It can be deadly to be trusting

It was a shock: A metal railing at Ala Moana Center, installed for safety, instead collapsed, causing two men to fall four floors Sunday night. One man, 21, died; the other was critically injured.

The men were leaning on the railing, as people often do. Surely they didn’t expect it to give way, especially one at a big shopping mall.

The owner of Ala Moana, General Growth Properties, will need to immediately inspect all of its railings for signs of weakness. The accident also should serve as a renewed warning to other landowners: Structural safety features need to be checked regularly and replaced immediately if needed. People place a lot of trust in them.

What’s next for isle rooftop solar?

From a distance, the spectacular rise then sudden fall of Hawaii’s rooftop solar industry might seem like a puzzling implosion.

Why incentivize the growth of this clean-energy technology, only to pull the plug on consumers at the height of the industry’s popularity?

Technical reasons come into play, of course, with phrases such as electrical grid instability, protecting the grid and excess energy being given as limiting factors.

In a sad but familiar trend, the number of photovoltaic permits issued for Oahu fell 40 percent in September compared with the same time last year: 379 permits, down from 631 in September 2015.

For the sake of the solar-energy future here, let’s hope a new evolution is imminent to brighten an increasingly gloomy industry.