Clear homeless under highways

Where there’s smoke, there’s fire — and potentially great tragedy.

The recent disastrous March 30 collapse of a section of the I-85 in Atlanta brings into sharp focus the potential dangers faced by commuters on Oahu’s freeways and major highways as well.

Encampments occupied by the homeless here are difficult to clear, given Hawaii’s shortage of affordable permanent housing, and the fact that the islands’ mild weather enables more to seek refuge on the streets.

But clear them we must, finding short-term accommodations as well as delivering permanent housing — and fast.

These individuals and families need to be moved to a place where both their safety and that of the general public can be preserved — and public infrastructure can be protected.

The Georgia freeway collapse was precipitated by a huge fire believed to have been set intentionally by homeless people living beneath the elevated interstate. Three people have been arrested in the case, in which the fire ignited stored polyethylene pipes for natural gas distribution and to encase fiber optic lines and other wires.

The blaze set off an explosion that dislodged large concrete pieces, and that brought down the elevated section. Because traffic had been stopped earlier in the firefighting incident, nobody was on the affected roadway, and there were no injuries.

If such a thing ever happens here, Honolulu residents might not be so lucky — including the homeless people who live beneath Oahu freeways and present the same kind of hazard.

As Honolulu Fire Department Capt. David Jenkins pointed out, such fires might have external causes, even resulting from arsonists trying to clear the homeless camps by fires.

Regardless of how the fire starts, however, the environment created by such encampments as the one beneath the H-1/Nimitz Highway viaduct is not conducive to safety.

The problem already is well known to city and state officials. In January 2013 a homeless man suffered burns to his face and arms following a rubbish fire under the viaduct. The blaze, which burned three spans of concrete ramps near Kilihau Street, also caused widespread telephone, internet and cable television outages because of the damage to fiber optic cables.

The encampments themselves are a danger to their residents; the lack of bathrooms causes a sanitation problem. Some of the campers try to ward off flies and insects with the campfires, and that should ring alarm bells for everyone.

Garbage collecting beneath bridges from Waipahu to Wahiawa — and out in the open, as in Iwilei — pose a real health and safety hazard. But it’s this freeway viaduct, traveled by nearly everyone on Oahu at one time or another, that is the most worrisome.

And it is galling that the worry keeps mounting while innovation to provide safer alternatives lags so terribly. It’s a fight every legislative session to secure anything close to what’s needed to finance new construction of rental units. That is where the chronically homeless could be moved, as part of local and federal government’s “Housing First” policy.

The housing capacity expansions — such as a small “navigation center” for the homeless at Sand Island, a relatively few rehabilitated micro-units in Chinatown — fall far short of what will be required. It’s time for the state to consider a larger campsite that could provide for security and sanitation, away from the infrastructure Hawaii needs to protect.

State and city leaders must come to grips with the mammoth proportions of Hawaii’s homelessness problem and scale the official response way, way up. The “slow and steady wins the race” approach to housing has gone off track, and the potential damage and loss of infrastructure proves the extent of statewide negligence.