The Coast Guard is celebrating the 100th anniversary of the Diamond Head Lighthouse.
As part of the celebration, an art contest was held over the last school year, and more than 70 students from around Oahu submitted entries.
Rear Adm. Vince Atkins, commander of the Coast Guard’s 14th District, last week announced the winner, Logan Erickson, an eighth-grader from Kailua Intermediate School. Erickson’s painting will have a permanent home in the lighthouse.
The lighthouse, or hale ipukukui, traces its roots back to 1878 when a lookout was established on the slopes of Diamond Head. It was later determined that a more substantial structure should be built to warn mariners of the dangers of reefs.
The original ironwork structure, built in 1899, was replaced in 1917 and has since been further modernized to use LED lighting burning at 60,000 candlepower and visible 18 miles out to sea.
Hawaii island
Stolen bus sideswipes car with woman, kids inside
A Hawaiian Paradise Park woman and her two young children were unhurt after their car was sideswiped by a stolen county bus Saturday.
Police later took a person “in custody,” West Hawaii Today reported.
The Hele-On bus was stolen at 4 a.m. from the county transit yard and found around 3:30 p.m. in the Puna district, police confirmed.
Motorist Kianee Lane spotted the bus as she was getting ready to turn left onto Railroad Avenue near the Target store in Hilo. When she made the turn, the bus driver appeared to experience some road rage, she said.
“I don’t know why he got so mad,” she said.
Lane said the driver of the bus swerved behind her and flipped her the middle finger. Eventually, Lane said, the driver went into the opposite lane to pass her vehicle and clipped her sideview mirror.
“I was freaking out mostly because I had my kids in the car with me,” she said.
She filed a police report on the incident later Saturday.
Axis deer eradicated in Kau, invasive species team declares
Axis deer have been eliminated in the Kau district, the Big Island Invasive Species Committee announced last week.
Spokeswoman Franny Brewer said there have been no confirmed sightings of the deer since the last one was killed in 2012, the Hawaii Tribune-Herald reported.
Efforts by several agencies — including the U.S. Geological Survey, Hawai‘i Volcanoes National Park, Three Mountain Alliance Watershed Partnership and The Nature Conservancy — ensured the deer didn’t get a foothold on Hawaii island, she said.
Game cameras were installed across 5,200 acres, capturing nearly 7,000 hours of footage, to ensure the deer no longer were present.
A U.S. Fish and Wildlife investigation traced their introduction to a Mountain View man, a rancher and a pilot from Maui who arranged a sheep-for-deer swap between the islands in late 2009. The men said they wanted to create another hunting resource on the island.
The trio were convicted of possessing game animals without a permit.
The invasive species are still found on Molokai, Lanai and Maui. According to the committee, the deer cause millions of dollars a year in crop and landscape damage, and can jump higher than 6 feet, making fencing useless.
