[CPEO-MEF] Team effort contains Makua Valley blaze

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Hawai'i
THE HONOLULU ADVERTISER
Team effort contains Makua Valley blaze
By Karen Blakeman
Posted on: Friday, July 25, 2003

City and federal firefighters, soldiers, and state and federal
environmental agencies contained the Makua Valley brush fire yesterday
and brought it under control.

"Our strong partnerships with various federal and state agencies were
the key elements in successfully containing this fire," said Col. David
Anderson, commander of the U.S. Army Garrison, Hawai'i.

Among the 2,000 to 2,900 acres burned were between five and ten acres of
a nearby forest preserve, said Patrick Costales, O'ahu branch manager of
the state's division of forestry and wildlife.

The fire, ignited this week when Army officials lost control of a
"controlled burn" that was set Tuesday, burned into the Kuaokala
preserve for a few acres and abutted against the Mokule'ia preserve, but
did not burn in, Costales said.

Costales said the preserve's system of trails and roads, which were
designed to act as fire breaks, held the blaze back and kept it from
doing major harm. The burned acreage, he said, was mostly pine and
silver oak trees that had been planted in the late 1970s.

"Most of the sensitive, threatened and endangered species," Costales
said, "were on the federal side of the line. Not the state."

The Makua Military Reservation has been the source of disagreement
between the Army, which uses the range for live fire training
operations, and Leeward Coast residents who oppose the Army's use of a
valley containing a diverse range of native plants and animals and
thought to contain a number of archeologically important historic sites.

This article can be viewed at:
http://the.honoluluadvertiser.com/article/2003/Jul/25/ln/ln12a.html

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