1991 - Kalaupapa Paving

In 1991, Goodfellow Bros. would find themselves in Kalaupapa, on the north shore of the Hawaiian island of Molokai where in 1866 more than 8,000 children and adults were exiled after being diagnosed with Hansen’s disease, also known as leprosy. Only sixty patients remained, but their pier needed fixing, their roads were in disrepair and their airport runway was a hazard.

The National Park Service of the U.S. Department of Interior, the State of Hawai`i Department of Health and, most importantly, the patient residents assumed a construction crew would do nothing to disturb this pristine, protected place and the people who lived there. After what they’d been through and the way they’d been cast out, who could blame them for their fears? But they didn’t know Goodfellow Bros.

Fixing the pier came first so it would be safe and have the capacity to handle the offloading of heavy equipment and supplies for the work on the runway and the roads. But how to fix the pier before you can get equipment and supplies there? Imagine living in a small, quiet community, and suddenly you have the spectacle of helicopters helping with precision construction, dropping buckets of concrete into forms one yard at a time. From the moment the work began, the residents drifted closer to watch what would happen next.

As the work moved forward on schedule, the runway project proved just as interesting to residents. The old runway had to be blasted out of the way, dynamite coming on a plane by itself, and the work had to go in phases to keep planes coming in and out. By widening and reorienting the runway by five degrees, it would be safer for airplanes to take off and land in relation to the crosswinds.

The last phase of work, the resurfacing of more than seven miles of roads, brought the construction into the heart of the community and would have a tremendous impact on people’s ability to get around, including many who used wheelchairs.

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