Lee Cataluna: Maui fires bring back memories of scary time

There was a time in the mid-’80s when somebody was setting fires on Maui. Last week’s massive brush fires that threatened Central Maui and consumed what used to be green fields may have reminded some longtime residents of those bad years when everyone was chasing down a fire bug.

In 1985 the Wailuku Fire Station was called the busiest in the state. There were fires maliciously set in cane fields in Wailuku and Kihei, a seemly endless stream of brush fires, building fires that took Baldwin High School’s drama classroom and, less than two weeks later, the school’s art building. The old Maui Community Theater at the Kahului fairgrounds burned the year before.

At one point Maui police arrested a 19-year-old man suspected of starting a cane fire in Wailuku. But while the suspect was in custody over the weekend, there were three more fires set around Central Maui. HC&S and Wailuku Sugar put up a reward for information leading to the arrest of people setting fire to their cane fields.

And that was just the beginning of a long, frustrating, dangerous hunt for a person hellbent on burning Maui acre by acre. It went on for years.

In the summer of ’85, 26-year-old Ronald Wayne Rivera was arrested and eventually confessed to setting the two fires at the high school, the one at the fairground and several cane fires. He said he just liked to see the big, red flames. Rivera served time in prison and died in 2008.

But while Rivera was in custody, the fires continued.

On Oct. 15, 1987, newspapers reported on a “Maui Arson Binge,” a string of fires set in the Central Maui area too numerous for an accurate, up-to-date count. At one point there were three suspicious fires reported at different places in the same hour.

My father worked at Wailuku Sugar at the time, and though I was away at school, this topic dominated every Sunday night phone call. He would come home from work, eat dinner and then go out again in his truck to patrol the fields. When the phone rang in the middle of the night, he’d race out the door in his work boots. That’s what it meant to work in sugar during those days. A threat to the fields was a threat to the community. No one had to tweet for a road to be opened or ask for tractors to help cut a firebreak on county land. Everyone fought the fires together.

The Maui arson spree came to a quiet end. A criminal profiler was brought in from the mainland to study details of the fires, including phone calls the suspect had made to police. From this a description of the suspect emerged, including his age range, education level and possible motive.

Local lore has it that a security company was hired to provide “enforcement,” and though no arrest was made for the fires that occurred after 1987, the lead “enforcer” ensured community leaders that there would be no more fires.

While even a suggestion of off-the-books justice would be irresponsible, a useful lesson from the past is community involvement. The plantation isn’t there to jump in and back up the county anymore. Those fields are dry and fallow, just the way the anti-sugar people wanted them. There are fire-starters among us — weird, twisted people hellbent on destruction. Maui has to keep eyes open.

Reach Lee Cataluna at 529-4315 or lcataluna@staradvertiser.com.