not being able to have houses available for people who need a mortgage, which typically is the working population. Would you agree with that? You're nodding your head, so get iced down. You're saying yes.

Yes. Yes.

Okay. Any additional follow-up questions? I just want to, really, it's a clarification. Yeah, it's a clarification because I know some of the questions about my house, my house, and my rates, but you mentioned it in your presentation that it's really not about lowering taxes. The insurance rates, it's about making sure the insurance companies don't choose to leave the market. So I just wanted the clarification from you that this isn't about, hey, pass this bill and your insurance rates will drop, because there's so many moving parts. And the certification process, I mean, how long would that take if we were to go through a statewide certification process? And then finding the people that are willing to get certified, right? Because they wouldn't be mandatory, correct? No, wouldn't be.

Can I follow up on that? So then what's the point? If there's no certification that we are incorporating as a part of this, if I build my house and you don't have a certification process, I'm super confused now.

The house doesn't burn down.

I get that part.

I'm talking about the insurance part. Developing this ordinance, there was a lot of pieces of it, right? Because there's a lot of moving parts out there, the insurance fees, potential statewide buoy codes. The ordinance was built so if those things fall into place, that we are ahead of the game, that this thing is built to meet those. So the goal of this ordinance was it meets this certification pathway. If these homes are built to this ordinance, or if somebody retrofits to this ordinance, And we get the state, like we're helping in New Mexico, Utah, Colorado, I don't know, the certification things. And they adopt that. They say, yeah, we want to adopt this. We got the state insurance board to come on board. Hawaii is already ahead of game, because anybody who meets this ordinance will meet the certification process. They submit that in, and they have their ticket.

So you're saying an arbitrary future certification process that may or may not be established by the state, may or may not rely on the state, is something I've learned is a really dangerous place to be in. It is. So I'm wondering. The basis of this is keep your home from burning.

I was just going to say, the basis is we built something that will protect lives and homes and places. And we've done it with the cognizance of we're setting this up for success. When that other part comes into play, we are at the cutting edge forefront of the science and the standards that are pre-vetted and insurance approved so that we're keeping people safe. For me, I'm motivated. It's a special kind of pain to have tried really hard to get attention to something that ended up happening in the worst of all ways. And so, for me, I'm motivated by the 102 lives that were lost. Maybe a little more than I'm motivated by insurance. But it is an important piece of this that a lot of people care about. So we're doing both. It's basically been integrated.

I completely agree with what you're saying. But I'm trying to understand, because from what I heard today from your presentation, both insurance and the survivability of your home is dependent on the neighborhood. You know, I've heard you guys say multiple times today that if you have a home hardened, scaped in one subdivision and every single house surrounding you is not, that it's not likely that you're very well established to survive.

In 80 mile an hour winds. And this is where the complexity comes into the science. So in a still environment where if you have one house might be burning or a couple, Fire department can get to that when it's not super windy, 80 miles an hour, embers starting fires that are then starting next fires. So this is all conditional. We build our fire departments. We build our houses. We build all these things for the majority of conditions. But now insurance is starting to look at what you have in place for those extreme events. And so it's just slightly complex. We might not have been articulating it very well.

CHRISTIE KITTLE- No, you are. It's very complicated. It's complicated. And as our responsibility as decision makers, it's like to weigh all that and to figure out, well, if I'm going to mandate one person on the street do that, for me, I have to understand. How is that worth that cost? And how is this mandate? We're not even saying it's an opt-in option. You get all incentives.

to do it so it's it's trying to be clear like because i heard that if your house is doesn't have this and it's or it does have this and it's surrounded by what isn't in those extreme conditions okay so that's when and so in those lesser conditions it does matter that's why firewise communities works because the volunteer the voluntary participation does work in a substantial amount of the fires that we're going to see But we want to shore it up so that it'll survive in any kind of fire, which is when you start to get to the neighborhood scale, which is why insurers are looking for that neighborhood scale.

We also don't want that home to be the ignition source, right? The goal is to build a community just to have interruption points, not ignition points. And so if that home you're talking about has a barbecue that tips over and doesn't catch fire, then it's not going to start that community fire on the highway today. So anything we can do to harden that hole from being that ignition point is important.

Any other follow-up questions on the presentation as of now? More presentation, please?

Yeah, we've got one last one. Thank you. The last part of the presentation is the cost of construction. So if I could ask Lance to join us. And I recognize we are winding down towards a lunch. So I'm going to ask Doug if you can make your section quick. And then Lance can go into the actual bid that he did from Unlimited Construction. I'll also state that in addition to Lance's bid, we did recently get another company's bid. Shioi Construction provided a bid. So after Lance is done, I'll kind of go over Shioi Construction's bid.

Go ahead. OK, I'll make this quick. One of the other things the county asked me to do was help them understand the cost difference between the bill in front of you and the International Wildlife Urban Interface Code, or the IWUI code for short. What's the cost difference between the two? What's the difference between them? Similarities, and kind of help them understand that piece, because that could be a big question the constituents give you. So the International WUI Code, or the iWUI Code for short, is a model code out there developed by the International Code Council. If a community wanted to go and grab a code off the shelf, a WUI code off the shelf, that's probably the code they would grab. The problem is, being a model code, it's built and developed for the areas it's most likely to be used, which in this case was the Intermountain West. So the WUI code is great for communities on the mainland, the western part of the states. It may not be the best code for Kauai here. And we'll kind of touch on that real quick. So the International WUI code. is built on slope-driven fire through timber, chaparral, brush, things like that. Obviously, the risk we have here on Kauai is not that. The risk here is wind-driven fires through invasive grasses with embers launching out in front of that. And so the ordinance in front of you specifically calls out those vegetation types that carry that fire and prohibits them. The international WUI code assumes a lot of the homes will be stick built, again, at wall assemblies on slab. Of course, a lot of the homes here in Kauai are elevated, a post and pier, like Kiana said earlier. The big risk is embers blowing underneath those homes and catching them from underneath. And so the ordinance in front of you has taken into account that and provides measures to keep those embers from getting under there and igniting those homes. And again, the International Booby Code really talks about generic vegetation classes, where obviously this code talks about specific plants that are prohibited, approved, different type of agricultural things going on here on Kauai. And again, I've been part of this process since the beginning. And just so council is clear, this was not code developed in a vacuum here. It is based on national standards, based on wildfire science. What's local is the calibration on this. That's the key. Science is not local. The science is the most recent wildfire science that is out there. And again, like I said earlier, it's built on the IBHS standards. Touched real briefly on this. The similarities between the two codes are there's a lot, because they're both built on the latest science, class A roofs, ember resistant vents, dual pane tempered glazing windows. Again, I'll run through this non-combustible gutters and that defensible space around structures. The most important piece here is where they're different. The International Woolly Code requires ignition-resistant cladding across an entire wall. Again, it is trying to protect that structure from burning down from direct flame contact and radiant heat from, let's say, a forest fire, a chaparral burning right next to that property. It also has protections of eaves, soffits, and vents and fascias for that exact same reason, for that direct flame contact. The bill in front of you requires metal gutters and gutter covers. Again, fire-prone species are prohibited. And the most important difference, and we've talked about this earlier, is it requires that five-foot noncombustible zone at the base of the structure. And over and over again in research and wildfire science, that is the most important piece of keeping a structure from burning down, is that five-foot zone. I'll jump into the cost real quick. And again, Lance is going to get more into this. So standard construction on Kauai plus or minus is around $400 a square foot. Bill 2998 adds about $6,700 to that cost, less than 2%. The International Wooley Code, there's different classes of that, but class one adds between $20,000 and $30,000 to the cost of that home, mainly because of that cladding, that siding it needs to have for that direct flame contact. And that's not including interior sprinklers that the International Wooley Code can require and access and water supply requirements in the International Wooley Code. I put up here, too, the IDHS optimum. That is kind of the highest standard that's out there right now nationally. And that can add close to $85,000 to $90,000 per property to meet that standard to harden a home. So the bottom line, adopting the International Wood Code would cost more per home and would do less in that first five feet. And that is where homes are won or lost, is that first five feet. Historically see homes burning down Okay, so that is a quick overview of the different cost between those two in case council members get that question With that turn it over to the start Thanks, Doug Good morning chair and council members.

My name is Lance Delos Reyes, and I'm a senior project manager at unlimited construction For those of you not familiar with unlimited. We are a general contractor founded in the early 90s here on Kauai and We have grown since to Kauai and Oahu, and we specialize in various types of projects, including multifamily, commercial, industrial, and hospitality. It's the multifamily residential experience that brings us here today and why the planning department came to us when developing this bill. So our role in this cost study was to answer the question of what Unlimited constructions costs for a residential building with woolly standards would be I think that's the main point here is this is what we is unlimited with price And to answer that we put together several iterations of estimates for ten three-bedroom two-bathroom homes Just under a thousand square feet in size and working off of a real architectural set for a home built back on kawaii back in 2021 como con area For each iteration of the estimate, we studied two main types of foundations commonly used on Kauai. The first being slab on grade, and the second being post and pier. And then we did that estimate twice, basically. We did it for a standard build, and we did it for the WUI ordinance application. It's important to remember that we are a union contractor, so we're signatory to laborers, carpenters, and masons unions. Our estimates reflect those rates. And we've also built in our typical general conditions, which include project staff, vehicles, temporary facilities, and so on. And this study represents purely vertical construction costs on pad-ready lots. So we're not including any off-site infrastructure, no roads, no mass grading in these numbers. And lastly, before we get into numbers, this is a conceptual estimate, not a bid. We had a complete set of drawings for the standard build. And then we applied our assumptions using the WUI ordinance when we built our model for the second portion of the study. So on the screen now are the results of our study for a slab-on-grade version of the home. And we broke this down by divisions, which we commonly see when we do construction estimates. Off the bat, of the 10 divisions identified in this pricing exercise, only seven experienced no price differences at all. Just to list those off, those are the concrete, plumbing, electrical finishes, equipment, finished carpentry, thermal, and moisture protection. No changes between your standard versus woolly ordinance. The remaining three divisions, rough carpentry, openings, and earthworks, did experience some increase. In dollars, the largest of the three is the hardscape at the perimeter of the building, which we've talked about a lot today. Roughly per house, that was about $3,400 in add. The rough carpentry was the second most, which is where you'll find your added mesh protection at the attic spaces and the 6-inch metal flashing, about $2,000 or $2,200. And the last, the opening section, represents the increase in the windows where you go from a standard window to a dual-pane tempered window system. And that was about $1,200 per house. So in total, the cost difference unlimited found between a standard slab-on-grade building and a slab-on-grade home with the WUI ordinance implemented was roughly 1.6%. And to put that in perspective, that's an added $6,700 to a house that's approximately $425,000 to build. On this next slide, you'll see the same study applied to a post and pier foundation four feet above finished grade which is another very typical home configuration here on Kauai. Again, seven of the 10 scope divisions remain unaffected, and the same three divisions resulted in increases. What I'd like to point out is that the added cost is almost exactly the same, about $6,700 per home. The percentage increase ticks up to 1.7 versus the 1.6 on the slab on grade. And that's basically because the baseline version, the standard build, is a slightly lower dollar value. So ultimately, Unlimited's findings were that the requirements in the WUI ordinance are already fairly common to a standard construction build. The elements that are newer to our typical builds are not complicated in nature, and we're confident in our ability to price them and provide homes that meet the WUI criteria within the increases shown in this study. And one last piece of context. Of the increases shown, only about $2 per square foot is actually upgraded construction material. So that represents 0.5% increase to an actual build of 1,000 square foot house.

That's the end of my portion. A quick question. Thank you. Thank you for that. Does this include the five foot setback, the concrete or the aggregate that goes on that?

Yeah. Where is that? So in the site work portion, Division 31, or the earthwork, I'm not sure what I labeled it there. That basically represents the difference from having no five foot barrier to actually implementing a gravel five foot barrier.

OK, and that is a gravel price?

Yeah.

The gravel price and the earthworks costs?

Correct. So we break it up by division like we would with any estimate. The earthworks number for a standard will include things like preparing your slab on grade, Digging up your footing and your foundations and then the added element when you implement Implement we is also in putting putting in the five foot crap, right? So on that line item you'll see the difference because there's a change in scope there from just doing a standard slab one grade versus slab one grade with your Gravel added and that's where the $3,700 plus or minus per home comes from Councilmember County

Mike, please.

Thank you. And this question is more directed to Ina because I was at the Water Department meeting maybe two months ago. And so it seemed like you guys have a tentative policy that you agreed on that the facilities reserve charge would be dropped if this bill passes for new homes to be able to offset that cost. And so the current facilities reserve charge is about $14,000? Correct.

For a 5-eights meter.

For a house, a 5-eights meter. So part of that thought process was that it would maybe double that savings. Because if it's cost $7,000.

It would function as an offset to additional costs associated with wildfire resiliency.

So are we saying with that change in the facilities reserve charge, because if I listened correctly in the meeting, it's like pre-pass pending the passage of this ordinance. Do I have that?

It's passed. It was adopted in anticipation that if there are standards increasing the cost of construction for wildfire purposes, that it would offset that.

And so unless we pass this, that FRC changes that?

That FRC exemption is only for wildfire resilience.

So then I'm just curious. We're basically, you know, KDOW, the Department of Water, would be subsidizing this bill. through that exemption?

I mean, so how are we going to compensate the- I don't know, but as the person who introduced the proposal at the Water Board, I don't look at it as subsidizing. The FRC program is still intact. If the bill were to pass, there still is FRC being charged for commercial construction, resort construction, vacation rental construction. It would just necessitate that the Water Department readjust their numbers so that the FRC program is still in play. There are also proposals to increase the FRC in the future. And so it just says, if the county as a whole is going to take an action to increase wildfire resiliency, then those single-family home residential constructions can be exempt from their participation in the FRC program.

So I have two reasons for asking that. One is to help people who are listening and writing that are concerned about that they wouldn't be able to accommodate this cost, at least for a smaller home, that would be perfect.

Yeah, under unlimited construction's proposal at $675 a square foot, we've priced that at essentially, with the FRC offset, any home 2,000 square feet or smaller is actually going to be cheaper to construct. Now, I also have construction also did provide numbers as well. If you guys want to take a look at it, hand it in. I'll say I apologize. They emailed it to me, and I formatted the title. And personally, I misspelled company's name. So I apologize for that. But these numbers, they came back. And they came back from an increase to about 2.5% increase on their bid for the WUI construction. So it's just slightly higher than what Unlimited proposed. But certainly under their proposal, a 1,400-square-foot house or smaller would be cheaper under the wildfire code with the FRC offset.

So most of the basic homes, we're not talking luxury homes, but basic homes, they're not going to have an increase.

Not with the FRC offset.

Not with the FRC offset.

And then even more so with the self-built homes or like the Habitat, which is why I think Habitat was here. To Lance's point, the material cost came out to an extra $2 a square foot.

Follow-up question, Chair Raposo?

Yeah, thank you. And it is a subsidy. The FRC exemption is a subsidy because somebody else is going to pay for that. So it's not... But I had a question for Lance. So I'm trying to understand how these numbers work. So the 5-foot setback with concrete or gravel around the property, around the house, you're saying it's just about $350 more per square foot. Correct. So for a 1,000-square-foot house, you're pricing the labor, the site work, and the actual material for that concrete or gravel pad at $3,500?

Gravel gravel for 3,500 bucks correct That seems kind of low No, it's a so when you take the footprint of the building that we did currently you add the 5-foot barrier around you get about 730 square feet of gravel at 4 inches thick you have Gravel is about 1.2 tons per cubic yard. So the math ends up to being close to 11 cubic yards of gravel and You want a quiet aggregate you can call him up.

We did that no I I just know when I call somebody for doing driveway in my house that that just was not even was just way higher I see and And and included you got to pay somebody to do that right you got the labor Yeah, so where I was getting at is the material portion of what I'm calling five dollars per square foot difference when you're talking about the 700

That comes out to about $2, and then you've got another $3 per square foot for labor. And you can approach that differently. My approach was that you'd have someone come in at the very end of the project and dig in your 4-inch thick gravel strip and have people dump the gravel in. There's going to be other approaches where you have bigger pieces of machinery, but that's kind of up to the owner on how they want to approach that. So our numbers were how unlimited would do it.

I'll also add, because we did see the testimony from Contractors Association with some gravel estimates, which certainly gave us cause for concern, because I think they're putting the gravel estimate between $15 and $20 a square foot and equating, I think, for the 1,600 square foot proposal, $27,000. And so we were very concerned about that, because we certainly did not anticipate a $27,000 ask. I did call around and I just submitted to Janelle to get quotes to see who was bidding at $15 to $20 per square foot for gravel. I could not find anybody bidding at $15. So the list that we have is Unlimited Construction, Shioi Construction, Earthworks, Pacific Concrete Cutting, Goodfellows, and Koi Concrete and Rock. Koi Concrete and Rock is included because they just provide the aggregate. You have to do it on your own, but the other five companies Unlimited, of course, came in at $5 a square foot. Shoei came in at $6.66 a square foot. Earthworks came in at $8 a square foot. PCCC came in at $5.33 a square foot. Goodfellow Bros came in at $4.33 a square foot. So that number is considerably lower across the board between $4 and $8. And I can just state that for the contract association number that was in that letter, also they're multiplying it times 1,600 square feet. for a 1,600 square foot house. A 1,600 square foot house is not going to have a 1,600 foot perimeter van. It's going to have a 900 square foot perimeter van. And if you're charging $4 for that 900 feet, that's $3,600. If you're charging the highest we found, which is $8, that comes into $7,000 for that van. So that's where we're just like, There may be contractors out there quoting as high as $15 to $20 for gravel. I was not able to find any in my research recently. Because I just saw that number, and it certainly has caused some concern. And when this proposal went through, And we were spinning it up. The cost of construction was at the forefront of everybody's mind, in that we saw what the ICC WUI codes do. And as Doug kind of went over, what is the cost of that? And $30,000, $40,000 sometimes? It was just like, well, that is just not going to be acceptable from a housing affordability standpoint. And so we worked specifically to try and keep those numbers down.

GARY RITTER- Regarding the international code, because I think I read somewhere, that if we don't pass this, we're going to be subject to them, their code? How does this all work? Because passing this, does it basically, we don't need to apply it to theirs if they implement theirs?

The State Building Code Council could adopt it. The Fire Code Council as well. The State Fire Code Council could as well adopt it. It certainly is in discussions, I'll say. If this were adopted, it basically signals that you can make adjustments to wildfire science measures at the locale level to mitigate that wildfire risk.

But isn't it the same old rule? You can make it stricter but not more lenient? That's kind of what we heard every time something comes from the feds. Oh, you can always make it tougher, but you cannot make it more lenient.

Yeah, so generally speaking, you could make certain things more lenient at the local level until recently. There was a statute passed that said from a fire standpoint, you can't make it more lenient. And our position on this is it's not more lenient. It costs cheaper, but it's more robust because it has the five foot and it has the defensible space.

Yeah, but is that how they see it? I mean, I think it is more lenient if you just look at what they're requiring versus what we're requiring. Ours is much simpler. I mean, it is... the way I read it, but that's not here nor there. I'm just curious as to know what will we be required to follow.

If council sees fit that this is appropriate, candidly, we'll be working directly with Elizabeth and folks like Derek for the fire code council to consider our version over the ICC version.

Right. And again, my point is that is not a guarantee. I just want to be transparent with the public, really, because what we heard today is everything is so good and everything is positive. And it's not that I disagree, but I want to be real. I want to have our opportunity to understand what this bill is going to do before I make a decision.

Could I add something to that? Yeah. It's a little bit apples and oranges at the moment because What we've done is put together a package of building materials, that non-combustible zone. We've incorporated subdivision design and also maintenance and accountability. And the codes that might be considered at the state level looks at only a slimmer piece of that, but has a few things that we didn't include, like sprinklers. But historically in the state, having sprinklers in every single house has been very controversial. It's been traumatic for some people. So the elements that would be added in actually have a pretty bad history of going through and actually being adopted in Hawaii. So I think there would be a lot of discussion. And as we've said, there have been two years of us really diving in deep to figure that out. And to think through, well, what is the International Code Council? What is the National Fire Protection Association code say? That's actually the one that we're on is NFPA, not ICC. And so when we looked at what would it take to include all of that in their way, we could see what the costs were. And we're like, well, if you take out the sprinklers, and you change one wall component. It makes it so much more cheap. But then in that amount of risk that you add by doing that, how can we offset it? Oh, well, we can offset it with that buffer around the house and also with the design and siting of where you put the home and make more space around it. And so that is all to be sort of massaged through. And I'm sort of confident that with our state fire council, we could work through those pieces. and very likely land on something very similar. And this is kind of setting the way for what that could look like while keeping things affordable, rather than just saying take the whole code as is and buy some product that includes sprinklers and other things that have historically not passed in Hawaii. So we're just kind of at that stage now where we try to work through how do we get as robust of safety, keep it affordable, and keep as much of the code intact as possible, but make accommodations like that. So it's been an ongoing discussion.

Thank you. FOLLOW-UP QUESTION, COUNCILMEMBER CONNAUGHTY.

MINE'S A FRESH QUESTION.

GO AHEAD.

OKAY. SO MINE HAS TO DO WITH ONE VERY SIMPLE IS, IS THIS FOR 10 HOUSES OR MORE OR IS THIS FOR ANY NEW HOUSE?

The home hardening requirements, including the gravel area, noncombustible zone, 5 feet, is for any new house.

OK. That's what I thought.

The 5 feet to 30 foot defensible space is only for projects. 10 feet or bigger.

And then when somebody is 10 feet or bigger, when do they evaluate the fire flow protection? Ever or not? I mean, like when we're looking, when we're building 10 new houses, if it's in an area where there is no fire flow protection,

The level of that project is going to have to meet the fire department's fire flow requirements for building permits.

OK. So that might be that they have a big tank of their own that's right there. Somehow that fire flow, the water for putting out a fire, in case people listening don't know what that phrase means.

Yeah, it's reviewed at the building permit level.

So that has to happen. So we're going to be taking care of being able to put a fire out with a fire department. And then, again, I'm kind of just a little stuck on the FRC, the facilities reserve charge loss on this. I'm still kind of asking how we're going to add that in somehow, because when I attend all these fire, I mean, those water department meetings, the water department doesn't have enough water. I live in Kilauea. We're a water-restricted area. We can't even put in a new house or a shower in the school. So... How are we going to deal with that in terms of being able to build houses or any of that? How are we going to offset that?

Yeah. And speaking as a Water Board member, and Joe folks are here as well, but speaking as a Water Board member, looking at the increases that were previously proposed on the FRC program, I think it would behoove us now to look at, OK, if this gets folded off, from the five-eighths meter standpoint, those will no longer be supplying the FRC fund. Are there other areas that are still paying into this fund, particularly resorts and vacation rentals, which Sea Worm has made statements to the effect that they are using more water and water departments should consider adequately adjusting their policies around it.

So you're saying Commission on Water Resource Management, I always like to say the real things, is saying that we could put that burden on to resorts or something else?

Well, the way that it's drafted right now, the The requirement is still on resorts. It just wouldn't be on single-family homes used for residential purposes.

But we would have to be increasing it. Because when we've looked at, and I've sat through the presentations on the increase on both rates and facilities reserve charge, my memory is that it went from 14,000 to 23,000 as the lowest stepping on the increase, and even having something like 42,000 per house on a luxury home, something over 2,000, if I am remembering correctly. It's something like that. So our consultant that we spent a lot of money for that built those rates, not only said it wouldn't stay at $14,000, it was going up to $23,000, if not $42,000. So those are substantial increases that won't be coming. So you're saying if the commissioner got a reasonable...

The increases would still be going, right? You still are grabbing a five-eighths meter for a vacation rental. And so if the vacation rental at $28,000, now we have less single-family residentials coming online with that, then I do think, again, it behooves... the consultant to come back now making that adjustment, knowing that the five-eighths that it's going to apply to are going to be vacation rentals.

So we're going to push it out onto other properties. But you think of somebody who's building a house, they wouldn't say that it's going to be a vacation rental, so they wouldn't have to pay that.

They wouldn't have to pay it.

And then three years later, when they turn it into a vacation rental, then they get it without having to pay it.

If they're constructing in the visitor destination area, the vacation rental is an outright right. So if they want to get exempted, they would have to enter some type of agreement ensuring they're not going to put in a vacation rental. And if they do, then they get assessed that charge.

OK. So we haven't created that, but we can create that in the future.

We have a new question coming from . You had a follow-up?

This is, it's not really part of the bill, but just to go back, because I know at one time we had a sprinkler conversation on the floor a while ago, and I was adamantly against it, but in a wildfire situation where the water infrastructure is getting damaged, do fire sprinklers work in a house?

I think we should call Derek up for that one. But just remember, there's a difference between sprinklers on the inside and the outside. Do they have different purposes?

The standard was for fire sprinklers in the house or outside of the house? In the house. They're for inside the house.

And they're designed to, for a couple of reasons. They're designed for immediate knockdown of a still fire or something. And the key there is, when it comes to wildfire, is you can keep that home from igniting. then that's not your ignition point for the subdivision. So if it knocks down that home. And Derek will know more than I. But it also does help if you have a window that gets broken out and you have flame impingement into that house. It can knock down that to a certain extent. But for what? They're not designed for wildland fire protection in most cases. Yeah, that's correct.

I mean, the answer really is it depends. It depends on the intensity of the fire. It depends on where the fire started, on whether or not that particular sprinkler head can extinguish that fire. If the fire, in some cases, you have, and we saw these in Los Angeles, where you had a sprinkler head on the outside of a cover patio, and the fire did get extinguished, in that outside covered patio area. And it discharged that sprinkler head. And it appears as though that sprinkler had put out that fire. It was an outdoor fire. For those that make the fires that make their way on the inside and then a sprinkler head goes off, if it's not 80 miles an hour blowing it into the structure, then there's a good chance that it might Put it out. But again, it depends on the intensity of the fire, the winds, where that fire's located, where that sprinkler head is. So it's not 100%.

Just committee members, we are coming up close to lunch. So I'm just going to, it's 1238. We're going to plan for a 1245 lunch. So a follow-up question.

So this is a follow-up on his question. And I got this from Chief Gibson. He gave some suggestions and some video suggestions in showing how some places they put a sprinkler head right on the top of the house, on the roof, that that would get turned on when there is a conflagration. and then also for the houses with pools, that they would have something that worked on that. But I believe what his question is, is if our water system is melting down, there's not even any water pressure. If it's coming through the whole community in a concentration, you probably wouldn't have the water pressure for any of it.

So let me back up and say, so let's take the wind. Configuration's out of it. Sprinklers work. That's fair. It's when you have these extreme events is when they could struggle. You notice I'm not saying for sure. I'm not saying emphatically one way, because it depends. So in terms of sprinklers that are on the outside that are on the rooftops and making their way, and there's companies that do that. We looked at several deployments of those systems in Los Angeles. There was a measure of success in those cases. But again, it depends. where it was located, they had water, and so on. In some cases, those particular structures could have their own water system, their own water supply. So it's not like it always works. And with extreme, with high wind conditions, And you already have a sprinkler type action. So it's an atomization of water, right? Smaller droplets of water. And then those get dispersed even more in the wind. So that creates some challenges there. It's also taking from the water supply that firefighters could be using. So that could be challenging. That's a complicated issue.

Committee members, any additional questions for the presentation?

I guess I have a process question. I'm not on the committee, but was it the intent to move this out today, or were you guys considering deferring?

The hope is to move forward, but it depends on the rest of the discussion.

OK. Again, I'm not on the committee. I don't have a vote, but I would suggest a deferral. One of the things that I do want to get more information on is information from the Water Department on what they anticipated. I'm not going to call them up now because I didn't send this in advance, but getting that... the financial impact to the Department of Water and how the plan to recoup those funds are. I mean, this is real money we're talking about. I did speak to a colleague on Maui and asked them what was their concerns. If they had this discussion, their concerns were what my concerns are as far as the cost. What Unlimited is proposing is very reasonable. I mean, $6,000 for a house, that is very doable. That's not going to impact anybody's mortgage. So is the FRC exemption even needed if we're talking about a $6,000 increase? So you're going to give up $14,000 of revenue for the water department to increase the costs by $6,000. It just doesn't work out. And then you impact the water department, who is already struggling financially. So there's a lot of questions that I have. I don't see the need to rush. Again, I'm not on the committee. So I would just ask the committee to consider a deferral.

So I have a comment on that. I was hoping that we would hear from the water department, because they are here. If they are, I'm good with the deferral. If we hear from them later, though, I would probably, if they are prepared to testify today, I would like to hear their testimony today, perhaps after lunch, rather than doing the full deferral. Because I think the water department is a very important layer in that. I like what the chair just suggested, where it could, maybe we don't have that dropping of the FRC. So we desperately need more houses, and to have more houses, we need more pipes in the ground, and we don't have more pipes in the ground if we don't have money into the water department.

Thank you for the discussion. Considering the time, we'll just take the lunch now and come back at 1.30 and hopefully have any more information. But this concludes the presentation part. As we return for lunch at 1.30, we'll continue with questions and initial discussion. then testimony, and then final discussion for our planning committee. Thank you so much. We'll call back to the planning committee, back to order. We just finished lunch, and the ending of the meeting was finishing our presentation. And so is there any follow-up questions for the presentation? Director Hall, want to call? We do have an amendment. by request through administration. So after any questions for Director Hall, we'll do the amendment, and then we'll have any discussion for the amendment and vote for that, and then go to testimony and discussion after that. So any follow-up questions from the presentation? No? Okay. Well, let's just do the amendment then. So Council Member Cavallo? Yeah, I have a... Floor amendment at this time.

I'd like to move to amend, please.

Second. Seconded. Director Hall, do you want to explain a little bit about the amendment?

Yeah, thank you, Chair. Thank you, Chair, members of Council, and all again on behalf of the Planning Department. Most of these are really just housekeeping items to clarify that It's an addition to a structure that would require the home hardening standards and not necessarily like a renovation. Some other stuff came in from the American Institute of Architects local Hawaii chapter concerning the way that the screening language was in play and just doing some housekeeping to make sure it's clear on what the screening is. as well as some of the vent stuff. Also, AIA brought those concerns up from a terrifying standpoint. And then lastly, when I was talking specifically Derek Alconis and his team on the difference between the standard ICC WUI code and what we have in place. What is the difference? And he said, aside from the fire rated walls, which we discussed at length, and using defensible space instead of fire rated wall requirements, the only other difference is that the ICC WUI code is routinely updated. And so there's a fold in here that The planning director, the building division chief, and the fire chief will annually review updated standards to see if this should be adjusted as well. And it holds it accountable to provide a report to the Planning Commission annually on the review of those standards. So regardless of who's in those positions, they will be duty-bound to do that annual review with the safety organizations.

Questions? Yeah.

So on that periodic review, I see it is with Underwriters Laboratory, who we just had present here. So that's working with them. And then on page four, at the bottom, it says, the planning director or planning commission may also grant an exemption from the requirement for a second county standard access road upon written approval of the fire chief. So that's what I was bringing up, right? Meeting those things? So did we have it in there where they had to have it?

Well, in the original draft, it was clear that they have to have it for subdivisions and proposals over 10 units. But clearly, there are going to be some, like at 10 units, in consultation with the fire chief, they may say, actually, this one One road into a 10-unit subdivision is adequate.

Okay.

But it forces the review to happen now for every single subdivision that fire evacuation is now mandatorily reviewed in the subdivision application.

So in the future, we could never create Wailua house lots?

No.

And I can't throw in a little plug there to just run Eggo King across? No, we can't do that.

That, it can be done to be a separate project. And we certainly are as well speaking with, like, Pell Slots has got that one access issue. And then you also have the Hanapepe site that you brought up, Councilmember. We are actively in discussions with Department of Applied and Home Lands to consider prioritizing that roadway connection to create a second access.

OK. All right.

Committee members, any additional questions? Councilmember?

I have a question on the addition Any type of additional work to a house, triggers?

It's essentially footprint expansion. So if you're going to add a room, say a 200 square foot room, that room itself, because it's being built, would have to be built with the home hardening. But you don't have to upgrade the whole house. You can if you want voluntarily, but the code won't require a full upgrade of the whole house.

Just the portion that's being built. Just the portion that's being built needs to be up to date. I have another question.

On page three, exterior glazing, is this new to be added in here? Each resident structure, is this part of the amendment? Glazing with at least one pane comprised of tempered glass, preferably the interior pane?

Yep.

Forgive me, tell me what glazing means.

This is for the window area, the windows themselves.

But aren't all windows glazed?

Yeah, but they're not necessarily tempered.

Oh, tempered. It has to be tempered glass. All right, what does glazing mean? Tempered?

I turn to Leo or Derek if they have further.

What does glazing mean?

Come on up. Sorry, the mic won't pick you up from there.

I just didn't even know what that really meant. Since they added it, they added that, not the word tempered. They put glazing. What does glazing mean?

Glazing is the actual window. So the... the glass that is being used. So if it's dual glaze, it's got two glass layers in that window. Oh, OK. And if it says tempered, that means it's the type of glass that typically you use in showers, doorways, that sort of thing.

That plastic in between, too, glazing. So if you bust it, it doesn't break?

It doesn't, yeah. Tempered is a process that it goes through in order for it to not break into shards. It's safer. It breaks into little pieces.

Thank you. Just another word, blazing. Yeah.

Any additional questions on the amendment, committee members? No additional questions? Well, we have the rules suspended. I'll do testimony on the amendments. Anyone wishing to testify on the amendments? Seeing none, I'll call the meeting back to order. Any additional discussion just on this amendment? No additional discussion. Roll call vote for the amendment, please.

Council Member Carvalho. Aye.

Council Member Cowden. Aye. Council Member Taraschino. Aye.

And now we're back to the bill as amended. We've concluded the presentations. We've included questions. I'll actually do testimony now. So I'll suspend the rules. Any public testimony on the bill as amended? Seeing none, I'll call the meeting back to order. discussion members, committee members.

I just have one question, and I don't know if we need to bring planning back up, but we received email testimony during lunch with several of the items, but the one that this ordinance is effective upon approval, what happens to those applicants that have had their permits approved and are getting ready to build, but they haven't reached that part yet? Are they going to be subject to this this ordinance, because it doesn't say there's no transition period or any type of waiting period. Basically, when this thing, when the mayor signs it, it becomes law, and how do we protect those people that are ready to build?

Yes. I'm on behalf of the primary department. The bill actually doesn't go into effect until, I believe, 2027.

Well, it says upon approval.

That I saw. I don't have a full bill in this.

Yeah, it says this ordinance shall take effect upon its approval, Section 5.

Do you want to see mine?

Well, that's what it says.

Yeah, I believe that's a typo.

I'm sorry?

I don't see it saying that.

So it's under the amendment? Signify the last line of the bill. What should it say?

On which page are you looking?

The last page of the bill. Page 36. Page 36.

I have section 19, 20, 21, 22.

Section 22.

Oh, 22.

OK. Yeah, so the way we did send it over, as Council Services pointed out, is we did send it over for July 1, 2027, but it got formatted with this language. So what we wanted was July 1, 2027, and we're willing to obtain a floor amendment to that. But to the question of, one, it doesn't go into place until July 1, 2027. allow, you know, that transition phase, if you will. If anybody wants to buy into those standards in advance, both the planning department and the building department are ready to review it and say it meets it, but you're not required at this point, should it be adopted.

Well, I'm not worried about those guys. I'm worried about the ones that are ready to build and now would have to go redo their plans. So we got to do an amendment for that. Again is it your plan to get this out today?

If we were to defer this out to the next committee meeting will that adversely impact anything regarding so you're fine if we wait for two more weeks Council Member Cuncia.

Well, I was going to say, I mean, I'm open to the motion for deferment once everybody's discussed this. I think I was going to say if we could do a friendly amendment, but if we're going to defer, we could always do the amendment at the next committee meeting. But, I mean, it is a big deal. There's a lot of stuff to it. And, I mean, if non-members have issues with it, I don't see any point in us saying, getting it to full council and then getting amendments and questions. And then we've got to kick it back again. So it'll just kind of be better if we defer it, try to get everything cleared up or questions. Maybe even if it doesn't get cleared up, at least get the information everybody needs for the next meeting and then hopefully be able to move forward there. But I don't want it to feel rushed on anybody. And again, yeah, to move it to full council and then make changes and stuff is, yeah, it's not conducive.

Okay. So do we need to get the amendment now, or do we do it in the next committee meeting?

I mean, whatever. I mean, if we're going to have discussions, staff can work on the amendment. I would just, you know, again, the administration did their work for two years, from what I heard, and they met with a lot of people and a lot of groups and organizations, and You know, I think for us to just try to rush it out in one committee meeting is probably not responsible. There's a lot of stuff in this thing that's as far reaching things in it. And just with the email we got during lunch, I don't know if you saw it yet.

I didn't see it.

There's a couple of things that they're suggesting. And I just want to have the opportunity to explore those options. And I do want to take a better look at the amendment. I totally agree with the concept. I totally agree with the hazard. But the water issue is another one that is very concerning for me, because we have a water department that is struggling financially. And again, I said it earlier, but if the impact to this construction is $6,000, then why would we be giving $14,000 of basically relief Because now that money has to come from someplace else. So we just put the water department further in Apulka. And it's not like we're getting more TVRs being constructed unless it's in a VDA. So it's not like we have that. Somebody's going to have to pay for that deficit. But I want to explore this more in detail. I want to have a meeting with Joe. I want to have a meeting with others as well. So I would appreciate it. Thank you.

There's no additional questions for Director Hall. Call the meeting back to order. We'll do some discussion, but it looks like we have the amendment. Oh, you've got to move and circulate. Move to amend and circulate. Move to amend and circulate.

Circulated.

Second. Moved and seconded. Any questions? Any public testimony?

This is turning into July 1, 2027. Correct.

No discussion. Roll call vote.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye. The amendment passes. Circulated back to initial discussion and or final discussion if there's no more questions. I'll just start with I'm in agreement with this committee and the suggestions by the members and non-members that I don't This is a big bill, and the administration has worked on it for a long time. And this is our part and you know committee meeting is designed for this and so a deferral I'm open to a deferral as well. So any more discussion?

I Would like to Recognize the strength of Houston in the meeting today how much it's appreciated and I believe all of us in office recognize the highest need on the island is keeping our long-standing residents on the island and in a home and even newer residents, but the goal is to keep people here. And so costs are driving people off the island and out of their homes. That's why we have to be careful on the cost. But I really appreciate the strength of the presentation, especially with the emphasis on the insurance, because I think that that could be catastrophic for the longevity of our existing population to be able to be here. I really value what a quality presentation that we had on all of it. And for the people who have been concerned, I appreciate that they're watching. So I also, I will support the idea to extend this out for another committee meeting so that their questions can be more thoroughly explored. But yes.

Any other discussion? Council Member Holland?

Thank you all very much. I learned a lot today, and I think I received some messages and calls over lunch, so I appreciate the opportunity to dig a little deeper into some of the claims, rebuttaling those costs, and some of the other concerns, including the additional amendments that were sent through on this email. I think for new subdivisions, for me, I'm much more comfortable with it. I have an issue with requiring the last house in a whole neighborhood to do this without it being coupled with some sort of incentive for the surrounding houses to also look at this, or like an opportunity. When it comes to stuff like this, I think I generally feel that we should be going with incentives over mandates. And so I try to think about the ways that that could be there. And if we can't do that and it has to be mandated, I think at minimum providing options would be nice. I like the idea of incorporating an option for immediately surrounding the house instead of concrete being like a watered or irrigated grass. maintained system, I think that's fair. I think looking at stuff like 3D concrete, like if you had a 3D concrete home, do you still need to do this? I mean, there should be options that people are given, and so I would really like to see that. I would like to see maybe if you decide to do the irrigated grass, you don't get the FRC exemption, but it is a way cheaper investment, and maybe certain people would prefer that. I like the idea of If you use a different type of construction like the 3D concrete that somebody sent in, is there any other flexibility? Is there any other options rather than just limiting it to this? I mean, I'm in huge support of us being progressive in the way that we think about these measures and how we plan ahead for fire. And I think it's absolutely important. But I am reminded of sometimes we pass things I think one example was the new fire suppressant systems that are like $25,000 suppressant systems and then everybody had to convert and it was difficult for some of the businesses in Kapa'a. I also have concerns about the water department. If you went to the public meetings, it was really, really concerning. It looked like we were about to lose access to water because they were going to go under. So I do find it interesting that we have this ability to I'd like to see what the numbers are on that as well, personally. And I think that this has to be coupled with some sort of certification process. I think that this needs more work. I think we need to have a more comprehensive approach rather than just kind of mandating this across the board. I think it's great. I think it's important. But I think it needs a little bit more thought into what options and opportunities there are. Yeah, for alternatives and for people to make choices that work with them and their property. Thank you, guys.

Any additional discussion? This will also be looking like our final discussion, too.

Yeah, I'll just say, I mean, as far as most of the measures, they're pretty easy to implement. You know, I think the hardest measure, but the most important measure is at five feet from the house. And so I'm sure moving forward, there's probably going to be a little more discussion on what type of options there are. But again, that is the most critical part, too, from what I've heard from meeting with everyone. That's the part where you can either have a house that doesn't burn or you have a house that does burn. But other than that, I've been... In favor of this bill, I've been in favor of it from when it came through as plantation camps. I do know we're definitely weighing and trying to foresee the future on will these things help with insurance coverage in the future. Hard to say. But it is definitely proactive, and we definitely see the benefit. And for the most part, I think most of the stuff that you need to do is very minor. It's just the cost again. I mean, we're in this dilemma where Housing costs are already high. We don't want to add any more housing costs to new housing or to anybody. We're in the dilemma of, I mean, the most important part is at five feet. And so I think that's where it's at. That's probably where most of the conversation is going to be in the next couple of weeks, I would think. And yeah, hopefully we can get any questions or concerns we have addressed within the next two weeks so that in the next meeting, if there's amendments or whatever we got to do, we can do it there.

That's it.

Any other discussion?

I'll just follow up on Mr. Kaneshiro. Maui was the county that got devastated by the fires, and I spoke to one council member. I didn't speak to all, but just one, and I asked them were they considering this, and the whole reason Maui, according to this one council member, isn't moving forward with something like this is because of the cost, additional cost to housing, which they're very cognizant of. But what they have done or are doing are working on other measures like the vegetation regulations where people cannot put plants near the house and things like that. I understand the concept, but Maui is not even looking at something like this because of the cost, and that is always my concern. But if the $6,000 figure is the right number, my estimates came in quite higher from contractors that I know, but I have no reason to doubt Lance and his estimates. I coached him in Papua New Football, so I know he's damn smart. So I know he's... But that is always the issue, the cost, and are we going to be hampering our housing efforts with this, but we'll see. Thank you.

Any additional discussion, Council Member Carvalho?

Just overall, I think the overall concept and idea, I mean, working and hearing all the testimony today, and it's okay, we can amend it and look at it, but the intent is all there, right, to make sure that we provide that opportunity, and I think that discussion is really healthy. But at the same time, okay, we can look at this again and then bring it back and kind of reevaluate some of the other areas. So I appreciate that.

I'm just going to add my discussion, and I know there is an interest in deferring, so I'll see if there's any committee members willing to do the deferral. But my initial discussion, and technically final too, is first mahalo to the team that has worked on it for two years to look at this intently, to bring in expertise into the space, to take the time to explore every opportunity to support and take care of our community. coupled this with the briefing, it is looking at this and the recommendation of this bill and what it's suggesting. It is our one but big part of how we can save lives. Based on the science and what was presented, is an action that I think in this body can do and I think must do in my perspective to be part of the solution. Personally, when I look at the cost and the ability to implement this, one, I don't own a home, so if this is applied and I buy a home or a new constructed home that is following this, Or if I somehow buy some land and build this and this is implemented, whether it's $6,000 or $20,000, I'm going to want to do it. And it's hard to think about this in this way, but with a two-year-old, no amount of increase of costs in your mind compares to losing someone that you care about. You know, I love the fact that we're looking at all the pieces and that this is just one small piece of it. And it seems that with the data, it will make a huge impact in our community. And I don't mind being the first in Hawaii or the United States in regards to saving lives and taking care of people. And so I know this body cares about people and we're going to do the necessary pieces. And so I appreciate the concerns that was brought up, because we do have to do our due diligence. It is our turn to take a shot at it, and so our shot is to the I's and cross the T's as part of the seven-member council, and I appreciate the administration and the whole team that did this legwork, and so it's our turn to take a shot at it. So I am looking to our committee members to see if anyone is interested in the deferral, because I do support the idea of working on it some more.

Move to defer to September 2nd, 2026. Second.

Moved and seconded.

On the deferral, Council Member Carvalho?

Aye.

Council Member Cowden? Aye. Council Member Kaneshiro?

Aye.

Committee Chair Bolasan? Aye. Ayes pass.

The bill has been deferred, and that will conclude the planning committee as there's no additional business.

Thank you. I'd like to call the Finance and Economic Development Committee to order that the record reflect that Council Member Coley is excused. Clerk, can you please read our only item?

Item Bill Number 2999, a bill for an ordinance amending Chapter 6, Kauai County Code 1987 as amended, relating to establishing the Special Duty Police Officer Program fee account.

Do we have a motion? Move to approve.

Second.

With that, do we have any questions on this item?

I have just a simple question.

I'll suspend the rules. Council Member Cotting.

Thank you. This bill is in the Finance Committee because it's really just opening an account. It's a separate program fee account. It's not really looking at any of the criteria about special duty police program.

Rudy Tye speaking. Police Chief, that is correct.

OK. So it's just about opening the account for a separate element. So I just wanted to make sure that that was clear.

OK. Any other questions from the members? If not, I'll call the meeting. Well, while the rules are still suspended, anyone in the audience wishing to testify on this item? If not, I'll call the meeting back to order. Any discussion from the members? If not, roll call vote.

Council Member Bolasan is stepped out. Council Member Carvalho.

Aye.

Council Member Cowden. Aye. Council Member Holland. Aye. Council Chair Raposo.

Aye.

Committee Chair Kaneshiro.

Aye.

Motion passes.

Seeing no further business and hearing no objections, the Finance and Economic Development Committee is adjourned.

Committee of the Whole will now come to order. Let the record reflect. All members are present. Mr. Koli is excused. All we have are the minutes of the August 5th, 2026 Committee of the Whole meeting. Can I get a motion to approve? Move to approve. Second. Moved and seconded. Any discussion or public testimony? Seeing none, all in favor say aye. Aye. Motion carried. That concludes today's agenda. Bye.

We don't.