NĀHIKU — After Hurricane Lala’s rains and floodwaters roared through East Maui, all that was left of the aging wooden bridge that served as the “lifeline” for Darrell Richard and five other residents in Lower Nāhiku were the metal guardrails.

“It’s wiped clean,” said Richard, now trapped on the makai side, cut off from the rest of the small East Maui community and virtually everywhere else.

The sight of the collapsed bridge put him in “a state of shock,” he recalled Friday while standing on his porch.

Richard and his neighbors want the critical bridge that was destroyed last weekend to be fixed soon, but there’s a big problem. Nobody seems to know who owns it. Nobody seems to know who is responsible for rebuilding it.

Maui County says the bridge doesn’t belong to them. East Maui Irrigation says it doesn’t belong to their company either.

Property tax records show the land around the bridge is registered to East Maui Land Holdings, whose address traces back to the Honolulu offices of Alexander & Baldwin, once the parent company of East Maui Irrigation. 

A&B could not be reached for comment on Friday. 

In Nāhiku, residents just want answers and a safe passage. 

“Somebody has to take responsibility for it,” Richard said. “Without the political clout to strong arm people, they’re not going to step forward to help us.”

Currently, the only option to cross the stream is a short scramble down a muddy hill, followed by a walk across mossy rocks and then a balancing act along a narrow wooden plank, which sat about 3 feet above the rushing water in the gulch on Friday.

“While some residents are able to cross a temporary footbridge, not all can safely do so,” Maui County spokesperson Laksmi Abraham said in a statement to the Hawai‘i Journalism Initiative on Thursday. 

On Monday, the Maui Emergency Management Agency conducted a site visit and found no damage to the five homes on the makai side of the bridge, Abraham said. After residents said they could use a generator and some fuel, the agency arranged for the Maui Police Department’s helicopter to deliver a generator, fuel cans and about 40 gallons of fuel on Thursday. 

Abraham said that MEMA has stayed in direct contact with residents since the site visit and will provide additional help as needed. 

“The County remains committed to ensuring these residents have access to essential assistance while normal roadway access is unavailable,” she said.

Abraham said the county doesn’t know who owns the bridge and that a 2017 Department of Public Works report found that “the bridge was constructed on private property and does not carry a public road.”

When asked to confirm if A&B was the owner, Abraham said the county was looking into it.

“It’s not county, so I don’t feel it’s appropriate for us to speak to who owns it,” Abraham said. “All we can verify is we don’t own it.”

In the meantime, she said the county “is actively evaluating” options.

A PRECARIOUS CROSSING

Richard always knew the bridge wasn’t going to last forever. In the 40 years he’s owned his property in Nāhiku and the 10 years he’s lived there full time, he’s witnessed the erosive nature of East Maui’s wet climate and the power of the stream that runs just below his home. Sometimes, it will come “from nothing,” building into a “rumbling, roaring, crashing sound” as it barrels through the narrow gulch. 

“It was inevitable that the bridge was going to get pulled out,” he said. 

The roughly 40-foot wooden bridge near the end of Lower Nāhiku Road connected the community to the state-owned landing that leads to the ocean. For years, it had been falling into disrepair, held together by “Band-Aid” fixes. Even those who used it often were cautious when crossing.

For a long time, Richard wouldn’t risk driving over the bridge. Instead, he kept his truck on the other side and lugged his groceries and other belongings across the bridge by foot to his colorfully painted two-story home.

Only after his neighbor Russell Stoner shored up the bridge shortly before the COVID-19 pandemic did Richard feel comfortable driving over it. He and his wife used it often. She is “the real social person in our group,” often making trips out for paddling, book clubs, farmers markets and other events. The couple also drove to Central Maui a couple of times a week to buy groceries.

The bridge was “a lifeline” for the Richards and their neighbors, whose homes are tucked into the jungle up steep driveways from the main road.

“Now I don’t know what we’re going to do,” Richard said.

Nāhiku resident Kurtis Chong Kee, who lives on the mauka side of the bridge, said even with the repairs, the bridge was “still kind of sketchy.”

“When we go down there to go fishing and whatnot, I don’t like even taking my big truck because … I don’t know what is the tolerance on that thing because it’s so old and it’s not the most guaranteed thing,” he said.

Maui County was concerned enough that even though it didn’t own the bridge, it stepped in to repair it in 1988 using Department of Public Works operational funds, then-Public Works Deputy Director Rowena Dagdag-Andaya told a Maui County Council committee in 2016.

“This was just something that the department wanted to assist with and shortly after that there were discussions with staff and the community and the state as to whose responsibility it was,” Dagdag-Andaya said. “At the time, they didn’t have any records as to ownership or title as well and there had been no other records as to any title or documentation that the county did create the bridge or construct the bridge.” 

In 2012, the department looked into replacing the wooden structure with a metal bridge. The cost: $798,000 for the installation alone, not including the removal of the old one. 

The department conducted “some temporary short-term fixes,” but after residents reported in September 2014 that the contractor had damaged the old bridge with their truck, the department went to inspect the rotted-out wooden structure and recommended that it be closed. The county, state and EMI all agreed that vehicle access should be restricted but pedestrian crossings allowed. 

Still, nobody knew at the time who was responsible for the bridge.

“That is the million-dollar question,” said Nāhiku resident Tom Bacon, who has watched government officials debate the issue whenever the bridge’s condition came up.

The Lower Nāhiku bridge’s ownership has been a mystery for years. It’s not in the State of Hawai‘i’s massive inventory of bridges, whose only record of a bridge crossing Makapipi Stream is the 40-foot concrete span on Hāna Highway built in 1926 mauka of the Nāhiku community. 

In 2008, state lawmakers asked the attorney general to investigate the ownership of the bridge and Lower Nāhiku Road, citing concerns about the safety of residents and first responders. The attorney general’s office was supposed to submit its findings before the next session, but nothing about the bridge appears in the list of reports submitted for the 2009 regular session.

During the council committee meeting in 2016, Dagdag-Andaya explained that Maui County’s jurisdiction ends at “the stop sign on Lower Nāhiku Road where the old Nāhiku School lot used to be.” The road then continues down through private property before reaching the bridge that crosses Makapipi Gulch. 

Dagdag-Andaya said the bridge “appears in private property, the EMI portion,” before the road continues through another private property and ends up at the state-owned landing next to the ocean. At the time, EMI was a subsidiary of A&B; now it’s owned by farming venture Mahi Pono.

Maui County ordered a title report, and in December 2014, the finished report “indicated that there was no evidence of title to the government of Hawai‘i” and that the road passed through multiple private parcels. The county shared the title report with EMI.

With no clear ownership, Dagdag-Andaya said the department was holding off on additional improvements to the bridge at that time.

In 2019, Maui County thought about taking over the bridge. The council passed a resolution urging then-Mayor Michael Victorino to acquire and replace it, but the purchase never happened.

Council Member Shane Sinenci, who holds the East Maui residency seat, said the county wanted to put funding in the budget to repair the structure four years ago.

“For me, it was about emergency access,” Sinenci said Friday. “If anything happens upside, it could be an evacuation route, at least down to the ocean.”

But Sinenci was told the county didn’t own the bridge and due to liability issues couldn’t fix it because it was on private property. 

Sinenci said he has been trying to explain the ownership issue to the residents who have been calling him about the bridge since it washed out in the storm. He understands that people “want action now, but there is a process.”

“We’re kind of receiving the brunt of it, but it’s like, ‘Hey, we’ve tried,’ and we’re always looking out for the safety of our residents,” Sinenci said. “But it’s just so much that we can do if it’s on private property and it’s not our property.”

Sinenci said that anything the county funds comes with liability and that he is in contact with the Public Works Department and Corporation Counsel to see what the county can legally do.

“We need ownership … and right now we cannot fix the bridge because we don’t own the property that is on two sides of the bridge,” he said.

A COMMUNITY IN LIMBO

Tired of waiting for outside help, community members took matters into their own hands around 2019, collecting donations so Stoner could repair the bridge, Richard recalled. Bacon remembers that the work involved putting plywood on top, elevating the bridge by several inches.

“They just kept putting Band-Aids on it basically and did the best they could through donated materials and labor,” said Bacon, who also avoided driving the bridge until after the repairs.

Bacon said the area is “cherished by the community,” and ultimately the future of the bridge should be up to the longtime families, saying: “I hope to see the community come together and decide what’s the best for Nāhiku and then have it done.”

Moses “Moke” Bergau Jr., a 67-year-old lifelong Nāhiku resident, said that while the bridge washout “is tragic,” the people there knew that was the risk of living on the other side. 

Bergau, who represents Nāhiku on the Aha Wai O Maui Hikina, East Maui Regional Community Board, said that historically the road was a key connection to other nearby communities and still holds importance today as the only access point to the ocean for the community.

But having a passable bridge for vehicles has come with a cost in the past — a summer “rush of the tourists” to an area treasured by local families. Bergau said there was never a need for the bridge to be large enough for vehicles and that the community consensus is to have a light footbridge for people or small ATVs. 

Residents want access, but they don’t want the crowds. Chong Kee said the area is “sacred” to the community, and “the less people down there, the better.”

Chong Kee, whose property was also flooded during the storm, said the community will have to discuss a solution for the bridge, and they’ll also be waiting to see what the county decides. He said if the government doesn’t take action, residents may have to raise the funds and do it themselves again, but he also worries they’ll get into trouble.

“At the end of the day, we don’t have any choice because our friends need to get out, and that’s where I take my kids to go fishing,” he said. “I mean, a lot of my food that I feed my family is off of fishing. … That’s a very important place for us, for a lot of us, not just me and my family.”

Kaili‘i Rodriguez, a 16-year-old junior at Hāna High School junior, was enjoying a dip in the stream on Friday afternoon. She said she comes down every day to swim and hang out with her family.

Her great-grandmother is from Nāhiku and the bridge had been around her whole life. The community has created “a whole bunch of memories” in the area and “it kind of hurts and it’s really sad” to see the bridge gone, Rodriguez said. She hopes it can be replaced with a “more stabilized” bridge.

Whether it’s the county or the state, Richard thinks the government should be the one to rebuild it, because the job is going to require serious equipment. He said he knows the county is juggling a lot of post-storm projects and their small community is not a priority, but he pointed out that the Nāhiku bridge has been an issue for a long time. He spent years going to meetings where officials smiled and nodded and said they wanted to help them, but never did. 

“I know that they’re strapped for money, too … but it could have been taken care of years ago,” he said. 

Richard said the temporary plank won’t last forever; in fact, he’s worried it will wash away in the next storm. The retired school principal said he and his wife have enough food and water for now, but “we’re on a tight budget, so I don’t know what it’s going to mean.” He was grateful for the supplies from the county but concerned about the long term.

“I don’t need gas,” he said. “I need a bridge.”