City considers cameras after vandals hit another restroom

City officials are looking into the installation of security cameras along the ceilings of the restrooms at Keehi Lagoon Beach Park and other Oahu recreational areas after what appears to have been the latest vandalism incident sometime about midnight Wednesday.

One of three comfort stations at Keehi Lagoon, heavily used by canoe paddlers and other park visitors, was destroyed by fire. Fire investigators were not able to definitively determine the cause of the fire, city spokesman Andrew Pereira said. One of the toilets appeared to have been smashed and ripped out of the ground, but investigators said the damage to the porcelain could have been caused by the heat of the fire mixing with the cold of water from fire hoses and possibly contact with the fire hoses themselves, he said.

Regardless, Honolulu Mayor Kirk Caldwell took to Twitter to voice his anger at the incident. “I’m outraged and the public should be outraged too,” he said.

Jesse Broder Van Dyke, another city spokesman, said Caldwell instructed city officials to research locating security cameras at comfort stations at Keehi Lagoon and other parks following the incident.

Police reported a drop in vandalism to a restroom at Hans L’Orange Park in Waipahu after two security cameras were installed in February 2014, Broder Van Dyke said.

Vandalism was identified as the cause for the destruction of portable toilets that were torched in January and March at Kaiaka Beach Park in Haleiwa. The portables are supposed to be temporary until the city can reconstruct a permanent facility in the coming years.

In January vandals smashed and destroyed a toilet at the busiest comfort station at Ala Moana Beach Park just days after it was refurbished.