Hawaii County proposes disaster recovery office after Kīlauea eruption lessons

Hawaii County leaders moved to turn the slow, uneven recovery from the 2018 Kīlauea eruption into a permanent government function, after years of unfinished work in Lower Puna exposed how easily disaster response can get stuck in the long tail.

Councilmember Ashley Kierkiewicz introduced Bill 157, which would create a Hawaii County Disaster Recovery Program inside Civil Defense and give the county a recovery officer appointed by the mayor. The job would cover recovery planning, interagency coordination, community engagement, funding management, and both interim and long-term recovery and resilience plans.

Kierkiewicz said the county should not keep asking already-busy employees to absorb disaster recovery on top of their regular duties, especially when state, federal and philanthropic money may be available but still needs a dedicated team to organize it. Her case rested on Lower Puna, where residents were still waiting on roads, water lines and parks to be restored more than seven years after the eruption.

County recovery materials show why the backlog has lingered. The 2018 Lower East Rift Zone eruption was described as unprecedented in scale and speed and caused an estimated $236.5 million in damage to public infrastructure. The county says 32.3 miles of roads were inundated, 14.5 miles of waterlines were destroyed, 900 utility poles were lost, and two geothermal wells and one electrical substation were damaged or isolated. Entire neighborhoods, including Kapoho Vacationland, Lanipuna Gardens and Kapoho Beach Lots, were destroyed, along with Kapoho Bay and tidepools and Ahalanui Warm Ponds.

The county’s own recovery site says disaster recovery can take five to 10 years depending on the scale and duration of the disaster. That is the gap Bill 157 is trying to close. The draft says the county’s experience after the eruption showed the need for dedicated leadership, intergovernmental coordination, meaningful community engagement and structured planning, and that recovery can stretch well beyond emergency response for multiple years.

Hawaii County has already built pieces of that system. It released the Kīlauea Recovery and Resilience Plan, the Economic Recovery Plan and a Volcanic Risk Assessment on Dec. 4, 2020. The Kīlauea Recovery Grant Program was established in 2020 through an amendment to Hawaii County Code Chapter 2, Article 47, and the county now says it has both the Kīlauea Recovery Grant Program and the Puna Strong Grant Program. It also says it could receive nearly $300 million in state and other recovery funding, including about $61.5 million in FEMA Public Assistance grants for roads and about $30 million for water systems.

Infrastructure work is still moving. Highway 137 reconstruction began Jan. 9, 2025 and is expected to finish in the third quarter of 2026. Pohoiki Road restoration is scheduled to begin in the second quarter of 2025 and finish in the fourth quarter of 2026.

The measure had broad support in committee but was postponed so Kierkiewicz could revise language on funding, definitions and whether the recovery officer should be permanent or activated only after a disaster. It is scheduled to return to the Policy Committee on Health, Safety and Well-Being on June 2.