August 23, 2004

• Well, TS Estelle is gone. She fizzled out overnight, in the cold waters that surround our islands. It’s those cold waters that protect us for the most part from such nasty weather. It’s also what helps to cool our islands.

  
  

  All we’ll see from the remnants of the once tropical storm is some much needed rains, such as we’re getting now. My yard is so dry in spots, even with the occasional brief rains that there’s dust under my Italian cypress trees!

  
  

  As for that traffic accident that shut down Volcano Highway for hours, they originally mis-reported the ages of the victims who were killed. One was a 53-year-old woman, Jeannette E. Manahan, who was the front seat passenger, from Elmherst, New York. The other was the 31-year-old uncle, Clinton Keliiholokai, of the 18-year-old driver of the other vehicle, Stanley Keliiholokai, from a nearby community. Both of them are ‘ice’ addicts.

  
  

  That makes me think of a recent Wal-Mart stop I made, where in line to check out, I overheard the cashier telling the man in front of me that he had already bought his limit earlier that day. When it was my turn, I saw 3 boxes of diphenhydramine-containing cold medication she had put aside that he was trying to purchase. This is the main ingredient in manufacturing illicit crystal methanphetamine or ‘ice.’ How stupid can he be that not only is he buying this to make that crap, but he goes to the SAME cashier on the same day to try to get more?!

  
  

  A witness to the accident was one whom they passed in their rush north toward Hilo. He is a neighbor of theirs & former National Park ranger & firefighter. He had direct knowledge of the neighbors’ addiction problems from the numerous times police showed up for domestic violence calls. The boy had been in several youth offender programs. He had left the car & tried to get someone to give him a ride away from the accident. Smart people rolled up their windows & locked their doors.

  
  

  Both drivers are in the hospital, their conditions upgraded from critical to guarded.

  
  

  What is it about that stupid drug that has people so caught up in its abuse? The things the people using the drug do is terrible! Even in the ‘hippie’ era, drug users respected others. These current drug abusers have NO respect for others or property! It was this drug that caused the other accident (on March 24) I mentioned in the last blog, where they careened out of control & hit a tour bus, killing everyone in their car. The investigators found thousands of dollars & the drug within the smashed up car. Is the ‘high’ worth it? When I was a kid, a fender-bender made front page, that’s as few traffic accidents as we had back then!

  
  

  The sad thing is that our island suffered another traffic fatality on the same highway much further south the very next day, Friday. A 23-year-old woman from Naalehu, Sunny Kalua, is dead after colliding with an oncoming pickup truck driven by 19-year-old Eric Perez. There isn’t any additional information available at this time about the cause of the accident. The boy & a female passenger from Kalua’s car are in critical condition.

  
  

  I wouldn’t be a bit surprised to find out that this accident was the result of some illicit drug use or alcohol, since both can devastatingly impair the judgment & physical abilities in drivers.

  
  

  The oil spill? Not a word that I could find about it in today’s paper (no Saturday local paper… I forgot)!

  
  

  One of my favorite movies (which I blogged about previously) is on…”Pay it Forward.” It’s showing on the local CBS channel. I hope you’ve had a chance to see it, since it presents some things worth thinking about & doing for others to truly be human & humane, like some of those at the recent accident scenes, who provided emergency first aid for people they didn’t know & wouldn’t benefit from, other than the ‘feel good’ of knowing they helped someone. I’m off to watch my movie…

  • 2:07 am
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